I used to live in a Victorian home. Maine's got a lot of them. I love that style

Me too. My aunt lives in one as well. Beautiful house with lots of detail as well as odd features

It's amazing how their tools weren't as good and yet they put so much more detail and things into the houses.

It is. Many of these were built with straighter lines and with everything more snugly fit than modern day houses. Just plastering the walls was an art in itself. The original plaster walls in my aunt's house are actually smoother and straighter than the drywall in mine.

Better craftsmanship back then. They took it more seriously

Yeah, they did. What strikes me is how recently this build it cheaply and quickly mentality appeared. Only in the last couple of decades since WW2

I blame the school system and the handouts

Why the school system?

It'll pass you along regardless of your grades. Why try hard if you get the same thing in the end?

true, yeah. Though what else do they do? They have no real authority to give meaningful punishment for slacking off

Not anymore. They used to discipline the kids. Kids progressively get worse, because discipline at home declines more every generation. And because teachers can't do anything about it anymore, quite a few of them just stopped caring. Where I went to school, the teachers always just took the easy route out instead of looking for real solutions, or if they said they were, they'd just find a way to get the results they want to keep on saying what they were before. For example, I don't have a learning disability, but was in special education anyway. I wanted to be in the mainstream classes so bad. So, what they did was, every year I got the same math and science book, and then in 7th grade just dropped me into metrics and algebra. When I failed those they replied "We told you couldn't" and put me back in the same third grade math and science the rest of the retards were on. What they told me they were gonna do was totally different. What they said I was gonna get was worked up steadily into more challenging math and science until I was finally up to speed with the rest of my grade. Instead they just dumped me right in after years of the same simple stuff. They didn't want us to learn, it was easier to keep us at the same place rather than try. Oh, and drugging them with medication they don't need also helps.

Ah I see what you mean. I know in our school the classes did get progressively harder. There was never any point I found school easy or not challenging unless I actually liked the class. I always hated school for that reason though. But there was the occasional teacher who was either a terrible teacher or didnt care. I had a math teacher is sixth grade who never gave out any tests and didn't even check the homework herself. Just sent around a kid to do it. And nothing was ever actually graded. She just checked off if you did it. Our school system is stlll pretty decent but you can see occasionally when someone misbehaves or slacks off and doesnt get any grief for it.

Eventually, I was taken out of public school. The private school I went to didn't have a special ed, and you wouldn't be passed along if you failed. The teacher you described was sort of like my math teacher there. It took me a while, but I was getting the math and science here. However, even though I would have been getting passing grades in math, she gave me zeros all the time. She'd look at the homework, quizes and tests, but rather than grade the papers based on answers, she just determined the grade by glancing at it, giving a grade, then correcting it later. I had a zero on a paper I had 8 out of ten questions right on. I got in a lot of trouble because of this, because I wouldn't be quiet about this shit. Graded before even seeing if they got it right. One time I asked her why we're going to correct the papers if she already graded all of them. That got her going good.

Oh wow. This teacher I had actually sent a student around to check to see if you did the homework. That was pretty much it though. Never checked the answers, or graded anything or even looked to see if it was the right assignment. You could've wrote gibberish for all the homework and you'd probably ace this class. She never had any tests either, so your grade depended entirely on doing the homework. You didnt even have to pay attention while she was teaching. I just drew the entire class.

Wow... That's bad. She still teach?

Yeah, she's teaching history now. That was the position she actually wanted, and she did a much better job in history, which was a bit strange.

Maybe she's actually trying in this class.

Probably, yeah

They wouldn't have lasted long here.

I'm guessing they're a lot more careful about who they hire there?

The Ministry of Education checks up on everything. The final exams at the end of the year are marked by the ministry not by the teachers and some of the internal assessments are ‘moderated’ by the ministry at random to ensure that teachers aren’t giving away marks and students aren’t failing.
Poor performing schools get their management replaced by a commissioner appointed by the ministry.

The same thing happens to District and Regional Councils from time to time when they screw up particularly badly.

I wish they did that here. I mean the schools I went to were pretty good apart from one or two bad teachers, but there are some schools in the bad areas where only 30%-40% of students graduate.