Re: CHAT: The [+foreign] attribute

Quoting daniel andreasson <danielandreasson@...>:

> Robert B Wilson wrote:
>
> > I had to learn them for world geography in school.
>
> Now there's the difference in a nutshell. You guys have
> "world geography" (as opposed to American geography")
> while we have "geography". Same thing with history. The
> idea of having a subject called "Swedish history" and a
> different subject called "world history" sounds a bit
> odd to my Swedish ears. But then again, the US is known
> for its nationalism, while Sweden isn't.
I'm given to understand that it has more to do with emphasis
on history as such.  Americans usually not only have to have
several years of general American history, but also some of
their state or regional history. In Texas, for example, we
had to have three years of Texas history, in addition to
several years of American and World history; European history
(more in-depth than you already got in the required world
history) was also available as an AP college-level course.

The father of one of my friends is English, and his opinion
was that our schools in Texas had considerably better education
than his schooling in the UK in the English language and in
most forms of history, but worse in the sciences and math.

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Thomas Wier            "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
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Chicago, IL 60637