The last two days have been mostly spent inside the classroom of the our Swiss school counterpart. It is interesting to observe the pretty significant differences. None of the kids does homework during the week, and, after the 3rd year when it is impossible to be kicked out the school, school grades do not matter since admission to a university is only dependent on a standardized test. Consequently, the learning atmosphere in the classroom is not that great and the teachers are so-so. It is also apparent that for the English intensive group of students they have sacrificed a certain amount of teaching quality in the name of learning English. The teachers are all "certified" in English but none is a native speaker and they all have grammar issues and challenges expressing complex ideas.
On Day 10, 6/20, we went to the annual meeting of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce which was interesting and reinforced a central goal of this exchange program: pair privileaged kids from private SF high schools with economic "majors" in a good Swiss high school and then take the kids to the top universities, businesses, and meetings. When in SF, the Swiss kids visited a succesful Swiss firm that set up shop in the States. We have visited Lindt chocolate and will soon visit a watch manufacturer. Along these lines, all the econ focused students at this school (2/3 of the students) take four classes in econ including "Business Studies." I was in that class today and on their test there was stuff about market research, market segmentation, product positioning, etc. Cool!
The past two days have been quite hot and warranted trips to the Lake of Zurich for tanning and r&r. I also swung by a huge (and one of the few) English bookstores to pick up a few more books for the remainder of hte trip. I've already read about 10 books on the trip....I didn't think I'd exhaust my supply!
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