Hi there,

What a strange coincidence: yesterday the "p.v." phrase landed in my mail box and 2day I heard "p.v." in the film 187 . Have U seen it? With Samuel Jackson as a teacher of Physics trying (in vain) to put a curb on some riffraff. Geese Louise, what a scary vision it is!!! Violence to the nth power, the teacher cannot do this or that, isn't respected at all, the headmaster isn't a teacher himself, just an administrator....etc, etc

Is it really like this OVER THERE? I realize that to some extent this
vision of violence at school is overstretched, but to WHAT EXTENT ?

Regards/ love
Miros

It's not a common phrase, but it's not uncommon either. A p.v. is one in which the "winner" loses so much that he might as well have lost.

Example: One nuclear power quickly dispatched another yesterday, but nattering nabobs from the winner's surviving city considered it a pyrrhic victory.

Regarding the movie: I have not seen it. But there are places where the education system is definitely weird. There are tons and tons of rules to keep the good students in line, but very little can be done to get rid of dangerous ones, or focus the ones who just need a little help. The success of a school is measured in part by how long it's been since they had a knifing, or how low the failure rate is. I was reminded of this a few weeks ago. During a tutoring session, a very large student threatening undertones to a girl over some excruciatingly minor episode. A very large component of the problem is that one cannot actually honestly discuss the issues without running into charges of racism, elitism, or what have you. There are all kinds of ways of obfuscating meaning that it's almost impossible to communicate. It's no wonder so many of my tutors quit in disgust after a short period of time.