Education Russia

On the long journey, doubts were often my companions. I’ve always admired those reporters who can descend on an area, talk to key people, ask key questions, take samplings of opinions, and then set down an orderly report, very like a road map. I envy this technique and at the same time do not trust it as a mirror of reality. I feel that there are too many realities. What I set down here is true until someone else passes that way and rearranges the world in its own style.

John Steinbeck – Travels with Charley in search of America

Russia

1.

For many centuries now, the Russians have been thought, trained, encouraged, or even threatened into believing that their leader is good, that their government is good, and that their job is to support it, and back it up.

It is the country with the largest surface in the world, and it follows that it is among the ten most populous countries. From St. Petersburg to Irkutsk, with stops in Moscow and Saratov, Monica and I have crossed almost half the country. And in the biggest cities, as well as in the small and not-so-industrialized ones, we have encountered the same attitude: Russia is in trouble and it needs a powerful leader, but Putin is as good a leader as they can hope for in these times. And this attitude goes further: people admit that it is a real struggle (mainly for the middle class and the poor) to make a decent living, but they accept the situation with stoicism and stubbornness. “Can you think of a way to improve this situation?” we would ask. And invariably, the answer would come with not so much hesitation “No, things are as they are”, “I don’t believe there is something to be done by people like me”, “I can only work hard for me and my family, but the rest is not in my power”. And there were comments followed by some hope for the future, just as we had comments followed by despair and pessimism. In this regard there’s not much surprise – out of 144 million people, it should be normal to have such variety of opinions of the future.

Now let me tell you what are the main issues the Russians deal with: little access to quality education (it difficult for the middle class to get higher education; the poor cannot even dream about it), difficulty to find jobs that are decently paid, exploitation of the employees in many different fields, too much bureaucracy, teachers that do not do their job properly, nepotism and, of course, corruption. Oh well, what can I say, in many aspects it actually sounds much like Romania.

What stroke me most of all is that from all the people we’ve talked to, none seemed to blame directly their government. Yes, they would admit it might be corrupt, or they would admit that the country, as a whole, is quite badly managed, or they would talk about corrupt administration. But when it came to saying things in black and white, all of a sudden, an unknown, unnamed, indefinable, mysterious entity would appear to take all the blame. Every bad thought and complaint about life in Russia went in that hazy-gray direction. They are a proud, patriotic people, these Russians. They know their place in history and throughout our whole trip in Russia I felt that they also want us to acknowledge it. They put this patriotic pride above any financial difficulty and above any personal dream. At least it was so with the people we met.

 2.

I would say that we’ve mostly seen people complaining and not acting. Please notice the “mostly”. Of course we’ve also met content people, but most of them didn’t know English at all...and oh well, that’s another story. With the risk of becoming judgmental, I will say that all these dead-end attitudes come from a lack of perspectives, or in other words, from a not so broad horizon. And it is my strong belief that this comes from a failure in the education system. Or it may as well be a calculated failure in the system. We all know that for some people, especially the poor, there is only so much education they can get from home. There are so many people relying on the public education system. And if this fails to awaken curiosity, give courage to question, and offer relevant information for the age we live in.... then of course, there’s lost generation after lost generation. However, considering the past, I think it’s only normal for Russia to recover more slowly in this regard than the other countries that belonged to the communist bloc.

The Russian education system still promotes competition among the students. There’s all kinds of examinations for schools, and of course, the highest grades win. That is to say the highest grades get the scholarships for good high schools, or good universities. Because there are always more applicants for good universities than there are places, the competition is very keen. Those who do not have such good grades as to consider applying for scholarships, need to pay yearly fees. It is difficult even for middle class families to support their children in universities in these situations. We were told quite bluntly by a graduate of the State University of Saratov: “If you don’t have money, you just don’t go to university, is that simple”. This is a Journalism graduate who has worked and was also helped by his parents in order to finish his studies.

However, we also met with another situation: a student who was recruited by a university in Moscow, right before graduating from a high school, in a small city near Moscow. Because he had good academic results, he was offered a place to study in Moscow. This summer, right before graduating his Master degree, he was again recruited by a company. So a week after graduating he already started work, without even looking for a job. Of course he is not going to become rich instantly, but he was very content with the beginning of his “adult-life”, as he called it.

3.

We have met with a Ugandan teacher, educated in London, who came to teach English in St. Petersburg. The biggest challenge she met with when trying to teach English was that the students didn’t actually want to learn another language. “I am Russian, and I live in Russia, therefore, I do not need to know English” was the logic behind this refusal to learn the language. In the end, the English teacher had to learn Russian so she would find other ways of communicating with her students. Apparently, the Russian English teachers do not really do their job. We encountered a few Russian young people who explained to us how they knew English from their favorite music bands or movies and how they were correcting their English teachers during classes.

I think this reluctance to learn English has a lot to do with the pride of being such a big nation. They consider themselves to be self-sufficient. And I do not think this is so far from the truth. They have the biggest country in the world, after all, with plenty of resources. So I can say that I understand this attitude, and at the end of the day, each and every one has the right to choose what they learn. In addition to this, we have to consider that for many decades, the Russians had translated universal academic and literary works into their own language. In this way, the need of the common people to learn a new language in order to have access to international works was limited. However, the situation today has changed, with all kinds of information pouring from all these new types of media. No translator can keep pace, not even with the scientific international works. And in the area of research and development in any kind of domain, knowing English is vital. So I would go as far as to say that this reluctance to learn English is limiting the students’ possibilities to excel in certain domains where they need information that is constantly changing. Not to mention the fact that their only information sources are the ones that the Russian media companies release.

4.

We also had a meeting with a graduate of pedagogical studies. She has studied to become a primary school teacher. She also had practice with the kids. She loved it. Except that when she graduated and wanted to get hired, she was immediately faced with the tangled world of Russian bureaucracy. There were so many papers to be found and signed by various other administrative people, and so many projects to be written periodically, and so many trips to other administrative offices (also periodically), that she simply gave up. She realized that instead of being able to focus on the kids and on creative teaching methods, she would have to follow exhaustive steps just to keep her job. And then, anyway, the curriculum is not too flexible. She felt that all her passion would be lost in tangles and stacks of irrelevant papers. Maybe she is wrong in doing so, or maybe she knows better what it means to be caught up in this system.

However, the paradox is that the government encourages young graduates to become teachers. A person, who will start teaching right after graduating, receives for the following three years a salary that is more than double the salary of a normal teacher. After those three years, the salary drops to normal. In order to get a raise the teacher will have to take all kinds of examinations. So there is a financial incentive offered by the government. Of course, there are many who take this road, especially for the financial security that comes with it. But few of these teachers are truly motivated to walk the extra mile for the education of the children. They simply comply with the rules imposed by government, take their salaries, and off go another batch of standard-educated children who will never feel the need to question anything.

5.

On the very bright side of things, is the fact that the Waldorf schools from Germany have some branches in Russia. We met with one of their students, from the Waldorf School in Irkutsk; a 17 years old German girl who fell in love with Russia, Russian language and Russian classics after studying in Irkutsk. These schools focus on creative learning, and on learning based on individual needs and competences. Of course, they are not recognized by the Russian government, but they manage to survive by donations from the Waldorf Friends Foundation and from taxes paid by some rich parents of some of the students. I say “some of the students”, because not all of them come from rich families. We were told that there are students coming from very poor families who are helped through donations or sometimes they work in the school for the money. The rich and the poor are studying together in an environment where these distinctions do not actually exist among the students or the teachers. The teachers are more than just teachers - they are mentors and friends and whatever the students need them to be. At the moment, in the school in Irkutsk there are not too many students, we only found out about a class with around 15 students. The girl we met with about this didn’t know English so well (she was fluent in Russian, though), so there were a few language barriers in our conversation. I suspect that Russians are reluctant to join this kind of school, even if the money would not be a problem, because it is not recognized by the government, hence the small number of students. However, this is a very interesting subject that deserves a more thorough investigation, for which we did not have time (we found out that there is such a school in Irkutsk only on our last day in Russia).

This is Andrei, freshly graduated and freshly employed. We had the chance to actually assist at his graduation ceremony – he said that this “European trend of fancy graduation ceremonies” is very new to them, and two years ago, for his Bachelor graduation, it was virtually non-existent. Graduation is starting to become a business in itself in Russia, just like in the rest of the Western countries.

Victory Park, Saratov – it’s an immense park full of war machinery, Russian and German. For every exponent there is a clear distinction between “victorious” and “defeated”, depending on whether the machinery is Russian or German. Needless to say, Victory Park was built to celebrate Russia’s victory in World War second, and maybe to remind it’s people of their importance in history. This year, Russia celebrates 70 years since Victory, and it is written on banners and flags all over the country. This is also why the train in the image is decorated.

This is Anton. He graduated from Journalism, but decided not to work in this domain because he thinks that there is too much censorship in the media institutions, and he could not make his real voice heard. He expresses his thoughts through graphics and drawings. I saw his portfolio and I was truly impressed. And then truly disappointed to find out that he is reluctant to continue. He decided to give up on his dream, or to postpone it, because he prefers financial stability for his future family, and the two cannot merge.

We traveled four days with a train from Saratov to Irkutsk. The car where we had seats was full of children. One of their mothers knew like two words of English, but she really wanted to make us talk to her two daughters who knew a little bit more...like four words. Of course, we didn’t really understand what she wanted. But one night I was not sleeping and I was alone on the corridor (due to a drunkard man in our compartment that was stinking of smoked fish and alcohol, a combination I hope none of you will ever smell). And this lady was still awake with her friends, and all of their children (at least six girls and a little boy). She knew about the drunkard man in our compartment, and she took us under their protection, finally making her daughters talk to us. We spent all night together. Somehow we managed to communicate with sign language and smiles and laughter. The little girls taught us the colors in Russian, and they made little colorful bracelets for us and also taught us how to make them (we are wearing them in the picture). So this was a mother who really wanted her daughters to know English. I hoped we helped a bit.