Bad teachers and language learning

Last year, in September, I started attending Danish lessons. The other day it occurred to me just how fast I have progressed. Last September Danish sounded like white noise to me. When people around me would be talking in Danish I wasn't getting anything. Today, 9 and a half months later I am ready to start reading books in Danish (real books, with the help of the dictionary of course), I can hear what Danes are saying and depending on the topic of conversation I can understand, from the general topic of the conversations to the details, but I still need to focus. If my mind is wandering I still get very little. But the point of this blog post isn't bragging.

When I was finishing elementary school and I needed to choose high school, one of the important criteria for me was the second language. I wanted to avoid German, I didn't feel like learning German and I was lucky. There was an option to sign up for the class where primary foreign language was English and secondary foreign language was Italian. I immediately jumped for the opportunity.

As it turned out, maybe I wasn't lucky at all, maybe it would have been better if I went for German, despite my reluctance. At least today I could say that I know two foreign languages and am currently working on the 3rd one.

I was motivated to learn Italian, not as I am today to learn Danish, but I was motivated. I was always a bit of a geek for learning and school and social and humanistic sciences always appealed to me. But today, the only thing I can say in Italian is "My name is Bruno." I don't even remember how to spell it though. And the lessons were equally intensive as I have them today in language school, two times per week.

The problem was that we had a horrible teacher. She neither could teach nor keep us in check. Every class was mayhem and it was like that for 4 years and we weren't happy with that either. There was a couple of students in my class who learned Italian in the elementary school. I remember one of them saying to me at the end of the fourth year that now he knows less Italian compared to when he finished elementary-school.

So after four years of learning Italian from a person who wasn't supposed to teach, I got nothing. After 6 and a half months (from September 1st to middle of March when school stopped because of corona) of learning danish, taught by good teachers, I got enough knowledge that by working at home I brought myself to the level where, with the help of the dictionary, I can read real books in danish and news. Tthere is still a lot to do for me. But compared to where I was at the beginning of September, today I am light years ahead.

The tragedy of Croatian educational system is that bad teachers that unfortunately work in schools, like my Italian teacher, are not uncommon. While I was working on university I was talking to my students about it often and there wasn't one student who didn't encounter at least one, sometimes more teachers who were like that. The problem is that, as I was joking around, when you get a permanent employment contract in Croatian schools, you can get fired only if you kill a student or arrive into the classroom naked. How it is in Denmark, I cannot say. My experiences for now were positive but very narrow in scope to make an assumption on a bigger scale.

Growing up in Denmark

If one would want, one could make Danes look like a horrible parents. (DISCLAIMER: this is a composite of different educational practices of parents in Denmark I have come across separately. I do not think that Danish parents are bad, but I do find it amusing when you compile it this way that they can sound so.)

As I wrote last week, very shortly after children are born, they are being tucked away at the baby-strawlers and put outside in the cold and rain to sleep at least once per day. Kindergartens have a whole baby parking installations outside where children are put to sleep.

Six to nine months after childbirth, mothers go back to the working market and children are left full time in daycare institutions. Even Danes acknowledge that because children are taken care of by professionals a lot, parents often miss on their children's important development steps like when they start to crawl, walk, talk etc.

From the age of two, danish children are starting to get education in kindergartens. First through play,but by the age of six or seven children are expected to sit and pay attention to their teachers for 45 minutes straight. If we take into consideration that attention span of an average adult is 15 minutes, I guess you can imagine that this is a very demanding task for children. But I have to be fair and say that this is a problem of education in general. If children fail at this they will be diagnosed with ADHD and treated for it. Couple of pedagogues I talked to told me that ADHD diagnosis is given out way too lightly in Denmark and that a number of children who actually have ADHD is low.

As children continue to develop, they should feel super lucky if their teeth and jaw develop as they should. If they don't, they will get external braces and they will walk around looking as space-man. With that, every shred of self-confidence they may have developed is completely ruined.

When they turn 13 they join the labor market and ofc they are being exploited. When children in Denmark start to work, they are being paid only half of what adults would be earning for the same position. 

When puberty kicks in and hormones start raging, when kids start to mature and ask questions about life, meaning, purpose and all other kinds of philosophical questions, their parents point them to the psychologists. Why? Because there is only so much personal problems with which parents can't be bothered, for everything else there are professionals who are there to help children to grow up. Did I say problems? Sorry, I meant to say normal part of development. Yes, for normal part of development, children in Denmark are sent to the psychologists.

Hmm... but maybe they do need professional help, after all from 13 to 18 they are expected to develop working habits and go to school and excel at both because in Denmark you can't be less then perfect. At the same time they are constantly being reminded that they are nothing special, that they shouldn't stand out, that is the way of the Jante Law that is deeply ingrained in Danish culture. And as an icing on the cake children are supposed to take their emotions and bury them deep down and never show them, because that is also deeply ingrained in Danish culture. All of that is expected from them while nothing in life makes sense and hormones are raging. And just at the moment they got the hang of their emotions, answered some of the questions, finished school, their loving parents thank them for cooperation and ditch them out of the apartment because that is expected when you turn 18. 

Of course they can visit from time to time, but only if announced a month in advance. After all, parents have their lives as well.

Don't you just wanna be a kid growing up in Denmark?