American School VS Belgium School

     One of the biggest differences, that I am still struggling a bit with, is school in Belgium. It is nothing like school in the United States. School here is looked at as more of a “job”. You come to school to learn, nothing else. Your teachers are your bosses, and your classmates are your coworkers. There is little room for mistakes, and if mistakes are made, consequences are unforgiving.      
     The way that classes are set up here are quite simple. Everybody takes the basic courses of math, history, religion, geography, gym, and French. For these classes, we (my class of about 20) stay in one classroom, and the teacher comes to us. Then there are the “electives”. You choose to take the “sciences” or the “tongues”. Though these are “electives”, everybody still takes classes of languages and sciences. Taking the sciences just consists of more hours of science per week, and taking languages consists of taking more hours of languages each week.
     Another big change is, unlike in the U.S., your classes never change. After the first week, no changes can be made to your schedule and it is permanent for the rest of the year. My schedule here in Belgium in different every day, unlike my schedule in the U.S. that was basically the same every day. The year here is also broken up differently. At my school in the U.S. we had three separate trimesters and at the end of each trimester your grades were “permanent”, then you start fresh the next trimester. Here, you have two “testing periods”, one right before the Christmas break, and one at the end of the year. During these testing periods you are given exams. According to how you score on these exams determines if you will proceed to the next grade, or retake the same one.
     This brings me into my next, most shocking, difference. I was surprised to find out, that it was not uncommon for people to retake grades. After getting to know the people in my class a little better, I came to find out their ages ranged from 14 years to 18 years. In the U.S., this would be shocking, and at first it was to me. I wanted to know more, so I talked to a girl that I knew had to retake a year (for the first time). I asked her if her parents were upset with her, and she told me that they did not really care because she had made it the farthest in her family without having to retake a grade. I was flabbergasted. But now learning how school works here, I’m not as shocked. They just look at it so simply here; if you know your material, you pass to the next grade, if you don’t, you retake the year. It is so much different in the U.S., I feel like schools in the U.S. do everything they can, bend every rule possible, give endless opportunities, offer extra credit and allow summer school just so students will pass. It seemed se normal 3 months ago, but now, American school systems are unbelievable to me.

My School

Institut de la Providence de Wavre