Brain Waves E (click "back" on your browser to return to home page)

So you are planning on getting married. Guys, expect your lady to plan 85 percent of all events. Maybe she will let you look at these web sites with her. Try and sweet talk her into this:

"The Knot"

"Wedding Channel"

Some thoughts for the gentleman. When you have a severe case of puppy love, other people may think you babble. Be careful when you cajole that lady, it may give you excellent result or may give a big problem. It is especially important not to be cantankerous with her. After you get married you may have ghosts in your closet. She resort to (get even by) being a mall rat, or burn your borsh.

Sweet talk = gentle persuasion.
To babble = to talk in a way that is difficult to understand.
To cajole = to use flattery or deceit to persuade.
To be cantankerous = to be bad-tempered or quarrelsome.
Ghosts in the closet = undesirable happenings from the past.
Mall = a superstore, a group of magazines.
Mall rat = a person who shops all the time.
Burn your borsh - if you can't figure that out, don't get married!

PROBLEM IN NEW YORK CITY

An investigation of New York schools has uncovered what is being described as the biggest cheating scandal in the history of the United States. Staff at 32 schools across the city helped students cheat in public exams, a government investigator has found. Special schools investigator Edward Stancik spent 17 months looking into the conduct of public exams and results in the city. He found that at least 52 teaching staff, assistants and school heads from elementary and middle schools helped the students cheat. He said that some handed out questions in advance, others gave out the correct answers during exams and others changed answer sheets for the students. In one case, third-graders (eight and nine year olds) reported that a school principal told them to write their reading test answers on a piece of scrap paper before putting them on the official test. She then allegedly came around to point out incorrect answers, saying: "that's wrong" or "do that one over." In Public School #234 in the Bronx the number of third graders reading at the normal level showed an increase from 29% to 51% because of the cheating.

Mr. Stancik said the 52 staff cheated to improve their school's overall performance, or to give their own careers a boost. Two schools had been taken off the state's register of failing schools because of the false "improvements". "It's the highest number of educators ever implicated in a single cheating investigation," said Robert Schaeffer, public education director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing.

Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew, from the board of education, is taking Mr. Stancik's report seriously. He said all 52 school employees named in the report have been removed from their jobs pending the results of the investigation. The report recommended that 12 of the teachers should be fired and the others disciplined.

The real losers are the students who were given a false impression of their abilities.

PROBLEM IN UKRAINE

Edited for the KYIV POST, May 17, 2001 By Olga Kryzhanovska, Staff Writer

A student at one of Kyiv's Universities, fears that he might not pass an exam. His grades this semester were not good, he says, because he was working three jobs to support himself. Today, the state provides little support to students. The average stipend in Hr 25, less than $5, per month. And the best students - those with grade averages higher than 4.4 (on a scale I to 5) - will get a stipend. Now he hopes that the money he has earned will buy him a way out of his predicament. He is considering trying something he has never done before: offering a few bribes to pass tests that he otherwise would surely fail. "The average price that students pay is $5 for a test, $10 for an exam," he explained nonchalantly. Many professors don't accept bribes at all.

Using bribes to make the grade has apparently become a common practice at many of Kyiv's large universities, colleges and institutes. Faced with a lack of state financing, more and more students find they must work to support themselves, leaving them little time to study. Other students, fearing mandatory military service, offer cash to teachers in a desperate attempt to avoid being expelled and subsequently drafted into Ukraine's poorly funded army, which is notorious for terrible conditions. Ukrainian law requires that all healthy males who reached the age of 18 should go into the military - except for students who have military practice in their universities. So while female students who drop out of university can finish up by attending correspondence school, men face enlistment

On top of that, many professors, who have money woes of their own, find it hard to resist the extra cash offered by students and take a few bucks to bump up a score. University professors of state-funded establishments are rarely financially better off than their students. The average salary for a professor in Kiev is about Hr 300, according to the Education Ministry. A doctor of sciences gets from Hr 2 to Hr 5 for giving a lecture at a university. Throw in cultural acceptance of low level corruption dating back to Soviet times, and it all adds up to an educational system slipping into mediocrity.

Widespread acceptance of bribery by Ukrainians is at the root of the problem. In Soviet times, parents and students used their connections - known as blat in Russian slang. Back then students hoping to enter a university or institute generally couldn't get in without knowing an influential person. The system hasn't changed much at state universities, except that now money has become as important as connections.

According to the Ukrainian Criminal Code, the penalty for accepting a bribe is from five to 10 years in prison, confiscation of property and deprivation of the right to hold important governmental positions for five years. A person who offers a bribe risks a three- to eight-year prison sentence.

The professor in Philosophy 203 gave one problem for the final exam. He placed a chair on the desk in the front of the room, then said, "Using all the knowledge you have gained this semester prove this chair does not exist."

Some of the students wrote fifteen pages of theory. One student quickly wrote his name, the course name and two words, and walked to the front of the room and gave the paper to the professor. The two words: "What chair?"

Philosophy = the study of the nature and meaning of existence, reality, knowledge, etc.
Theory = an idea that has not yet proved to be true.
Semester = half of the school year, usually four or five months.