Button Freeze in 2.11b

Since I've updated the software, I've had my buttons not function or respond on me a few times. The music keeps playing, and the visual keeps moving. This has only happened to me in the car, but I only use it in the car unless I'm updating the software. If it happens, it usually happens within the first two minutes. I end up just pulling out and in the player to recycle power and everything works from there.

Dare I say this is a duplicate of this one. I haven't had it happen to me in 2.0b11 yet, but people say they're still seeing it. From experience, bugs like this can be mighty tough to get to the bottom of. Look at Windows...

Please note that it's 2.0, not 2.11.

It happens to be the 11th beta release of the upcoming 2.0, but it's not 2.11. This is notated as 2.0b11, not 2.11b. I know this is getting picky with semantics, but it's important for posterity here on the BBS. (For people looking up old posts next year sometime. )

This is a known bug in 2.0b11. It's been there since 2.0b3, and we're a little worried about it because they haven't found its cause yet.

Yeah 2.11 evokes memories of DOS 2.11 and, well, that's no good.

Last night, while driving home, I was able to cycle through a series of events that would duplicate this 100% of the time. I'm kicking myself now, though, because I'm trying it now and I can't remember what I did!

I do remember that involved doing a certain sequence of actions and presses right after reboot. I know one of the actions was the hold on the bottom button to try to switch from info to visual.

I'm certain that wouldn't have been the only way to trigger this bug, as people sometimes get bit after the player's been going for days. I did think it might be helpful, though.

Reminds me of the bit in HHGTTG where the lady sitting in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realizes how it could all work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything. But before she can tell anyone, the Earth gets destroyed.

Any more hints on the sequence of events?

I have found that pretty much any time I am running the player with visuals my buttons react very slowly. It is occasionally a little slow without visuals, but with visuals it is for all intensive purposes locked up (though music continues to play). If I have the track timer running, the timer clock only updates every 15 seconds or so. I am running 2.0b11 on a MK1. I am about ready to return to 2.0b7 as that seemed to work much better for me.

Man, if you could shed some light on this you'd be a legend, because this bug is Public Enemy #1 as far as I'm concerned.

for all intensive purposes

[grammar nazi]
This should be ``for all intents and purposes''. Don't know if this was intentional or not, but in case it wasn't, you can get laughed out of a room for using a malapropism of this caliber, so take care.
[/grammar nazi]

If you say it fast enough, most people won't notice. It helps to slur it a little.

Or perhaps he did mean that it was for only intensive purposes. Or maybe only for the intensive care of porpoises?

Personally, I think someone sounds like a moron when they don't pronounce the first "r" in "February." Or leave out the "b" in "obvious." Or say "chewsday" instead of "Tuesday" (incidentally, "Twosday" doesn't bother me so much)

Bruno

...Or when someone says "aboot" instead of "about".

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Eh I dunno, "aboot" is really more Scottish if you think about it (think Groundskeeper Willie)... Canadian would be more "aboat" (think Bob and Doug McKenzie.)

Exhibit A

Hey, if we're gonna have a grammar nazi roaming the premises, I might as well be the "humorous takes on other peoples' accents" nazi.

The things that bother me more are when people second-guess themselves and incorrectly correct, like pronouncing ``often'' with a `t' sound, or use the pronoun ``I'' when they should use ``me'' because it sounds less correct.

And don't get me started on the NBC announcers referring to the figure skater Butyrskaya as ``Byoo-tra-sky-a''. Is it so hard to say ``Byoo-tur-sky-a'' (to move the vowel to an English one)? Does it even look like it it has a vowel directly after the `r'? No! (It's like freakin' ``nook-ya-ler''. )

BTW, couldn't the emoticon names in this software be a little more consistent? You've got emotions (mad, shocked, crazy), expressions (frown, smile, wink, blush, laugh), and some miscellaneous (cool, tongue), with no synonyms to be found. I always have to look at the reference (which is only linked from the first page, not after you start previewing ?!?) to figure out whether it's sad or frown.

Umm, it's perfectly acceptable (and correct) to pronounce the "t" in "often." Maybe you're thinking of "listen."

Damn, I completely forgot about "Nuculer"

Imagine how I felt when I found out my dad was watching the hockey game on Sunday on NBC! Ugh. As if anyone from NBC knows how to announce a hockey game. Or do it with anything but extreme prejudice.

Bruno

Oh, my unit still freezes its controls at least multiple times per week. But playing and updating of the screen always continues without a problem. (on-topic portion of post)

I thought someone might try to call me on this one. Actually, it's not. Let me quote extensively from The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations (whose qualifications I'll simply state by the fact that William Safire blurbed it ``ek-STROR-di-ner-ee''):

often AWF-in or AHF-in. Do not pronounce the t.

Before I give you my two cents on the t in often, let's take a look at what various authorities have said about it since the late 18th century.

John Walker (1791), whose Critical Pronouncing Dictionary was one of the most well respected and popular references both in England and America well into the 19th century, declared that ``in often and soften the t is silent.''

``The sounding of the t,'' proclaims the legendary H. W. Fowler in Modern English Usage (1926), ``which as the OED says is `not recognized by the dictionaries,' is practised by two oddly contorted classes -- the academic speakers who affect a more precise enunciation then their neighbours ... & the uneasy half-literates who like to prove that they can spell ....''

``The t in glisten is silent, even as it is in castle and often,'' says Frank H. Vizetelly (1929), editor of Funk & Wagnalls New Standard (1913), ``yet one occasionally hears pedants and provincials pronounce them [GLIS-ten] and [AWF-ten]. No pronouncing dictionary with a reputation to lose ever sounds the t in these words.''

``You don't want a t in here any more than in soften,'' advises Alfred H. Holt (1937).

Webster 2 (1934), which sanctions only AWF-in, notes that ``the pronunciation [AWF-tin], until recently generally considered as more or less illiterate, is not uncommon among the educated in some sections, and is often used in singing.''

According to Random House II (1987), ``Often was pronounced with a t- sound until the 17th century, when a pronunciation without the (t) came to predominate in the speech of the educated, in both North America and Great Britain, and the earlier pronunciation fell into disfavor. Common use of a spelling pronunciation has since restored the (t) for many speakers, and today [AWF-in] and [AWF-tin] ... exist side by side. Although it is still sometimes criticized, often with a (t) is now so widely heard from educated speakers that it has become fully standard once again.''

``Nowadays,'' says R. W. Burchfield (1996), editor of OED 2 (1989), ``many standard speakers use both [AWF-in] and [AWF-tin], but the former pronunciation is the more common of the two.''

What is going on here? After two hundred years of censure, has the t in often scratched and clawed its way back into acceptability? I would caution those who might be consoled by the comments of Random House II and Burchfield to heed the admonitions of the past and avoid pronouncing the t. Current dictionaries, incuding Random House II, do not give priority to AWF-tin, and it is much less common in educated speech and far more often disapproved of by cultivated speakers -- particularly teachers of English, drama, and speech -- than Random House II makes it appear. In 1932 the lexicographer Henry Cecil Wyld called AWF-tin ``vulgar'' and ``sham-refined,'' and today the bad odor of class-conscious affectation still clings to it as persistently as ever. As if that were not enough, analogy is entirely unsupportive: no one pronounces the t in soften, listen, fasten, moisten, hasten, chasten, christen, and Christmas -- so, once and for all, let's do away with the eccentric AWF-tin.

By the way, if you had to click on the ``William Safire'' link above, you automatically lose the right to debate anything about the English language.

Uff-Da! I never thought my slight fau-paux would create such a string of responses. I guess I need to start typing these posts with my dictionary, thesaurus, and 3rd grade grammer teacher by my side.

If I'm ever short on time, I have pasted my posts into Word to at least check for spelling if I knew Bitt was online. I'd rather be corrected than continue in ignorance. Is he a grammar nazi? Yes. But he's helping raise the bar a bit.

Quite an interesting bunch we've got here!

I personally think you should get style points for your ironic misspelling of grammar.

I briefly considered intentionally misspelling "misspelling" for another heaping plate of irony, but that's about enough of that.

Regardless of all of this, this is, by far, the most well-spoken group of people I've ever encountered on an Internet bulletin board. A friend of mine was/is trying to get a DirecTV emulator job working and is posting on a bulletin board about that. And since DirecTV is only available in North America, all of these people are bound to be native English speakers (except, I suppose, for the odd French Canadian or Mexican), and they are totally unable to express thoughs in any sort of coherent manner. All of the non-native English speakers here speak much more properly and with greater aplomb than any of those other people do.

Also, I try to only correct people that I think need help. I don't correct the non-native English speakers because they don't expect me to speak perfect Swedish or Italian or whatever. In this case, I corrected because I don't want anyone to look bad at a job interview or in front of a professor or whatever.

Oh, and, by the way, it's ``faux pas''.

Sorry, Random House is correct. When I hear people leave off any hint of the "t" I immediately think of the same people who say "OVIOUS" instead of "Obvious"

I use the "t" but it's barely audible. I'll make sure I get as many people to use it as possible. Call it the grass-roots approach.

Half the people writing those guides are nothing but pretentious twits anyway.

Bruno

Note, don't pronounce the "l" in "Half"

Do what you want. You're still wrong. I'd argue that the pretentious ones are the ones who pronounce the `t' in ``often'', trying to prove to us that they can spell, to paraphrase the article quoted above. (``Sham-refined'' is a wonderful term that I keep trying to work into everyday conversation. Hasn't happened yet, though.) Interestingly, Random House's ``Word Maven'' currently seems to take almost no position on the pronunciation of ``often'' these days, other than to say it's less bad than my reference claims, but he does at least imply that it's an error. (``Nor is this an error as egregious as the infamous mispronunciation of nuclear,'' from the link above.) Also, the fact that no dictionary suggested AWF-tin as an acceptable pronunciation until the 1970s doesn't bode well for your claim, but, rather, to dictionaries' increasing appeasement of the pseudo-literate.

Also, I try to only correct people that I think need help. I don't correct the non-native English speakers because they don't expect me to speak perfect Swedish or Italian or whatever. In this case, I corrected because I don't want anyone to look bad at a job interview or in front of a professor or whatever.

IIRC, "Also" should not be used as the first word in a sentence and in addition, "or whatever" is a grammatical faux pas.

" In addition, I try to only correct people that I think need help. I don't correct the non-native English speakers because they don't expect me to speak perfect Swedish or Italian or other foreign language. In this case, I corrected the poster because I don't want anyone to look bad at a job interview or in front of a professor or teacher."
It is difficult to tell which context to place this in. You may have been trying to articulate '...(at a job interview) or (in front of a professor) or (other circumstance)', in which case additional punctuation may have helped. I hope that your future homework assignments do not suffer from the same errors. Otherwise excellent. A-



Sorry Bitt. I really tried, but I just couldn't resist.

Pffft!

Hey, the "t" only started being dropped in the late 18th century. Why is bringing it back any less correct? In a few years when everyone uses the "t" (very softly of course), won't you feel silly.

I don't need to prove I can spell. I have more spell checkers than I can use. I just think it sounds better. In the exact same way that Nu-clear and Feb-RU-ary sound (and are) correct.

Besides, you'll never know one way or the other while reading...

Bruno

The problem with your argument of it being dropped in the 18th century is that in the 18th century, the group being polled were the well educated, whereas the group currently being polled are the simpletons that assume that every letter must be pronounced, despite stark evidence to the contrary (the aforementioned hasten, listen, soften, etc.).

I love it. The BBS is back to its old self: The most heated discussion currently is about the pronunciation of a letter in a word.

I'm not sure where to fall on this discussion. On the one hand, copious amounts of evidence has been presented against the pronunciation of the T.

But Bruno's point that it was only dropped in the 18th century makes me wonder: What's the T doing there in the first place? If it was pronounced when the word was first transcribed in that form, who's to say it's wrong?

Here's my personal theory on changing language. I have come up with this theory/axiom on my own, and it holds no authority whatsoever. Just one guy talking out of his ass.

In days of yore (for lack of a more precise term), English changed on the whim of its speakers, creating large obstacles between speakers of what was ostensibly the same language. Over time, words changed due to the way they were pronounced. Over more time, the new pronunciations and, sometimes, spellings became the standard throughout the language based on where those words were used the most. For example, if ``boatswain'' referred to something that occurred on the polo field, as opposed to on the docks and in boats, it would likely still be pronounced ``boat-swane'' and not ``bow-sun''. This is all valid change in the realm of language evolution. However, we now have what should be a fairly static language, with the exceptions of new words. There aren't separate communities that have wildly different pronunications of the same words (except for some that have large variations in vowel pronunciation -- think Boston or Canada -- but these are largely consistent within themselves). All of the pronunciation changes that happen these days are because of people that simply don't know how the word should be pronounced, and make up pronunciations on their own, largely based on their spellings. This is in contrast to older changes where people were largely illiterate, and were simply imitating what they thought they heard other people say, like the childhood game where a group passes a phrase through a gauntlet of repeating children to see what comes out of the other end.

Now, I can't honestly say that the more recent version of change is more wrong than the older version. In reality, in my opinion, both are wrong. The language shouldn't change, because it creates a division between the old language and the new language, and between their speakers. But there's no way to do anything about the old changes. They've come and gone. But we can prevent new, arbitrary, changes from occurring.

As reference, I'd like to point out one of the oft () overlooked contributions of Martin Luther. He is usually remembered as the progenitor of the Protestant Revolution, as he was. But one of his earlier transgressions was to print a version of the Bible in German. Until he did so, it was only available in Latin, out of reach of the common German Christian, who had to rely on translations from the clergy, who he considered, rightly, in many cases, to be corrupt. (Think about the current theory that many radical Muslims might be that way because their interpretations of the Qu'ran are spoon-fed to them by radical clergymen, possibly incorrectly.) When he had it translated into German, anyone could read it. I realize that many (a majority?) of 16th century Germans were probably illiterate, but surely many more could read German than could read Latin. And those that could read could tell others outside the realm of the Catholic Church's authority. (I'm getting to a point -- honest.) While this early step in the Protestant Reformation was huge in that context alone, it was huge in another way, as well. In one fell swoop, he unified the German language. Almost everyone started to read that Bible, or listen to it being read. What had been a wild amalgam of starkly contrasting language suddenly became one again. And that force of a unified public was likely one of the forces that made the German Protestant Reformation a success.

So my point is that unifying a language serves to strengthen it, and its speakers. On a related note, I have no problem with local vernaculars, from Cajun pidgins to computer geek cants to even Ebonics, in their local contexts. But when those speakers lose recognition of the real language, and try to communicate with others outside their local group using that language, we've lost the fight. And, while this argument about pronouncing the `t' in ``often'' is hardly reason to lose sleep (despite the fact that I'm writing this diatribe at 4 in the morning), being less that vigilant is the first step in the wrong direction.

off-topic as ussuall.. i love it.. keep up the good work.

off-topic as ussuall.. i love it.. keep up the good work.

Oh yeah.. .what is this thread supposed to be about? hehe I love it too! Bitt, with you premission, I'd like to print that out! That is one of the most insightful posts I have read in ages.

Get a job as a professor and sign me up. I'd most likely fail, but enjoy it none the less.

Uhhh. I suppose you can print that out. It's not like it carries any authority, as I already pointed out. If you want to publicize it in any way, I guess I'd like it if you could put my name on it.

It's kind of hard to get a job as a professor without at least a bachelor's degree. Maybe I should apply anyway, just to see what they'd say.

(I know you're being a little silly here but my two cents: )

It's more pretentious to insist that a language is an unyielding entity, that there are gramatical rules that are fixed into place, canonical spellings for things, proper ways of doing things. Clearly, on the one hand, I favor standardization as a way to effect proper communication. On the other hand, I'm a firm believer in language evolution, dawinism for grammar if you will. A language that doesn't adapt, will eventually become another latin. For a while, there were latinates who *insisted* and waged a purity of language campaign. Basically standardized spellings and words and constructs were held in higher regard than evolved sequences that more clearly articulated new ideas, situations more succinctly than the old "proper" way of doing things.

Usage, definition, all these rules are subject to change. Like nouns becoming verbs, split infinitives becoming acceptable, etc.

This sort of evolution occurs in isolated pockets, and the successful "memes" reproduce and spread to the rest of the language ("population"). The unsuccessful modifications die out, and the constant changes keep the language adaptive and alive.

Calvin

Like nouns becoming verbs...

Remember: Verbing weirds language.

Not any less strangely than being spammed and finding spam in your e-mail.

Calvin

I agree with you. There are evolutionary traits in language that will not and should not change. Good recent examples are the fact that split inifitives are no longer the bugbears that they once were. Nor are trailing prepositions, although I personally try to avoid prepositions with no objects wherever possible. And the subjunctive case is all but gone in English because it's simply no longer used. All of these are perfectly valid forms of linguistic evolution. But deliberately changing the pronunciation of a word (or deliberately changing anything, except introducing a new word), IMHO, is no more valid than Free Speling.

When i learned the english language in school here in Germany, i was told to pronounce "often" without the "t".
I think, it's "Oxford English", what they teach in Germany. In my case, it was about 15 years ago...
Learning a foreign language without a native speaker as a teacher should have the "official language form" as the result. ;-)

cheers,

Learning a foreign language without a native speaker as a teacher should have the "official language form" as the result. ;-)

There's of'en some truth in this....I've met a few Danes who spoke perfect English with an upper-middle class London accent. (ie, not snobby, but very well spoken). One of them was an au-pair on her first trip to England, and no-one could tell that she wasn't English until told. She knew and could pronounce (perfectly) the Really Long and Obscure Words(tm) that usually catch out foreigners who've lived in England for 2 or 3 years. My respect for Danish education was heightened to say the least.

I don't think that the German or French education systems place quite so much emphasis on English. Both of their native languages are spoken outside of their borders, but the Danes appreciate the fact that their language is virtually dead outside of Denmark, and have dealt with that situation practically.

I always find it amusing that there seems to be more non-native English speakers in Europe with an American accent than with a British accent. It's not surprising when you think about it, but there is definitely an irony there.

As an American, I always find it odd when I hear someone with a combination accent, like a German who speaks with a British accent on top of his German accent. It makes sense, really, but it always takes a minute for my brain to wrap around it.

One of the main problems with English (and I speak only from my own experience and from hearsay) is that schools simply do not teach it. The last time I was taught any sort of English grammar was in, I think, 4th grade (about 10 years old), and, even then, only incidentally. Most of it was in 2nd grade (8 yo, obviously) This is far too early to comprehend grammar. After that, it was all ``literature'' and ``creative writing''. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but there needs to be followup grammar once you've done a good amount of reading and writing and can now comprehend what a subjunctive case is, or what the difference between a direct object and a predicate nominiative is, and so on. I get the impression that other languages are taught to their native speakers much better. In fact, most of the grammar I know now comes from taking German classes in high school, which spurred me to learn more about my own language. (Comparative grammar is very interesting, BTW, for geeks like me.)

Because it has been this way for so long, most teachers are clueless (or at best - inconsistant). I've had teachers tell me this!

And that's somewhat based on the fact that we, as a society, don't respect the teaching profession enough to either pay teachers enough or hire people who are actually qualified. And it's gotten well into a domino effect now, where teachers didn't learn enough grammar (or whatever) to teach it well. Certainly primary school teachers are taught to be teachers, not necessarily to understand the subjects they are supposed to be teaching, and the fact that a majority of adults in the US seem not to even understand simple concepts like the difference between subjective and objective cases (in other words, when to use ``I'' and when to use ``me'') means that the same majority is also teaching our kids to not know the same things.

I'm not saying that everyone should know what a gerund is, but they should know that a word ending in `ing' is a verb modified to work as a noun, or at least the concept behind it. (In a comparative manner, all Perl programmers should know that $a{'index'} references an array indexed by arbitrary keys, but there's no reason that they should need to know that it's called a dictionary or hash or associative array or whatever it's called in Perl, unless they need to talk about the language itself.)

I'm not saying that everyone should know what a gerund is, but they should know that a word ending in `ing' is a verb modified to work as a noun, or at least the concept behind it.

Hear, hear. When I was at school, the only lessons in which any grammar was taught, were foreign-language lessons; the O-level French curriculum required grammatical knowledge long after the O-level English curriculum ceased to do so. For the GCSE examination which replaced O-level, the grammar component finally evaporated (at least under the exam board my school used). I remember, on the eve of the exams, our French teacher world-wearily asking how many of us in the top French set understood the concepts of past versus present tense (not how to form them in French, or anything like that). About half the hands went up. Almost everyone got A's though.

(In a comparative manner, all Perl programmers should know that $a{'index'} references an array indexed by arbitrary keys, but there's no reason that they should need to know that it's called a dictionary or hash or associative array or whatever it's called in Perl, unless they need to talk about the language itself.)

Actually I disagree with that. An important part of being a programmer in any language, is discoursing about your code to other programmers. Using commonly-understood names is thus important. It's been said to me that computer science is just about giving important-sounding names to the completely obvious -- well, yes it is; that's why it's important.

Only in such dens of pedantry as software development teams is much time spent discoursing about the structure of human language.

Peter

I suppose I should have been clearer in my statement about ``unless they need to talk about the language itself''. Of course, all people that work in a group of programmers need to talk about the language itself all the time. But if one was working alone, there would be no need for there to even be a term to describe it, as long as you know what it does. Sorry for the lack of clarity.

Edit: I've always been fascinated by the British schooling system of O-levels, A-levels, etc. This is probably based on the fact that I don't really know what they are. Please break my fascination and explain this to me.

High school english teachers are the worst! There was on high school english teacher in particular, in an attempt to prove something in a distopian novel (1984? brave new world? don't remember) indicated that the method the thought police would operate would be by forcibly eliminating functional/dangerous parts of language itself. Lacking the nouns and constructs, the mind would therefore not be able to think or concieve those same concepts. Duh.

My arguments that if words could not be wrapped around a concept, then a new one will arise. She said my argument was invalid because new words are never invented.

My other argument that people can construct complex grammatically correct sentences without knowing the *names* of those same grammatic rules just fine didn't fly. She insisted the name of something and the concept of something is one and the same. Argh. I think I got a horrible grade too.

Calvin

Agreed. It's terrible when teachers, schools, and textbooks spout false information.

Examples from my own personal experience:

- A grade-school teacher tried to argue with me that "Squirrel" was one syllable. I explained that not only was it two syllables, but the double-R is another grammatical rule indicating the location of the split between the two syllables. After I opened the dictionary and pointed it out to her, she didn't talk to me much after that.

- A high-school textbook claiming that, when you look up in the sky, if a star is not twinkling, then it is a planet. If it is twinkling, it is a star. It claimed that only actual stars twinkled because they generated the light, and that the reflected light from the planets would not twinkle. Fortunately, it was not an astronomy textbook.

- Grade school teacher teaching communism as a positive cultural and political model to impressionable Californian kids. This was before the collapse, of course. I actually got the school to clamp down on him for that one. For that matter, any teacher of Government or Social Studies who chooses to espouse a particular political philosophy without presenting the other side.

- Don't let me even get started with creationism in the classroom. I'll close the thread and point everyone to www.talkorigins.org instead.

If it's not twinkling it's probably an airplane! LOL!

Yep I have plenty of stories like that. I had one junior high school teacher hold up the communist manifesto explaining it was a wonderful read... also before the fall.

My girlfriend is a elementary school teacher, and pronounced Diploticus incorrectly and was promptly corrected by the 2nd graders. (It's a dinosaur, and not pronounced the way it looks, and kids somehow know this.)

Calvin

I thought it was spelled Diplodocus...

I'm not a speller. But you're right. Brownie points to the person who correctly pronounces it without asking for help from some kid.

Calvin

Hey, I loved dinosaurs as a kid. I pronounced it right from day one. Now pronounce Compsognathus.

I've always been fascinated by the British schooling system of O-levels, A-levels, etc. This is probably based on the fact that I don't really know what they are. Please break my fascination and explain this to me.

OK. The minimum school-leaving age in the UK is 16. The system used to be that at age 16 there were two ranges of exams available: O-levels (meant to be more "academic" and aimed at those planning to continue with education), and CSEs (meant to be less challenging but more "vocational" and aimed at those entering the workforce at 16). The brightest pupils would take up to eight or ten O-levels; a few would leave without so much as a single CSE. The lowest grade awardable for an O-level exam, just above fail, entitled you to a CSE in that subject instead. (Could you be awarded an O-level for a really stunning performance on a CSE exam? I can't remember, but probably not.)

This system was then done away with, starting with exams sat in summer 1988, in favour of a single set of exams called GCSE. A GCSE offered a wide range of grades, the top ones of which were deemed equivalent to O-level grades, and the lower ones to CSE grades. This was meant to simplify the whole system, although in practice exam boards tended to set a "basic level" and a "higher level" paper in each subject, which closely resembled the previous year's CSE and O-level respectively. Born in 1972 and sixteen in 1988, I was part of the first year of GCSEs.

There was a lot of fuss at the time about declining standards, and looking at the O-level and GCSE syllabuses for (say) mathematics did show a lot of material missing from GCSE. But it was (allegedly) replaced by greater practicality and applicability of the material that remained, which if true is, I guess, no bad thing.

Now, for those who didn't leave school at 16, the next two years were taken up by A-levels, exams usually sat at 18. Pupils were expected to specialise at this point, sitting usually between three and five A-levels. (Or their equivalent; there are things called AS-levels which count as half an A-level each and can be used to broaden the range of subjects studied.) The lowest A-level grade, just above fail, entitled you to an O-level in that subject. The A-level system remained the same even when O-level changed to GCSE.

Entrance to university is based on A-level grades: an offer of a university place would be conditional on achieving (say) three C grades, or two A's and a B, or whatever.

All this, by the way, is the English (and Welsh and maybe NI) schooling system. The Scottish system is different again.

Peter

Grade school teacher teaching communism as a positive cultural and political model to impressionable Californian kids. This was before the collapse, of course. I actually got the school to clamp down on him for that one. For that matter, any teacher of Government or Social Studies who chooses to espouse a particular political philosophy without presenting the other side.

I've got to ask, in the light of that last sentence, whether would you have felt it as important to "clamp down on" a teacher who chose to espouse capitalism as a positive cultural and political model to impressionable kids without presenting the other side...

Peter

Yes. Personal political preferences should be left out of the classroom, and only facts/history should be presented.

Yes. Personal political preferences should be left out of the classroom, and only facts/history should be presented.

I totally agree. Both capitalism and communism in their theoretical forms have great things going for them, but in practice both have some really bad points. I think that kids need to understand the principles and practicalities of both, and there is no better teacher than history.

Personal politics should not enter the equation. Like religion, a teacher should encourage kids to investigate, explore and understand, and even to take a stance, without ever telling them which to chose.

Okay, so lemme see if I got this straight. At 16, you could choose to leave school, and if you did so, then you could take O-levels or CSEs (or, after 1988, GCSEs) or neither. If you decided to stay in school, then you did so for two more years, and then you took A-level exams, and they functioned as college entrance exams. Is that right? The only place where I suspect I'm wrong is that the people that stayed in school from 16 to 18 took the O-levels as well.

And all of these exams are separate for each subject, right?

Just to compare, in the US, we have grades 1 though 12, usually divided up where 1 through 5 are ``elementary school'', 6 though 8 are ``middle school'' (formerly ``junior high school'', and 9 through 12 are ``high school''. Each year, you get a single grade, for lower grades, or a grade for each course, usually 6 or 7 courses per year, in higher grades. In order to graduate to the next grade, you must score well enough on the current year's grade. If you don't, you get ``held back'' and have to repeat the grade. Once you progress through all 12 years, you get a high school diploma. This is when you're 17 or 18. There is no final exam to get this, other than the final exams you'd take pretty much every year for every class. You can drop out of school when you're 16 here, as well, but you get nothing. You can later get a GED, which is a high school equivalency diploma, by taking a test or series of tests (I'm not really sure. As far as I know, I've never known anyone with a GED.). Oh, and there are CATs (California Achievement Tests) taken every few years or so throughout grades 1 to 12. These are standardized tests that, I think, have no bearing on your grades, but end up being used by the government to determine how schools are funded.

There are two standardized college entrance exams, the SAT and the ACT. I've got no information on the ACT; supposedly, it's more common on the west coast. The SAT consists of, IIRC, 5 exams -- 2 ``verbal'', judging language comprehension, etc., 2 ``math'', judging math skills (I think through basic algebra), and one other, either math or verbal, that's usually a test for the next year's exam, and doesn't count towards your score, but you don't know which one it is. These are all taken during one morning for 3 hours or so. The scores on these tests (you get one math score and one verbal score -- the individual tests are not counted individually -- each up to 800) are large deciding factors on college applications. You can take the tests as many times as you want, I think (there might be some limit, but you can definitely take them two or three times), but they cost some amount of money to take ($25 or so?). There are also AP (advanced placement) exams for individual subjects that don't really have any meaning on their own, but some colleges will let you place out of early courses if you score well on them. These exams are not given at the same time at the SAT (usually), but usually if you take multiple ones, they will all be on the same day.

The fact that you lumped Canada together with Boston in terms of pronunciation is almost enough reason to discount everything else you've written, no matter how articulate.

If you want pronunciation with flare you should be thinking Boston and New York. There is no "aboot" in "Canada." You might be thinking of a few fishing towns in the Newfoundland perhaps. Then of course you may very well have been corrupted by South Park...

If there was ever a more non-standardised language than English, I've not seen it. I'm still amazed that so many people can pick the language up at a later age (my parents for example). I started thinking about it the other night and was fairly amazed that I managed to pick it up and still hold on to Portuguese (I moved here just before the age of 4, not knowing a single word of English, but fluent beyond my age in Portuguese).

Should I bring up the point about the "t" being dropped in "often" - it does go against one of the points you made in your speech from the ass-podium.

Bruno

Proud not to know a preposition from a supposition from a contradiction.

I wasn't saying that Boston's and Canada's accents are similar, just that they're different from a flat midwestern accent or a southeastern US accent, largely in vowel pronunciation. (I don't think that there's a good way to say one is the standard that others are variants of, because that would have to be British English, and that's just not a good standard to base off of for North America.) I've never been to Toronto, but I have been in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and PEI, and they definitely do talk like that there. Or at least the rural folks do. I suppose I should have said ``southeastern Canada''. No offense intended. (That Jamie Sale figure skater girl has an accent to me, as does Wayne Gretzky. Maybe they don't to you because of what you're used to? Just a guess.)

(In reality, the very first time I was up there, after I crossed the border from Maine, I almost immediately got lost, and stopped at a gas station. I had assumed that you were right in that there really wasn't that thick an accent. But when I told this guy that I was lost, the first thing that come out of his mouth was ``Well, weere ya goin' to, eh?'' I swear to God. It took a lot of effort not to laugh in his face, not because it was that inherently funny, but because it caught me totally off guard.)

New York could have easily been included in that list (or Chicago or Minnesota), except there are so many different accents in NYC. But that's kinda my point. These are just accents. Even if you have a thick accent, if you pronounce a word incorrectly, you're pronouncing it incorrectly. For example, you can pronounce ``forget about it'' with a thick Brooklyn accent and still be pronouncing it properly. But saying ``fuggeddaboudit'', with or without such an accent is wrong. (I'm inclined to say that Brooklyintes are saying the first, really, but you get my point.)

(And I assume you meant ``pronunciation with flair''. )

Which point does it go against? I don't think it does, but I could be totally wrong. (And, come on, ``ass-podium''? What kind of half-assed attempt was that? You could have at least called me a ``know-it-all bastard''. At least that would have been true. )

Also, pride over ignorance does not seem to be a good thing to me. I don't think that anyone should ever be proud about not knowing something. It's just that there's not necessarily any shame in not knowing certain things.

You said you were speaking out of your ass in that message, so I said you were speaking from the "ass-podium"

I agree that Sale has a bit of an accent. Gretzky does a bit as well - I think mostly from his time in the US though. People around here, for the most part, sound just like the people you watch on TV in network programming. That's just "normal" to me. Different areas will have their own little "isms" of course, but in Toronto there's nothing as distinct as Boston or New York. Not even close.

Eastern Canada can get pretty wild with the accents. At some points you might swear you'd crossed the Atlantic.

And no, I meant "flare" - a big red flaming one. Hey, cut me some slack, I was trying to get out of the office. Do you want that dictionary in the mail or dontcha?

Bruno

Hey, everybody, I've had a sudden change of heart and I've decided that pronouncing the `t' in ``often'' is just fine ... at least for the purposes of this conversation.

Not quite. Here's the complete educational timeline:

Infants school: 4 - 6 (5 - 6 in some cases)
Junior school: 7 - 10
Senior school: 11 - 15
College or 6th Form: 16 - 17
University: 18+

Everyone has to take at least some GCSEs (the modern version of O Levels and CSEs), over a period of two years at the end of senior school. At the end of that time (when most students have just turned 16) you can leave school altogether if you want.

If you want to continue your education you can leave school and go to college (NOT the american meaning of college) for two years to take A Levels or a vocational equivalent. Alternatively you can stay in school for two more years to take your A Levels, which is known as 6th Form for historic reasons. Over the last year or so most A Levels have been replaced with AS Levels, which are courses with about half the content of A's (so you do twice as many of them). That is in line with current thinking that 16 is too young an age to specialise.

After that, you can go to university if you think you can handle the beer.

Rob

After that, you can go to university if you think you can handle the beer.

Teehehehehehe..

Actually I've always heard that universities in most countries outside the U.S. are basically a joke... Is this true? Everyone I know who's studied abroad, including in England, has said that the difficulty level in Universities around the world is no comparison to that of any half-decent American university. My friend who studied at Leeds, for instance, spent far more time in pubs than he did doing any sort of work for class. Another friend who studied at Nanzan in Japan said that he could have gone there when he was 12 years old and still passed all of his classes. Any particular reason why secondary education is so much easier abroad?

The converse is that primary education (up through high school) in America is horrible, and in general, anyone who's completed our equivalent of high school (by age 18) knows more on average than an American of the same age. This makes for a pretty big shock for anyone who expects to skate through higher education. And it also makes the first couple years of college for any foreigner much easier since they've had most of the material at an earlier age.

Maybe your students find your universities (I've never heard anyone from the US use the term University before, it's uplifting) a bit more challenging because they were ill-prepared in grade-school (as you mentioned).

I've never heard that US Universities were any more difficult or challenging than those in Canada and Europe. Expensive, yes. Sometimes very difficult to get into, yes.

Bruno

Well since this same comment has come from people on both sides (American friends studying abroad and saying it was easy, and foreign friends saying that, despite their superior secondary education in their native country, our university classes were difficult for them) I think there's at least some merit to this theory. It seems improbable that all of my American friends are geniuses, and all of my friends from places such as India, China, and the UK are idiots. I've even heard this from foreign professors and teaching assistants... So I'm not the first person to bring this up...

Besides, I wasn't including Canada in my comparison because Canada is just, as we all know, America Lite. Nobody really cares about what goes on up there. They've got Universities in Canada?

Teeheheehehe.

I've always had the impression that the top schools in Europe were substantially harder than the universities of Canada and the US. I don't make it a policy to ask people this stuff, but just my impression form some people I've met over the years. Of course every country has a variety within the educational system. Not all schools in the US are at the same level, nor are they up here in USA Lite. (BTW, I find the major centres of both countries to be about equivalent, and everywhere else to be as back-woods on both sides as well.) Unfortunately, it's our dollar that's truly "lite." I'm hoping someone will try to push the NAbuck currency someday.

Bruno

If you decided to stay in school, then you did so for two more years, and then you took A-level exams, and they functioned as college entrance exams. Is that right?

University entrance exams. Calling them college entrance exams in Britain would only confuse people. In Britain "college" means (as Rob said) either a place you attend between 16 and 18 to study your A-levels (that's if you don't carry on in the same secondary school; not all secondary schools offer A-levels), or, a part of one of the few universities (Cambridge, Oxford, Dublin, Aberdeen) that are in fact collections of affiliated colleges.

Cambridge and Oxford, by the way, also have their own entrance exams (for science subjects, at least), that are taken at the same time as A-levels. Or at least, they did in my day.

The only place where I suspect I'm wrong is that the people that stayed in school from 16 to 18 took the O-levels as well.

They do, yes. Usually they won't let you stay on to do A-levels unless you got fairly decent O-levels/GCSEs, although that's a lot more flexible and informal than university entrance tends to be.

And all of these exams are separate for each subject, right?

Yep.

The only other thing I'd add to Rob's explanation, is that schooling for ages 4-11 is sometimes called "primary school" and 11-18 "secondary school".

Peter

Your description doesn't uniformly describe the US. Where I grew up in New York, we had "elementary school" (grades k + 1-6) followed by "junior high school" (grades 7, 8) and high school (9-12).

The one person I knew who took a GED was completely bored with high school, after grade 9, took the GED and went to college directly.

Calvin

To think, I thought all that stuff in the Harry Potter book accurately described British schooling. Oh well. No broomsticks at all? Damnit.

Calvin

Yeah. I should have said that it varies widely across the US. In fact, when I was in 2nd grade or so, there was a brief period where there were ``6th grade centers'', which were schools that had nothing but 6th grade taught there. Very weird. I think it might have had to do with transitioning the system between junior high and middle school. Regardless, the idea is that if you don't finish those 12 years of schooling (excepting those few that get to skip a grade), you don't get a thing.

Never heard that about getting a GED early. Pretty cool. In most circles, it's considered a ``Good Enough Degree''.

The friend of mine relocated all the classes he wanted to take early. He deferred all his gym classes and introductory classes to "senior year" and took "AP" and other advanced courses for the 9th and most of 10th grade. After that, he figured he took everything he wanted to take, and opportunistically figured (early) that the GED was the exit strategy. Otherwise he would be stuck in 11th and 12th grades with the "introductory" classes and the gym classes left to furfill the graduation requirements. Pretty sneaky bastard! :-D

Calvin

Eastern Canada can get pretty wild with the accents. At some points you might swear you'd crossed the Atlantic.

You might not be able to buy these tracks in most areas but definately download some Buddy Wasisname, In particular "the Vette" and "The Yammie*". After you decipher what this Eastern Canadian (Newfoundlander) is saying laugh a lot... some funny tings is said dere by! If you can buy them... well worth it... if not I can try and get some copies to sell to fellow empeggers if anyone is interested.

*Yammie - A Ski-Doo wit a Yamaha sticker stuck on 'er"

Actually, that just reminds me of one of the most bizarre regional accents, and it's right here in my home state. On the outer banks of North Carolina (in Ocracoke, specifically), there are a group of people known as the ``hoi toiders'', in deference to how they would pronounce ``high tide''. The accent, which is really more of a dialect, is that of Elizabethan England. I've been trying to find an audio sample of these people on the web, but it's like stepping back in time. Very bizarre.

To think, I thought all that stuff in the Harry Potter book accurately described British schooling. Oh well. No broomsticks at all? Damnit.

Well, everything Rob and I have said applies to state schools, or what in the USA would be called "public schools". Private schools, the posher ones of which are confusingly known in the UK as "public schools", much more closely resemble Harry Potter's school. Except for the broomsticks. Or at least, not for that purpose. Allegedly. (UK "public schoolboy" is AFAICT the equivalent term to USA "preppie".)

I was just thinking that the UK is quite well-supplied with depictions of USA schools (My So-Called Life, Welcome To The Dollhouse, and the brilliant The Wonder Years); I bet Grange Hill isn't shown in the USA at all.

Peter

...confusingly known in the UK as "public schools"...

Agreed it's confusing. A little history (from memory, so it's probably wildly inaccurate):

Once upon a time (like in the Dark Ages), nobody went to school. Those kids lucky enough to have rich parents (nobles, etc.), had private tutors.

When the merchant class started to blossom, they wanted to educate their kids, too, but couldn't afford private tutors. This led to the foundation of schools that anyone could join, as long as they had the cash -- hence "public" school.

These days, most people use the two terms interchangeably.

Personally, I don't care -- I went to a governors' conference school .

Yeah, well i went to a Laboratory school on the campus of a major University! =P

(What's a governors' conference school anyhow?)

What's a governors' conference school anyhow?

I have no idea. My school was one, though.

These days, public/private/whatever schools usually come under the umbrella term "independent school" -- see http://www.isis.org.uk/

Schooling can vary based on district here in the USA as well. For example, I started out with one year of "preschool" at a private school. There are no public forms of this around here. I then attended "elementary" school for grades kindergarten through 6th grade. The class structure here was one teacher for everything except a few things like gym, music, art, and for those selected for it, GT or "Gifted and Talented". GT students were usually selected by a test used by the district. This is where I first got my hands on computers and programming, the courses weren't standard for all students yet. Grades were assigned for a particular subject and determined what a student needed help on.

I then moved on to junior high school, and when I started it was grades 7 to 9. This introduced the credit system to some extent, but it wasn't a huge part. Each year, students pick their own classes. There are requirements like one English class, one math class, then there are other credits used on wood shop, or other practical application classes. Each class is taught by a different teacher, and is usually the same amount of time. Some schools did a block schedule where a class was longer, but was only attended every other day, while others did a shorter class that was attended every day. This seemed to vary based on school, and wasn't a standard across the district. When I moved to 8th grade, I found myself at the top of the school, as it was now called middle school where 6th to 8th attended. When I was there, 6th graders basically did the same thing I did. But later it changed into a mixture of the two.

9th through 12th grade is high school. 9th grade for me was the first year of actually having credits matter to graduate. I picked classes again just as the last few years, but this time I had more freedom. From here until 12th grade, I needed x amount of credits in different areas to get my diploma. Credits are not standard between districts, and transferring can be a pain. Also students who did poorly but did want to continue usually has a 5th year of high school where they attended half the day. Credits were the deciding factor of advancement. if you didn't have x amount of credits, you were considered to be in the same grade the next year. Based on what you wanted to do, Advanced Placement classes could be taken. These classes taught content intended for post high school education. And most of the time students had to take a test at the end to determine their final grade, and the amount of credit they obtained to then apply towards higher education. I was always good with math, so I have a credit for Calculus I, usable at most colleges here.

The ACT is what I took (since I am on the western side of the east/west divider for schools). There are 4 different sections with scores from 1-18. Then a final number between 1 and 36 is generated as your final score. The colleges I looked at had a guide indicating if you could easily enroll. It was based off your ACT score and your grade point average (GPA) from high school. The higher the score, the less they cared about grades.

Around here, 16 was also the age you could decide to no longer attend school, though you got nothing for your credits. The GED can be taken for the equivalent of a high school diploma, but some places of employment will deny GED applicants. I know a few people with one, but have never asked much about it. I know they attended some night classes at the high school before taking a test to get the diploma.

Most private schools follow a similar model to this to help with transfers into or out of the public system.