If you've heard of the PISA test, you probably think of it as an international test of math and reading skills among high school students. But there's more. For example, they ask principals if bullying is a big problem in their schools. Here are the results for 2015:
The Netherlands is the world champ of high school bullying! Who would have guessed?
Of course, different countries might have different ideas about what "bullying is a big problem" means. Maybe the Dutch think that dissing someone's shoes is a five-alarm fire. Still, it's kind of interesting.
Yeah so "bullying" being (1) in the eyes of principals and (2) according to prevailing national opinion. Seems like country-to-country comparison is like apples to rutabaga.
bingo. this just reflects that Dutch, Belgian, German principals etc are progressive enough not to ignore their actual bullying problems.
school bullying in South Korea is *legendary*. pretty much every Korean TV show that even tangentially touches on characters'experiences at school features a bullying-related plot arc.
Yeah, exactly. Perception.
Getting a principal to accept that there's a bullying problem when they don't want to is nearly impossible.
It would be better (and still not great) to poll students. They'd have cultural expectations but their own experience would be more likely to be reflected.
It's not like principals are the ones being bullied.
Indeed without some objective reference on the word - normalising what counts as bullying the comparison is not very much apples to some non-fruit comparison.
Gargage in Gargage out type data.
Experience of physical harrassment might be less subjective, not to resolve bullying to physical alone but certainly it is a likely clearer referant.
The Boers had to get their temperament from somewhere.
W00f.
Bullying is one of those things that is always worse in places where the people in charge don’t believe it exists or downplay it as a problem. So if like a third of Dutch principals are willing to admit bullying exists in the schools they oversee, I conclude bullying is actually probably better there than in places where no principals admit it’s happening at all.
The first rule of being in charge of a dysfunctional organization is often not admitting to others that your organization is dysfunctional. Because in far too many Americans’ eyes, what does that say about your “leadership”?
Case in point:
“Trump said testing “makes us look bad.” At his campaign rally in Tulsa five days later, he said he had asked his “people” to “slow the testing down, please.” At a White House press conference last week, he told reporters, “When you test, you create cases.””
Quantum Trump. Who knew?
Exactly.
Good way of describing it.
Dutch is kind of a rough-sounding language. Even the rote preflight instructions on KLM sound alarming. I was yelled at in a history museum in Amsterdam for lingering past closing time, and it was ... something. (The attendant apologized profusely when he realized I was American.)
It can't be any worse than museums in New York.
...but then again, it was New Amsterdam...
Why they changed it I can't say
Guess they liked it better that way.
'Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it I can't say
People just liked it better that way'
can you imagine sinatra singing "new amsterdam, new amsterdam?" does the new amersterdam yankees make sense? those people had foresight!
What else to expect from a people for whom the sweetest thing to call someone is "schat". The "ch" part being so guttural even Germans recoil.
I say this as a Dutchman living in France where even the mother of my children cannot comprehend that "schat" is more tender than "chérie" or the direct equivalent "trésor". I make her laugh sometimes with sweet phrases in which every "ch" and "g" sounds like a bulldog clearing its throat. "Schat gaandeweg schraap ik grager en grager gedachtes uit je geweldige geest."
A Dutchman once told me "Dutch is not a language, it's a throat disease."
My take from the graph is that Netherlands principals are the most honest.
I went to school in Holland (after 9th grade in an American one) and my kids went to school in France. Lots of comments above have it right. Dutch authorities, from cops to school principals, are taught to be socially comprehending and vigilant against things like bullying. In France they don't care as long as they themselves are obeyed.
The graph Kevin shows doesn't demonstrate bullying levels in countries but whether or not something will be done about it.