Re: [OT] Software Engineering at 14

[Markus Mottl <mottl@miss.wu-wien.ac.at>]

In comp.lang.functional Mark Wotton <mwotton@hons.cs.usyd.edu.au> wrote:
> Well, yes, actually. At least when I went through, doing at least one
> humanities subject was compulsory all the way through to year 12,
> which happens to be the year I turned 18. This doesn't include the
> study of literature and English, which is also compulsory.

> This should not be taken as an indictment on Austria's educational system:
> it's just a data point.

You are extrapolating from your experience to the one of others. In
an age where you still sit in school, others usually already have to
work as apprentice so we are already only talking about a fraction of
the population.

Anyway, in Austria most part of the pupils who seek higher education
go to grammar schools rather than the professionally oriented higher
schools as Andreas does (is it really wrong to give people this option?).

E.g. in my school fine arts and music were both compulsory until year 10
(age 16), then you had to choose one of them. History, geography, German,
English and either Latin or French were compulsory up to the last year,
and this was a school that specialized in _nature science_. Humanist
grammar schools usually teach Latin, old Greek, French, English and
German as compulsory subjects nearly all the way through and usually
also encourage pupils to take another language. Of course, the other
subjects aren't neglected either...

So really, better inform yourself about educational systems of other
countries before making unjustified claims. In contrast to many other
systems, this is the standard of our _public_ schools where everybody
can go to irrespective of social status and income.

Regards,
Markus Mottl

-- 
Markus Mottl, mottl@miss.wu-wien.ac.at, http://miss.wu-wien.ac.at/~mottl