If children aren't eating, the cause is most likely not being able to afford food, or not being provided with food by their parents. If teachers were to have any effect, it would be by giving the children money or food, not "hanging out" and "encouraging" them.
A clearer way of stating it might be not "the euro students value their education more because it's free," but "the euro students value their education more because college attendance is determined by academic status rather than ability to pay. So, they had to work hard at their studies to get into college, and must continue to perform well academically or risk being kicked out."
Whereas in the US, college attendance generally* is determined by ability to pay, and a student who can pay will almost certainly be able to find some college that will let them attend, whether they take their studies seriously ("value their education") or not.
*Of course achievement still matters if you want to get into the most selective institutions ... but I gather you can do that with (a lot) of money, too.
From Harold McGee's fabulously scientific book On Food and Cooking[0]:
"Hearts of palm are the growing stem tips of various palm trees, especially the South American peach palm Bactris gasipaes, which readily resprouts after its tip is cut....[Harvesting] hearts of other palms often results in the wasteful death of the entire tree."
> In my experience, they typically like to pick apart others, but can't handle being picked apart.
Yes. cryoshon even states in his post that he wouldn't want to be around a person like himself. So he's only allowed to interact with masochists who like being constantly criticized while never criticizing back, because anything else would be "fake"?
Primary/secondary textbooks are not professional academic publications, and typically lag far behind the latter. Your primary/secondary teacher's behavior is not a reflection of professional archaeologists' behavior.
