Student Survey

SURVEY SUGGESTS RUSSIAN STUDENTS ARE SEEKING A MORE ISSUE RELATED EDUCATION

By Stephen Wilson

 

            A recent survey undertaken by the Institute of Progressive Education which questioned children from grades 8 to 11, has found a deep level of dissatisfaction with some subjects which are taught in Russian schools. Many school students see them as providing irrelevant and useless information which won't in any way equip them with the practical day to day issues they face and confront in their lives. But such findings that the current Russian Education system is largely irrelevant and at times just torture in demanding they learn material which they quickly forget after exams and will never use  is a frequent allegation made by pupils, parents and even teachers who feel pressure to implement a program they have no say over. For instance, school students frequently complain they will never need to solve the complex math equations posed by teachers. In deed, some of the equations are more appropriate for university students rather than school students suggesting the people who designed such programs have failed to discern fundamental differences between school and university students.

 

As many as 76% of pupils claim that the existing school curriculum is out of date and largely irrelevant to contemporary society. The survey also found that 44% of students questioned felt the need for the introduction of Psychology as a subject, and 41% Financial Literacy and 31% would like to see Sex Education introduced into the curriculum. As many as 69% of pupils don't see the point of doing the subject 'Basics of Health and Safety', 57% see the subject of 'handcrafts' or 'Labor' as 'useless ' and 38% don't see the point of the subject of Astronomy.

It is quite clear from those findings that if school students had a choice they would scrap some subjects. What is significant is that school students believe that a subject such as psychology could provide useful tips on how to better communicate with their parents and school mates. They might be better able to maintain their self-esteem as well as handle their own complexes. One of the biggest problems which school students have is that many schools no longer provide a psychologist to offer helpful counselling and if such a psychologist is available they are unaware that such a service even exists! The demand for a topic such as Financial Literacy reflects the realistic worry that some day they will enter a world where they will have to pay the bills, tax and save money to deal with either rent or mortgages.

 

But one of the main predicaments of the existing education system is that the culture of it in some schools can be stifling, suffocating and at worst, blatantly repressive. Some Russian school teachers are surprised that in some parts of the World school students have a right to express an opinion and that their views should be respected. Yet we are seeing a situation where the authorities have been jailing some school students for expressing radical opinions or simply playing computer games or calling for people to go on demonstrations. The heavy weight of the Soviet past has hardly been decisively lifted. An example of such intolerance is when a school teacher denounced one of her own 15-year-old school students to the authorities for posting a tweet on a social site supporting a protest by the Communist party on the 23rd of February calling 'For a Russia without Oligarchs and palaces, and against political repression. We demand the release of all political prisoners, the creation of a people's army and police, cutting the cost of transport and utility bills, free education and medical care, a return to former age of retirement and organizing the payment of people who have suffered under Covid 19'.  Unfortunately, the deputy director of the school in Penze, Vera Makhonina, told the school student to delete such a post and that the school does not welcome such public statements. The teacher even denounced her own school student to the authorities requesting legal action be taken against her! The school student was threatened with reprisals. This is despite the fact that legally speaking, this pupil has broken no law and can at most, be referred to 'a police committee for minors'. The idea of this committee is to aid and assist vulnerable pupils going down the road of crime and not to repress school students for expressing political opinions disagreeable to this or that teacher. As far as I know, no legal action has been taken against this school student. Unsurprisingly, the parents of the school student are searching for another school which their daughter can attend.

 

Ideally, a school should be to help bring up pupils in the best sense of the World. This would be to encourage them to be curious, brave at expressing their views and to listen to other views which are different. However, all too often the existing view of 'bringing someone up ' implies pupils refrain from asking awkward questions, should obey authority at all costs and learn to be silent. But it also can consist in teaching school students that the main aim of bringing people up is to teach them that the main aim of life is to make as much money as possible. The aim is to instruct people that the main aim of life is to attain security, comfort and affluence rather than love and assist other people. This view of bringing people up is highly questionable and even dangerous. Concerning the topic 'Financial Literacy', it would be great if such a subject would be more courageously issue related. The teacher would encourage school students not only how to save and spend money but to freely discuss questions: "Why are so many people poor? Why are wages so low? And 'What is more important: to make money and build a career or do the right thing?'  One of the things such a topic might do is to at least demolish the myth that the primary cause of poverty in America and Russia is 'financial illiteracy'. Poverty is not caused by the vices, personal defects and low skills of the poor. In fact, as Adam Smith stated in his work 'The Wealth of Nations',  the poor are much more financially literate than the rich because one error can spell disaster for them. And more recently, Muhammad Yunus, in his work 'Banker to the Poor,' 1999, reached the same conclusion almost just over 200 years later. So the key issue is not just what subject should be taught but how it must be taught!  

*This article acknowledges the source of Irina Brichkalevich who wrote a brilliant article for Moskovskii Komsomolets titled, 'Komsomolka, beauty... and 'Extremist'? Deputy Director informs the authorities about a school student and her post about the protests of the Community Party of the Russian Federation, February, 2021.}