Getting into Harvard Is Easier Than Kindergarten in Qatar

The average person has a 7/100 chance of being accepted by Harvard University according to the 2013 admission rate.

Internet
Internet (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Our three year old, however, has a 0/6 acceptance rate thus far for Pre-K 4 in Qatar.

That school competition is fierce is an understatement. Here, in the gently blowing sands, a city bursting at its seams struggles to make room for cars on the streets and kids in the classroom. he Supreme Education Council (SEC), the governing body for primary and secondary schools in the country, has decreed that all four year olds must be out of nurseries by their birthday. With no new schools on the horizon this has set off an all out panic on the part of parents everywhere.

With non-refundable application fees to the tune of 200-500 QR ($60-$200 USD), applying for as many schools as possible and crossing your fingers is an expensive proposition.

And the odds are much worse than Harvard and perhaps even more closely guarded. Anywhere from 500 applications for 105 seats in the pre-k group at the popular international schools.

“She told me he was on the waiting list,” said the other mother in swim class. Our boys were busy ignoring the swim instructor. We were sharing our schooling woes. “I asked her based on what?”

I leaned in, hoping to get insight into the notorious no-man’s land of waiting lists. Mothers around the country were having the same despondent chat online, in coffee shops, during play dates.

“Because you are not a real American, is what she said.”

“Where is she from?” I asked indignantly.

“I don’t know, her family name is Asian, she wears a veil, but she’s got an American passport.”

“The she’s not a real American either!” I said.

But there was nothing more she could do. Causing a fuss would guarantee her child would never gain admission as opposed to a dubious chance at moving up the waiting list.

With hundreds of applications, the schools have their choice of children. And their parents, it would seem, from the requests to list occupations and indicate who is paying the bill (employer or parent) on the entry forms.

I geared up the nerve to drop into one of the schools in our neighborhood, dressing like I imagined a well heeled mother would, rather than a professional who might leave her children to the iPad while trying to meet a deadline. I drove to the entryway, preparing to park my car. A teacher was standing outside the gate, waiting for someone or a delivery. In either case the sight of her put me in mortal fear. I drove away.

“Did you go into the office? Are you calling everyday?” My other friend asked. “You of people were intimidated?”

I shook my head in shame. Between two children, writing and a teaching career, there was barely time to exercise, much less romance admission officers.

“We applied to the German school,” another mother said during a play date.

“Does he speak German?”

She shook her head. “But they’ll teach him after kindergarten. At least he’ll have somewhere to go.”

I couldn’t argue with her logic with the prospect of homeschooling looming on my calendar for next year.

I’ll keep you posted on how we do in the intricate filtering system going on at international schools around the country. Hopefully I haven’t hurt the kid’s chances even further with this blog post.

What about you? Have to give plasma to pay application fees for your graduating high schooler?

Enhanced by Zemanta

Wordless Wednesday: Calling Grandma to See How Old She Was

My team’s latest research project is understanding how gender, age, education and marriage are related for Qatari women. We’re a few weeks into the study which involves survey data, interviews, and focus groups. The initial survey asks respondents to share their age, educational level and marital status. Over and over again, a number of respondents said, “I don’t know my grandmother’s age when she was married.”

Or they’ve had to call their mother to see how much education her mother had completed.

Do you know this information about your grandparents? Were they married as high school graduates or teenagers?

 

Enhanced by Zemanta

Mo's into MOOCs

Salford Business School launches unique open a...
(Photo credit: University of Salford)

If you’re not in the university business – either a student or professor, you may be thinking, what’s that? A Mooc, or a Massive Open Online Course, is a free class that thousands – often hundreds of thousands – of students take via the Internet. MOOCs present an opportunity to broaden the educational classroom beyond the physical boundaries of university buildings by making knowledge available to anyone with access to a computer and Internet connection. They represent a hybrid of university support, venture capital, nonprofit organizations, foundations, and private industry. I’m taking two myself, one on Creativity, Innovation and Change and another on Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative .

I launched my own MOOC yesterday on writing the personal essay. While 100 people signed up for the course, 45 or so have entered our online forum. Nothing like a kickoff to separate the doers from the wishers.

As a follower of the blog, I’ll give you access to the MOOC content (password: mooc). Post your answers to the first exercise below in the comments if you’d like me to have a look. And if you want to participate in the next class, sign up for my newsletter. I’m mulling over a short story course for the second iteration.

Someone is bound to ask me why I’m doing this. Not exactly a small time commitment. Well there are two reasons: one is a future educational research project I’m interested in developing. This is a test ground. The second, I’m a writer who loves to help others tell their stories. This project is perfect as it tackles two ideas I love in one venture. For me it’s actually efficient creativity!

There are several other interesting developments which I’ve experienced even in the short week or so that it took to launch the course.

1. Several people opted out of the course when they found out that it had a Google+ forum linked to the discussions. I resisted Gmail for several years because I thought they were offering unparallelled storage because they wanted to harvest our data. Now my work (and even my husband’s) has Gmail based email interfaces. There seems no way around Gmail. I did give people in this category the option of taking the course only through my website

2. Taping video lectures is not as easy as you would think. First you have to watch yourself (something no one should have to do). Distilling a lecture into discrete units takes some of the spontaneity out of my style of delivery, which in the physical classroom is peppered with jokes, admonishments and answers to questions. Watching myself several times, in order to edit the video, meant I noticed how often my face moves while I’m talking. While this may be okay, even engaging in person, on television it has the opposite effect; why is that woman’s face moving so much? What’s that strange scar that only appears when she furrows her forehead? I’m going to work on stilling my face in the coming three lectures. I may become better at poker.

3. The immediacy of posts means that I can respond to a student any time, from anywhere that I get a notification: in the last five days this included airports, hotel rooms, and beds, were all locations from which I replied. An automated quiz means I can see not only who has logged in to take it, but what questions are tricky, and which ones have easy answers. The data metrics are endless; what time people posted, what time they took the quiz, how long it takes between being approved to post and the first post.

I can’t wait to see how this format helps or hinders the writing process. Stay tuned for weeks 2-4.

Have you taken any MOOCs? What do you think about 44,000 people taking a class at once (that’s how many are in the Online Games one).

 

Enhanced by Zemanta