I'm Hungarian. Due to my parents, I attended schools in 3 different countries:
- first half year : Hungary
- grades 1.5 - 4 : Germany
- grades 5 - 8 : Hungary
- grades 9 - 12 : USA, California
- Universities, PhD: Hungary
After the first half year in Hungary, when I arrived in Germany, I was waaay ahead of all the other kids in Math & Sciences and was near the top of the class for most of the 4 years without speaking the language properly.
Then I got back to Hungary, where I had major catching up to do, especially in terms of Math, Sciences, Music and of course Hungarian language. I eventually caught up in Math & Physics, but not in Biology or Music, which never interested me much. (I mention Music because Hungarian schools teach music at a high level from grade 1 to everyone according to the "Liszt system", and for someone like me, who is not musically minded it was impossible to catch up.)
Then I went to University High School in Irvine, Orange County, California, one of the best public high schools in the USA I believe. Even so, that was a fairly shocking experience for me. Initially I was way ahead, but the whole system was so different, neither I not my parents knew how it worked (eg. you have to pick your own classes), the advisors put me into idiotic "English as a Second Language" classes for the first few months, where you really can't actually learn English because all the other kids are Korean. And for some reason they only had ESL for low-level math classes, roughly at the level you'd learn in 6th grade everywhere else. So eventually I did okay at UHS, because we figured out to ignore what the advisors (who seemed completely useless to me) say. But I couldn't really cope with all the freedom, all the activities, or the fact that everybody had cars at age 16, and I didn't, so I got Bs regularly.
Then I got back to a Hungarian University for a CS major, and even though I took all the AP classes in the US and took some CS at the local community college and UCI, I was waaaaaaaaaay behind, esp. in Physics. The AP Calculus classes are not so bad, but the one year AP Physics class is a major joke. In Hungary they study Physics for 4 years straight. So at first I had really bad grades at University. Eventually I went on to do a 2nd degree (another 5 manyears) in Physics, mostly because it interested me and I was so annoyed by my lack of understanding.
Overall, it's clear that the US public HS, even one of the best, was a major waste of time. I didn't learn much, nor were the teachers any good. I eventually enrolled to become a physicist to properly repair the "damage" caused by a lack of proper Physics education at the HS. It quickly turned out I'm so interested in Physical theories that I'm currently doing a PhD.
I'm also fairly certain that I got a better University education here in Hungary (esp. Physics) than I would have gotten at a public University in the US, all things taken into account. However, it's clear that no University in any part of the world can compete with top US and UK schools (mostly private and some public like Berkeley).
Overall, I'm still very happy to have spent 4 years in the USA, as it was a major life experience, and I benefit from it every day. I would say it was worth it even though the HS sucked, because the US culture / language is like Rome was 2000 years ago. The United States is the center of the world, and if somebody doesn't understand the United States, they don't understand the world. To get a better feeling for the "center of the world" part, visit the NASA museum in Washington. Everything worth mentioning that has happened after 1940 is there.
Also, the preview of this film seems to discount the self-confidence issue. I can understand this, but the makers should visit a country where kids, and thus people, are not injected with such self-confidence and see how they're doing (like here in Hungary). US self-confidence is one of the major factors why the economy is so great and why you have so many startups. I'm doing a startup right now, and it's no question that it's because after having spent 4 years in California I have a "can do" attitude, completely off the charts compared to my peers here in Hungary. I remember when I was at Uni I overheard someone referring to me as the "American guy" and I asked him how he knew I spent time in the States: he replied he didn't, he just gave me that nickname based on my attitude.
I am also a Hungarian, and I think Hungary is a worse and worse place as you get older. I've attended one of the best high schools in Hungary which was very high quality. Universities on the other hand are not bad, but also by far not the best. And jobs are mostly the boring outsourced stuff. Attitude towards starting up is very poor. I am so different from the people surrounding me. I literally live physically in Hungary, but virtually in the Valley (reading HN, Techrunch, etc...)
It's perplexing to me how a country with a great primary education can have mediocre universities. And then you have the exact inverse phenomenon for the USA.
Problem is your first Uni. degree is free for Hungarian citizens, so everybody wants to get in, after all it beats getting a job. And the gov't goes along with it, because it temporarily decreases unemployment. However, this decrease in quality of incoming students led to quality of education going down at most places, and completely bogus management/administration majors gaining popularity. As a result, now virtually everybody younger than 30 has a Uni. degree, but most degrees aren't worth the paper they're printed on, as the people holding have little real-world or even theoretical skills --- eventually they become secreteries or HR people. That's why many smart people, once they figure this out, pay and do a second degree at one of the few places that's not affected by this phenomenon, like me doing the Physics major. Fortunately Physics is scary to most people, so it's one of the last remaining oasis in our education system.
I am also doing my startup in the field of databases, but on the other end of the spectrum than Keyspace: I am working on bringing databases to ordinary people. What I am working on is a web based, multi-user collaborative MS Access-competitor. (I am relying on an open-source database engine.)
Yeah, what I work on is quite similar to dabbledb. There are some differences of course. One of the most important differences is that my system will not only be available as a cloud service, but companies can run their own server if they want. The server software is extremely simple in this sense: it needs zero configuration, it embeds an open source db engine (Derby) and an open source web server (Jetty). Basically the server just needs to be copied an run and that's all. It is also operating-system independent (provided that a JVM is available).
Yes, easy and intelligent import from Excel is strategically one of the most important things do right in this kind of application. I will release an alpha version in a couple of months, and I will submit an 'ASK HN: Please review' post on HN.
- first half year : Hungary
- grades 1.5 - 4 : Germany
- grades 5 - 8 : Hungary
- grades 9 - 12 : USA, California
- Universities, PhD: Hungary
After the first half year in Hungary, when I arrived in Germany, I was waaay ahead of all the other kids in Math & Sciences and was near the top of the class for most of the 4 years without speaking the language properly.
Then I got back to Hungary, where I had major catching up to do, especially in terms of Math, Sciences, Music and of course Hungarian language. I eventually caught up in Math & Physics, but not in Biology or Music, which never interested me much. (I mention Music because Hungarian schools teach music at a high level from grade 1 to everyone according to the "Liszt system", and for someone like me, who is not musically minded it was impossible to catch up.)
Then I went to University High School in Irvine, Orange County, California, one of the best public high schools in the USA I believe. Even so, that was a fairly shocking experience for me. Initially I was way ahead, but the whole system was so different, neither I not my parents knew how it worked (eg. you have to pick your own classes), the advisors put me into idiotic "English as a Second Language" classes for the first few months, where you really can't actually learn English because all the other kids are Korean. And for some reason they only had ESL for low-level math classes, roughly at the level you'd learn in 6th grade everywhere else. So eventually I did okay at UHS, because we figured out to ignore what the advisors (who seemed completely useless to me) say. But I couldn't really cope with all the freedom, all the activities, or the fact that everybody had cars at age 16, and I didn't, so I got Bs regularly.
Then I got back to a Hungarian University for a CS major, and even though I took all the AP classes in the US and took some CS at the local community college and UCI, I was waaaaaaaaaay behind, esp. in Physics. The AP Calculus classes are not so bad, but the one year AP Physics class is a major joke. In Hungary they study Physics for 4 years straight. So at first I had really bad grades at University. Eventually I went on to do a 2nd degree (another 5 manyears) in Physics, mostly because it interested me and I was so annoyed by my lack of understanding.
Overall, it's clear that the US public HS, even one of the best, was a major waste of time. I didn't learn much, nor were the teachers any good. I eventually enrolled to become a physicist to properly repair the "damage" caused by a lack of proper Physics education at the HS. It quickly turned out I'm so interested in Physical theories that I'm currently doing a PhD.
I'm also fairly certain that I got a better University education here in Hungary (esp. Physics) than I would have gotten at a public University in the US, all things taken into account. However, it's clear that no University in any part of the world can compete with top US and UK schools (mostly private and some public like Berkeley).
Overall, I'm still very happy to have spent 4 years in the USA, as it was a major life experience, and I benefit from it every day. I would say it was worth it even though the HS sucked, because the US culture / language is like Rome was 2000 years ago. The United States is the center of the world, and if somebody doesn't understand the United States, they don't understand the world. To get a better feeling for the "center of the world" part, visit the NASA museum in Washington. Everything worth mentioning that has happened after 1940 is there.
Also, the preview of this film seems to discount the self-confidence issue. I can understand this, but the makers should visit a country where kids, and thus people, are not injected with such self-confidence and see how they're doing (like here in Hungary). US self-confidence is one of the major factors why the economy is so great and why you have so many startups. I'm doing a startup right now, and it's no question that it's because after having spent 4 years in California I have a "can do" attitude, completely off the charts compared to my peers here in Hungary. I remember when I was at Uni I overheard someone referring to me as the "American guy" and I asked him how he knew I spent time in the States: he replied he didn't, he just gave me that nickname based on my attitude.