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Eastern Europe? Could you please elaborate or provide some example to illustrate what exactly you mean? I am from Eastern Europe (Czech Rep.) and I used to live

by honzzz 13y ago

Eastern Europe? Could you please elaborate or provide some example to illustrate what exactly you mean? I am from Eastern Europe (Czech Rep.) and I used to live in UK. Generally I would say that current Eastern Europe is way more open/tolerant/apathetic to 'unpopular opinions' than UK.

petercooper 13y ago
I don't have an interest in filling a post with links to articles about the freedom of speech issues or homophobia in Belarus, the Ukraine, Lithuania, Romania, or what not, but they are easily found. For starters, though, Belarus, the Ukraine, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece and Albania aren't even in the top 80 countries for press freedom: http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2013,1054.html http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2013,1054.html However, I had to hit Wikipedia as I'd never considered the Czech Republic to culturally be "Eastern Europe" but it turns out it often is. I consider the Czech Republic as progressive as any Western European nation and the statistics seem to support that (for example, Czechs are more in support of gay marriage than even the Brits). I've been to the Czech Republic before and was pleasantly surprised at how awesome it was. So, to clarify, I did not have mean "Eastern Europe" formally but countries on the geographically eastern fringes of Europe.
- weland 13y ago
  Don't trust everything you see on Wikipedia. I went to school in one of the countries you mentioned. There is a firm cultural policy there that the teachers' authority ends at the doors of the school. Barring some extreme cases (e.g. underage teenagers starring in porn movies), a teacher doing something like what's mentioned in the article would result in significant public outcry, on all levels, exactly on the grounds of free speech. The merits, policies, methods and value of schools, colleges and even individual professors are matters of public debate with no restriction. Attempts of imposing sanctions on pupils for expressing views of discontent with institutions do occur, but are isolated and rarely carried out, due to -- you've guessed it -- public outcry. Perhaps most symbolic for this: after the fall of the Communist regime, school uniforms quickly fell out of favour and are quite rare after 4th grade or so even today. And where they are in place, the rules against not wearing them are rarely enforced for precisely the same reasons. It's all nice on paper, but as soon as someone decides a kid should be expelled for not wearing those particular clothes, things usually get ugly. Press freedom, corruption and the like are not good general indicatives for the population's values. There's a large gap between general indices and individual behaviour. [Edit:] Communities tend to find ways around things, especially youngsters. Press freedom is the simplest example there: precisely because everyone knows press is basically a propaganda agency, there's general distrust of it, and people are suspicious of what they read in the newspaper. Same goes for teachers: after a long (political-driven) culture of authoritarianism in schools, people are very suspicious of school staff extending their authority past the realm of schools. It also works this way with the generation gap. Precisely because younger people (particularly in urban areas) perceive their parents as closed-minded, they obstinately try to exercise open-mindedness, or to at least adopt a more indifferent stance, with e.g most teenagers there either supporting gay marriage, or simply not "getting what the big deal is", if people want to marry, they marry. (This is itself a symptom of something else, but I digress). tl;dr There's at least one place on the fringe of Eastern Europe where a school principal behaving like this would generally end up with a lot of angry parents on his doorstep the following morning.
BWStearns 13y ago
Ukraine has its moments.

by honzzz 13y ago

petercooper 13y ago

I don't have an interest in filling a post with links to articles about the freedom of speech issues or homophobia in Belarus, the Ukraine, Lithuania, Romania, or what not, but they are easily found. For starters, though, Belarus, the Ukraine, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece and Albania aren't even in the top 80 countries for press freedom: http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2013,1054.html http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2013,1054.html However, I had to hit Wikipedia as I'd never considered the Czech Republic to culturally be "Eastern Europe" but it turns out it often is. I consider the Czech Republic as progressive as any Western European nation and the statistics seem to support that (for example, Czechs are more in support of gay marriage than even the Brits). I've been to the Czech Republic before and was pleasantly surprised at how awesome it was. So, to clarify, I did not have mean "Eastern Europe" formally but countries on the geographically eastern fringes of Europe.

weland 13y ago
Don't trust everything you see on Wikipedia. I went to school in one of the countries you mentioned. There is a firm cultural policy there that the teachers' authority ends at the doors of the school. Barring some extreme cases (e.g. underage teenagers starring in porn movies), a teacher doing something like what's mentioned in the article would result in significant public outcry, on all levels, exactly on the grounds of free speech. The merits, policies, methods and value of schools, colleges and even individual professors are matters of public debate with no restriction. Attempts of imposing sanctions on pupils for expressing views of discontent with institutions do occur, but are isolated and rarely carried out, due to -- you've guessed it -- public outcry. Perhaps most symbolic for this: after the fall of the Communist regime, school uniforms quickly fell out of favour and are quite rare after 4th grade or so even today. And where they are in place, the rules against not wearing them are rarely enforced for precisely the same reasons. It's all nice on paper, but as soon as someone decides a kid should be expelled for not wearing those particular clothes, things usually get ugly. Press freedom, corruption and the like are not good general indicatives for the population's values. There's a large gap between general indices and individual behaviour. [Edit:] Communities tend to find ways around things, especially youngsters. Press freedom is the simplest example there: precisely because everyone knows press is basically a propaganda agency, there's general distrust of it, and people are suspicious of what they read in the newspaper. Same goes for teachers: after a long (political-driven) culture of authoritarianism in schools, people are very suspicious of school staff extending their authority past the realm of schools. It also works this way with the generation gap. Precisely because younger people (particularly in urban areas) perceive their parents as closed-minded, they obstinately try to exercise open-mindedness, or to at least adopt a more indifferent stance, with e.g most teenagers there either supporting gay marriage, or simply not "getting what the big deal is", if people want to marry, they marry. (This is itself a symptom of something else, but I digress). tl;dr There's at least one place on the fringe of Eastern Europe where a school principal behaving like this would generally end up with a lot of angry parents on his doorstep the following morning.

BWStearns 13y ago

Ukraine has its moments.