In the UK I have noticed the people with neat handwriting are usually no good with PC's. At my school we had writing practise but it bored me to death
It was pretty clear even in the early eighties as long as my writing could be understood there were more pressing things to learn.
I cant comment on all classes and areas of the UK. But where I was brought up in lardy dee da surrey most kids were reading before they got to school, the alphabet was drummed into us along with numbers and times tables.
At six or seven my firends and I were creating programs on our Computers playing with science kits wheter Chemistry or electrical.
Most of our toys had an educational slant to them. While in phill most of the toys are just simply toys from what I have seen.
Also much of our play was actually learning but we never knew it musical instruments, word games and others aimed at teaching us skills. I can remeber at a very stupidly early age we were being taught basic french but all as part of games.
The Wife and her two siblings went to a very good private school in Phill thanks to the hard work of her family and I went to what I think were very good schools but nothing like the equivalent.
They can write nicely and do pretty projects, but having helped on projects both while in phills and remotely im surprised how quite frankly useless some of the courses and projects were. Using wikipedia and other very dodgy sources was allowed, while most of the projects I did at school were to work in or run a business or what they now call project managment.
The Wife and her siblings do very simple courses which seem to be copying and pasting or doing things step by step.
While the projects i were set at school were very much right we want your ideas and skills to shine though not how you copied the info or found nice clip art.
My Wifes and her friends know little about the world apart form what they learned on Discovery, they dont seem to debate or hold opnions they have formed when we were ten/eleven at Junior school (the list of Unis are some of the cream of manila and jobs they have are all with blue chip companies or overseas.
But at junior school we did have lots of playtime but that from memory was very important in the office the factory or home you spend more time needing learning to adapt to those outside of the family. When we went home at least at my school we had home work from a very young age wheter school created or from my parents. So not much time to play most evenings.
While if my Children had to go to a Phill school Im sure as long as they went to a private fee paying one they would do ok as long as they had trips abroad and learned how to think for themsleves and form their own opnions.
If they were in the UK they would again have to go to a good school also, fee paying would not be such a worry i never went to a fee paying school and most of my School mates and I are in good jobs which we choose and enjoy while earning well above the national average.
A good school is a good school either in the UK or Phill with both needing input from the parents to ensure the children are fully rounded in my view.