...

They were angry about the 2000 election, so they did whatever they could to make it seem like some idiot got elected, and the poor, honorable Al Gore was somehow duped or robbed of the peoples will. Seems they were pretty successful. Hate can be very insidious, and in this case, to the point where people didn't even now why, they just did.

And I supported the administration precisely because of those (allegedly) left-wing positions. And for that I am now a right-wing extremist according to some.

I used to vote for the Green party, my family are traditional Social Democrats.

Now I find myself voting for the conservative Christian Democrats (I still vote in German elections) and my mother left the Social Democratic party in Germany when they gave up anti-communist values and made a sharp turn towards the left.

Bump...

I am still fairly left-wing.

But the modern left has pretty much re-invented what "left" means.

In the old days the left stood for the belief that a socialist society is superior to a capitalist society. The modern left believes that no society is superior to another and rejects such a belief as "racism".

The old left supported minorities against imperialists. The modern left has, in the middle east, pretty much abandoned the minorities and supports Arab imperialism starting with the Soviet-Union in the 1950s.

The old left supported the Jewish worker. The new left supports what it perceives as the Arab land owner.

The old left supported democracy. The new left supports dictatorships.

The old left supported progression. The new left advocates stability.

The old left supported the worker. The new left supports the land owner.

The left has changed. But so have I.

I am still in favour of socialised health care. But I am strictly against social welfare payments and mildly against progressive income tax (especially when it is used for transfer payments to other people who don't work).

Pardon the example, but in Israel the city of Haifa is referred to as The Red Haifa because its inhabitants are traditionally mainly socialist.

But while in Europe "socialist" would now imply "they have lots of holidays and don't work much", in Israel it means that shops are open on weekends. "Socialism" there means "work more", not "work less". I like that version of socialism.

Thanks for the comparison.

One of my best friends is a teacher and he is really all right and works hard.

However, I couldn't help it but make fun of him when I had the chance.

It was 3 PM and I was in the office (in Dublin). And I was bored so I decided to call my friend who I knew was working as a teacher now. I reached him at his flat. It was 4 PM in Freiburg.

He immediately started telling me how hard he is working as a teacher and how much time he has to invest and how little free time he has and so on and so on and so on. I listened for about ten minutes until he was done.

Then I said:

"Good, good. Anyway, I figured you would be home at 4 in the afternoon..."

Luckily he got the joke and laughed. (The joke is that while he was complaining about his job, _I_ was in an office while his job allowed him to be home in the afternoon.)

Anyway, I remember you were wondering about German patriotism and where to find it.

Try this site: http://www.pi-news.net/

They themselves are OK if a bit Islamophobic. They do attract anti-Islamic bigots though.

I used to comment there but can't any more as they always erase my comments now. I was too pro-Islamic. (I react badly when somebody lies about Israel or Judaism and also when somebody attacks Islam. And PI have a tendency to attack and demonise Islam.)

"The new left supports what it perceives as the Arab land owner."

And incidentally, for the new left the Arab land owner remains the land owner when the Jew has bought the land.

The old left supported the idea that Jews should buy land in Israel and build a progressive society there.

And guess what, it happened; and the result is an old left dream of a country. 5% of the population even live under voluntary communism on qibbutzim and moshavim. And the rest is a welfare state with equal rights for men and women, legalised gay marriage, and gay pride parades; a secular state of of black and white citizens, a modern state with some of the best universities (open to all) and some of the best hospitals (and a socialised health care system) in the world; a country with laws protecting labourers and very strong trade unions (the Histadruth, literally "organisation" is the trade union congress. Kishon described Israel as an integral part of the Histadruth). Israel has exactly those attributes the left always wanted in a country.

It's not coincidence. The Zionists were socialists. Stalin supported Israel originally because he thought Israel would become a socialist state (it has) on his side (it has not) which would fight the reactionary Arabs (it did) which were allied with the capitalist west (they were not for long).

Israel is every socialist's dream. Unfortunately it is Jewish.

I get the joke about teachers.. everybody but one of my siblings, and I got 5, is one. The odd one out is a banker with a phd in law in Munich and thinks that teachers only work half a day, have 3 months+ holidays a year and are generally just lazy. pffffffffff (and he also knows everything better lol)

Ill check this website out... yeahh and I sorta noticed your hackles getting raised whenever your see something irritating about Isreal or Judaism in a post. But it is very educational, you write really well, and I like it.

I am sort of  islamophobic myself, but I mostly keep it to myself, otherwise you're "intolerant". I live in Freiburg, a pretty left (but really spießig as well) city, and right where I live there are also lots of turks and arabs, and the little girls and woman wear  veils and this really long overcoats and long sleeves when it is so hot outside. IMO, they just treat their woman like 2nd class beings. And of course the honorkillings pi$$ me off, and that islamists use the principles of the GG with the goal to actually abolish it in the end. Fundamental islamists are a threat. But I guess such is true for all fundamentalists. I don't have anything against moderate oppinions and religions, and maybe I confuse islam and islamists at time, but I try to be careful.

If the utopia of a socialist community works, like in the quibutzim, it is probably the best way to live.

Well, isn't that true?

What do teachers do during the school holidays?

Here in Ireland they are not getting paid during that time.

Thanks.

I have my "special" subjects:

Israel and Judaism (I am in favour.)

Islam (My position got my posts deleted at that German site.)

Evolution (I understand Darwin's theory and tend not to believe in fairy tale alternatives.)

Fairness (I think that "fairness" is the belief that other people work for free.)

Macintosh (It's rare these days. But I am still a convinced Mac Pro user.)

My teacher friend lives in Freiburg too. Are you at the same school? His name is Samuel. He teaches Chemistry and English.

The veils and overcoats are a weird custom and have nothing to do with Islam. (You don't see them among Arabs in Israel or Muslims in Iraqi Kurdistan.) It's a Wahabi (Saudi-Arabian) invention and there is no long tradition behind it. It's simply a tool to subjugate women and that's all. There are men who feel threatened by women and some of them will use any tool to keep women "in their place". It's difficult to feel superior if one knows that the other could do better if left unchecked.

(As opposed to us normal men who feel threatened by women but do not actively try to keep them in their place. )

I don't know if all fundamentalists are necessarily a threat. When the last Harry Potter book was released, Christian fundamentalist preachers screamed that the book was Satanic; Muslim preachers screamed that it was both Satanic and Jewish (of course); and the bearded barbarians in Israel (the rabbinate) criticised that it was sold on midnight shabbes.

Don't worry if you confuse Islam and "Islamism". They do it too, all the time. Do you think Hamas remembers that the Quran states that G-d commanded the Jews to live in Israel and not turn back ignominously? Of course not.

I prefer capitalism, really. But I enjoy a good socialism when I see it.

In Israel the political elite are often recruited from the qibbutzim.

I don't know your friend, sorry. Freiburg as more than one school.

Ok, first of all, it depends on how you define "working". If you just go by clocking in and out of the school building, then you would have a point if a teacher only taught till 1pm and then left. BUT that is not all what a teacher does, teaching just his classes. The job of the teacher has become so much more, you have to form students to become responsible human beings, educate them more than on the subjects. Teachers have to take up the slack from parents who work fulltime and have no time for that or who are simply unable to do it. So, besides the regular job of preparing lessons, looking for material, correctings tests etc., there is this other pedagogic aspect, dealing with parents who think you don't do a good enough job, offering extracurricular AG's etc has become the norm in many school - it is a fulltime job dealing with brats (students and their parents) and you really really really really need the 3 months vacation to recuperate and to be able to do a good job. And you get paid in vacations in Germany. Teachers restore their nerves during holidays so that the students don't suffer.

Personally, I think school cannot not be a supplementfamily. I am very much burgoise on that, school teaches knowledge and the rest should happen outside school with family and friends. My mom always laments that there are no true families left and that this is the true problem. But whatever the reason, even if I don't like it, the job of educating young people in every aspect of life, morals and society falls to teachers. You'd think we'd deserve alitttle bit more respect for that instead of scorn lol

completely offtopic for the thread, but I am sure it is an issue in the US and Ireland as well. So, your friend and me have a really important and hard and totally underappreciated job. You should grovel a little!! lol

You see that is part of what bothers me with teachers. You have very little time between clocking and clocking out and then explain how you have to do a lot for your job outside that time too.

Well, it's the same with other jobs.

Although my clocking in/out time is only between 9 AM and 6 PM I spend at least two evenings per week learning what I need to know for work and most Sundays too. Not that I dislike it. I like my job and I like studying for it. But the point is that that is not unique to teachers and that it seems to me that teachers often think that it is.

Teachers obviously deserve respect but I think you are confusing what a teacher should do with what a teacher does do. While it is true that a good teacher spends a lot of time outside his clocking in/out time working there is not really a mechanism to check on that. And I have had many teachers who very obviously didn't do any work after 1 PM (and all of them were civil servants and could never be fired for anything). My parents also have bad memories of how much teachers cared when they spoke to parents. (Basically they just complained about the students.)

It's a pity that very few teachers ever work in any other area and that very few non-teachers ever evolve into teachers because I think there is a disconnect here.

Looking for material is easy. Here is almost everything you need for history classes:

http://www.summahistorica.com/

The author, Bob Packett, is an excellent teacher. And he really does do A LOT of work inside and outside school.

My argument wasn't that it was unique to do extra studying and preparing lessons outside schooltime - that is part of the job, but the demands in educating students in becoming citizens and upstanding members of society. Alot of teachers admittedly don't do it,  but nevertheless, it is becoming more and more of an absolute requirement in schools. Part of this development is the call of "flächendeckende Ganztagsschulen" (no idea what you'd call that in English). The trend is towards what I described.

You don't like Beamtentum? (lol) But it is such a great and traditional institution in Germany and we (teachers of the world) are never wrong.

Von 8h-13h hat man recht und den Rest des Tages frei - isn't that a cool thing?

All kidding aside, being a great and good teacher is one of the true goals of my life - there is nothing more gratifying than having an impact on a young life that helps a young person to fulfill his or her full potential. I hope I can be that person. Truly good teachers are rare.

Very few jobs don't require one to work with people all day long.

Heck, I sit in a half-cubicle in an office with hundreds of people.

We'll see. I still think teachers have too much holidays compared to other professions.

You can never blame the civil service for something that actually happened.

I don't like any job description that offers job security no matter what.

I had two good teachers, perhaps three or four. But only two really good teachers.