Educational Excellence

Russian teachers observe a considerably higher educational standard in schools compared with many similar institutions in the West. Russian students often win prizes of all sorts of international competitions.

Schooling begins with kindergarten. Russian kindergartens are special establishments with their own buildings and staff where little Russian hopefuls gradually learn the difference between home and outer world. Real school – Monday to Saturday – begins when children are 6 or 7 years old. All over Russia children used to work with the same books and follow one curriculum. This state of affairs is coming to an end however, as more and more new school books on the same subject appear to differ from each other. Childbirth may be on the decrease but the number of educational authors is steadily increasing.

There is one small drawback to this otherwise perfect Russian school system of serious teachers, hard work, lots of homework and endless cramming: the children hate it. Happily, in summer they get their reward by being packed off to camps. In Communist days, the camps were called Pioneer Camps, with sham-military parades, horn-blowing, morning line-up, etc. Now the young have a lot more freedom, with excursions, walking tours and of course, discos. Much of the expense of going to camp is paid by the factories and workplaces where the parents are employed.

Three foreign languages – English (the favourite), German and French – are supposed to be available to Russian schoolchildren but in most schools only 1 foreign language is taught, often inadequately. Russians are just beginning to understand that a foreign language is a must if you want a career. In Soviet times it was considered a useless extra, like drawing or singing, when compared with such important subjects as mathematics or chemistry. For why learn the language of an enemy unless you want to become a foreign spy? Besides, even if written language was useful in some cases, the oral version was utterly superfluous: who were you going to talk to?

Some school subjects like maths or chemistry, are studied at considerably greater depth than by Western children of the same age. A good Russian secondary school student of maths could help a first-year European university student pass his exams.

Gold and silver school medal winners may enter university without having to sit entrance examinations. This is a major advantage as competition for places at institutions of higher learning is fierce. A good education has always been prestigious and generates respect. Girls with an education are a much more attractive goal for a choosy male. For their part, many boys would rather go to university than join the army and conscription rules allow a postponement for university students. It’s not that boys particularly like learning but it’s a softer option to wile away your time dozing in the back seat of the classroom than to spend it marching.

University examinations in most cases are oral. If you have failed an examination you can try again and again. Educators’ salaries are in inverse proportion to the height of the education ladder. Often the monthly pay of a common labourer far exceeds that of a poor university professor. Fortunately, some would still rather be a professor than a labourer..

There are no university campuses in the Western sense. Universities seldom have buildings built specially for them. More often they are scattered all over the city and it is not uncommon for a student to travel from one end of the city to the other for a lecture or tutorial. Students either live at home, in rented rooms or in madhouses, erroneously called hostels.

Many parents pull strings to get their offspring into university. Their success varies depending on how important the applicant happens to be or how great the sum attached to the string.

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 995