7 letters about the modern education system

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Letters sent to the editors of the "Last Call" project. What do ordinary teachers, rank-and-file researchers, young people, one way or another connected with the education system, write about?

Prolonged peak of education

Hello. I am a 11th grade student of an ordinary Moscow school. It so happened that I felt the catastrophe of our education system to the fullest. When I was 11 years old, my family moved to Moscow from Tver to give me the opportunity to get a decent education. I entered the best school in the area, quickly enough adapted to the increased workload and began to build my own future. I studied hard, filling in the gaps that opened up in the new environment. Then the school bore a proud name, which included the words "with in-depth study of the English language." Indeed, the system of learning foreign languages was then effective. With my "Tver" English (I must note, for the 4th grade in Tver it was quite good), any second-grader could easily surpass me here. In almost every lesson, we heard that English exams in grades 9 and 11 would become almost mandatory for us, and we were not afraid of them, knowing that we had someone to prepare for.

Two years later, the “first bell” rang out for changes for the worse. A small roll of the plane down over several years developed into a vertical fall. It was then that "optimization" came to us for the first time. Four schools and four kindergartens of one quarter were combined into one, gave the newly-made "complex" our number, but for "some" reasons none of our administrators got into the leadership of the association. Then it was not perceived as a catastrophe, but what a shame now that we did not try to change anything at the stage of the emergence of problems.

Further more. The “young and promising” director turned the school into an experimental laboratory of educational reform by signing her death warrant. We have lost the status of a school with profound English. The second language - French, the pride of our previous director - turned into a fictitious subject with one hour a week. And then came the School of Steps. The essence of the process is to combine several class parallels on the basis of one building of the complex. The primary school is separate, the middle and the senior are also in separate buildings. The fact that we stayed in our building cost our director a job. The man who gave the school 30 years was fired from it for views that were inconvenient for the management. The high school building became a ghetto. They can easily steal anything from a person - from a banal pack of cigarettes to headphones and a telephone. There is no discipline. For centuries, the "ecosystem" of school life that had been forming, the system of general respect for elders and assistance to younger ones was crossed out.

I have six months left here. It hurts to realize that we will have nowhere to return. Teachers will disperse to other places of work, teachers of venerable age are going to retire with our departure. We are grateful to the authors of the Last Call project for a true picture of the catastrophe of Russian education. This plane must be urgently taken out of its protracted dive. We have universities ahead - who knows if we will be able to become who we are planning now.

Can the bacchanalia at universities be stopped?

I am going to become a school teacher, I graduated from the university a long time ago, and so far I work with children in other areas. But I want to tell you not about school, and not even about children. And about the university and students. There are two universities in the republic: the Adyghe State, and the Maikop State Technological. For the sake of fairness, it is worth saying that ASU is relatively holding on, there are good teachers, in MSTU you can count them on the fingers of one hand. And everything that I will say next applies to both universities, adjusted for a complete bacchanalia, and a smaller bacchanalia.

Both universities are relegated to cash-based diploma offices. Most teachers don't care about the subject and the students. Everyone knows that GOSs are pure fiction, just like the diploma work. Students are citizens of foreign countries, both universities should be renamed Turkmen, since half of the students are from glorious Turkmenistan. The overwhelming majority does not learn the language, therefore, the diplomas are fictitious. By the way, which was not the case in Soviet times, all foreign students studied the language and spoke it no worse than their native language before graduation.

The level of corruption goes off scale beyond all conceivable limits. As far as I know, every Turkmen student pays not only for the university tax, but also past the box office, for each session, since he is physically unable to pass it. Almost everyone pays, because it is no more difficult than paying in the accounting department - sometimes it’s even easier, because you don’t have to run to the ATM and the prices are very affordable. By the way, learning is extremely easy, you can easily study at 4-5 without paying a penny, but all the same, knowledge in fact is zero. An example is a quarter of students who even pay a credit in science, where knowledge from elementary school is needed. It seems strange to me, because I knew the answers to all the questions on this test from the encyclopedia for a preschooler. An expert in the field of what can a person become who does not know how many natural satellites the Earth has, what is photosynthesis, or who is Napoleon Bonaparte?

All training comes down to self-study, and at the end you will be given a diploma. It is clear that experts come out nothing, from the word at all. The food industry knows neither chemistry, nor biology, nor equipment. Programmers in the classroom listen to teachers who talk about their lives. In 99% of cases, lawyers either do not know the laws at all, or they better understand thieves' laws and go with the goal of taking a fatter place, not hiding corruption inclinations. The management is just a rabble who does not understand what kind of profession it is, as well as teachers, since everything is taught at once - from higher mathematics and metallurgy to agriculture and philosophy. The Department of Physics is going to cancel the experiments and switch to dry theory, which is nonsense, and everyone understands this, but there is no way out, as well as the equipment. And the worst thing is the students. The impenetrable stupidity of the overwhelming majority causes shock. There is stench and uncleanness in the toilets just a couple of hours after the start of classes, they are used according to the principle of "anywhere". I am very sorry for the cleaning staff because at the end of the day these are the Augean stables. Few understand why it is impossible to shout and curse in a university building, why the teaching staff is not equal to students, what subordination is. The bottom line, of course, is simple - I paid, which means I have the right to everything. Ultimately, EVERYTHING comes down to money.

One gets the impression that only a red-hot iron can instill respect for learning in such a rabid crowd. Those who are not the wild part are also profane. Most student movements are just a beautiful screen that covers the savagery. There is no sense in most of the endless forums, gatherings, gatherings, meetings. There are only mountains of printed T-shirts for some reason that no one will wear, and notepads and pens that will fly into the trash. At the same time, everything costs budget money, while the trash cans have rotted through and through for 3 years around the university, and students would have been more useful at an extraordinary volunteer clean-up.

My narration is chaotic, devoid of structure, and, perhaps, does not carry a special semantic load, because we are probably not the only ones with such problems. But I always wanted order, at least to some extent, and not the chaos that we have. And your film encourages me to take active action. I no longer close my eyes from fatigue, looking at the manifestation of barbarism. I saw that there are actually a lot of people who care, and we can collectively slow down the current situation, perhaps reverse the process, or direct it along a different path.

The root cause of systemic problems is capitalism

I was born in 1990 in Leningrad. In elementary school, I was very lucky with a teacher (the Soviet school was still alive), the older I get, the more clearly I understand this. His secondary education was already quite modern, but he was reluctant to study and after finishing the 9th grade he went to college. As a result, I became a typical representative of today's youth with a standard understanding of the surrounding reality and near-liberal views. After college he served in the army. But after the service, the most interesting moment of my life began.

Finding at least some decent job, even in such a big city as St. Petersburg, turned out to be problematic. Almost everywhere you are faced with deception (they promise one thing, but in reality it turns out to be completely different, and it also happened that they were "thrown for money"), everywhere they require work experience, and where to get it. As a result, my work experience is already formed from a dozen places where I got a job through an acquaintance, but did not stay long because of the conditions, as well as attempts to start entrepreneurship.

Nothing sobering up a reasonable person from liberal ideas as real life and the difficulties that one has to face in it. After a long rush in search of work, I … became an employee of the power structure. I must say that what I saw inside this system is fundamentally different from my expectations. In a closed collective, everything is hypertrophied, and the stratification that is visible in society is striking in such a structure. There are simple performers of various jobs, who are often not considered people, but there are commanders who disdain to communicate with subordinates. All this made me think about the reasons for this phenomenon, and in the end I was completely convinced that the root cause of all systemic problems is capitalism.

These services very conditionally and limitedly protect the state (and I went there to serve precisely for this), but they protect the capitalists and their value system very well, because no one won cuts and kickbacks, and all attempts to combat corruption are nothing more than imitation stormy activity. All these laws, unfortunately, do not stop those who want to steal from the state in any way, but they make the life of employees very difficult with unnecessary scribbling and the inability to quickly resolve important issues. Of course, for me personally, as they say, it is a sin to complain (I don’t fatten, of course, but I somehow have enough for bread), but I don’t give a damn about the rest of the country and what we will leave to our children.

"Garbage" science

I wanted to share how beautifully our native science is being killed in our time. A couple of years ago, having finally settled into our institute at the Academy of Sciences, I felt a growing irritation. At first I could not understand what the reason was. It seems that the institute is working, people write articles, receive some grants, the process is underway. But something in all this was not real, even fake. And I got it. Oddly enough, everything that happens in our Academy of Sciences (at least in our institute) has nothing to do with science. Each of the employees is probably an excellent person who does his job perfectly and fights for science, but the system has sentenced everyone long ago, turning scientists into banal bureaucrats who write papers that no one needs.

They say that a lot of money is allocated for science every year - and it is. Only this is done not for the development of science, but for its destruction. Everything that is required (officially and openly) from our scientists - writing reports, articles, calculating PRND scores (indicators of scientific performance), and so on. Nobody cares at all what this article or patent will give in the future. So over the past 10 years, not a single development based on someone's dissertation prepared at the institute (be it a candidate's or even a doctoral one), not a single patent from the institute's laboratories have been implemented in practice, and after confirmation and receiving conditional points, they were immediately sent to the archive …

Do you think that various RFBR grants, competitions for which are held regularly, are awarded to the most interesting and promising developments that in the near future may lead to a breakthrough in science? Not for a long time already - in the overwhelming majority it is issued for those applications that are banally more beautifully designed and behind which there are "taller" people. Nobody cares that in the future they will not be needed by anyone in practice.

The last thing that finished me off (last week) and what prompted me to write this letter was the news of the attitude of FANO (Federal Agency for Scientific Organizations) towards our native Russian scientific journals. When submitting all the materials and data about the institute to determine the category of the institute (all RAS institutes are now divided into 3 categories according to their importance - another innovation of the reformers), our management was directly told: “You can not include publications in Russian journals in the report, we don’t need this rubbish . Garbage! Russian magazines? So, when they tell you that our state gives a lot of money for the development of science, you should know that it gives money, that's just not for domestic science.

I want to believe that all is not lost

I am 22 years old, I was born and raised in the city of Moscow. In 2016 I graduated from the Higher School of Economics. I entered the institute for a budgetary place myself, although not without the help of tutors, my mother did not spare money for this - she wanted to give the child a future. My grandmother also helped - she worked as a teacher of the Russian language, she had 40 years of experience. Soon their efforts began to bear fruit: by the 11th grade, I began to clearly feel that I often know much more than the teacher in my specialized subjects (history and social studies). Then, at the age of 17, I did not attach much importance to this, but relatively recently it became obvious to me that my knowledge in other subjects, in physics or chemistry, was by no means so impressive: I can retell the law of constancy of composition or Newton's first law, but these will only be formulas learned a long time ago - I simply do not have a real understanding of the essence of these sciences, and everything that was in my head at the time of graduation has completely disappeared from there over the past 6 years.

Nevertheless, I entered the HSE at the Faculty of Applied Political Science. A new world was opening up in front of me, I was a student at a top university. I would like to tell you my main impressions of studying at this educational institution. The overwhelming majority of teachers at the faculty, as expected, were of purely liberal, anti-Soviet views. The lecturers broadcast their views quite openly, not forgetting, however, to mention in advance that the norms of the university and teaching ethics do not allow them to impose their views. However, this is exactly what happened. In the wake of the protest moods of 2012 in Moscow, these seeds fell into fertile soil - the overwhelming majority of my classmates listened to the teachers with open mouths, I myself was often carried away by their judgments and, I confess, only parental education forced me at that moment to take that information critically.

In the first year, we had the subject "Introduction to the specialty", in which we read various dystopias throughout the semester. At lectures and seminars, we analyzed these books (Animal Farm, 1984, Brave New World, We, the Blinding Darkness) in order to instill in us a dislike for everything Soviet on the basis of the works of art by foreign authors, which often had nothing to do with reality. On the example of these books, we were shown the horror of the USSR, told about the GULAG, queues, hunger, denunciations, and so on. You alone, as a first-year student, of course, cannot resist the authority and charisma of the teacher. The teacher in itself deserves a description - his name was Mark Yuryevich Urnov. He was an elderly man, but energetic, with rich experience. Once he was the dean of our faculty, stood at the origins of the university, in general, he was an honored person in his field. His lectures were adored by my classmates, he regularly made jokes, told stories about his work in the analytical center of President Yeltsin, his participation in programs on Echo of Moscow, sarcastically read us Mayakovsky's poems about “We say Lenin, but we mean the Party! We say Party, but we mean Lenin, "he sang songs of Galich … In general, the man was" good. " Alexander Isaevich would definitely approve. You can read his Facebook.

In general, the years passed. The faculty focused on theory, but all theories turned out to be either purely postmodern or positivist. We have been taught for years that there is no truth, there are only opinions; there is no reality, there is only text. For the first time in my life I heard the word "dialectics" on the radio during my 3rd year. Our philosophy course bypassed Hegel, we considered Marx only from the standpoint of the incorrectness of his teaching. Any controversy on this topic caused only supportive smiles. Questions from the series "But, for example, John Reed in his book shows the national character of the October Revolution" found answers from the series "John Reed was an engaged journalist, but there was no revolution, there was a coup."

After graduating from HSE, I entered a master's program in Finland and, while communicating with foreign students, I was surprised to find that my knowledge of my specialty is much higher than that of guys from good universities in countries such as the USA, Great Britain, France, Sweden, Japan, and Finland. My theoretical knowledge is currently opening doors for me, and for this I am grateful to HSE. The university really made the perfect shot of me in order to go straight abroad. But I don’t need it. And nevertheless, on the third course, I realized that I didn’t know anything practically useful. I cannot do any analytical work of work that would go beyond the level of "scratching my tongue", I am not able to organize any processes. I started to self-educate in a panic, because I realized that the HSE Faculty of Applied Political Science hadn’t taught me to apply anything in 4 years.

I am bitter and painful that this institution annually graduates hundreds of young guys who do not know anything, although they seem to know a lot. There is little in their heads other than outright anti-Sovietism. They do not know how to critically perceive information. They are bitterly disposed towards their native country, all of them dream of leaving here where the grass is greener. It pains me that such people go to work in state bodies without hesitation saying that they will profit there. And the same people, at the call of the teachers, go to the rallies "For Navalny and Against Corruption." I want to believe that all is not lost. I would like to believe that if then I was alone on the course, who, by pure chance, was able to see through the slop poured on us, then every year there will be more and more such people. I want to believe that the abomination of today's reality will steadily turn thousands of hesitant young people in the right direction - in the direction of struggle.

Horses and collective farm cattle

I am writing to you from Moscow. Not from some crumbling or closed university, but from a place that is considered a "pivotal educational institution" - MSTU im. Bauman. But even then the orgy began. I will not particularly grovel about the poor equipment of some laboratories (there are not enough materials, the machines are old, I especially remember the nameplate "made in the GDR" on one of them), about the state of the infrastructure (in particular, the elevators in the training laboratory, which, well, very often break down, and once one of them crippled a person), even about the fact that tests on engineering graphics as part of some "experiment" are submitted on computers in a TEST form (well, hello, dear pedology). The situation is this. Some adjustments were made to the power supply system. The prices for food were inflated 1.5-2 times, and some canteens were slightly renovated for the increased profit. At the same time, they did not poison any cockroaches (also a very painful topic), they just created the appearance of an update. These are still flowers. The very juice is as follows: it was said that separate "corners" will be introduced in canteens for those students who have better finances than others. A separate menu, waiters, presentability … Here it is - the division into, as you put it in the film, noble horses and collective farm cattle! However, I understood the attitude of the management towards entrepreneurs and finance when I came to the Open House a year ago. On the ground floor there are posters with quotes from famous Russian politicians. "It is now more important than ever to establish a dialogue between science and business." Gorgeous, huh?

Preparing for emigration

Hello. I am writing to you from the city of Voronezh, provincial, but large and “confidently developing”. I am 28 and the last 11 years of my life have been devoted to education and science. After graduating from the history department of the university, full of hope and dressed in rose-colored glasses, I entered the graduate school of my home department. Three years have passed in constant work in archives, conferences, writing scientific articles, pre-defensive vanity, and now, finally: peace! Meet the ready scientist! Alas, the scientist turned out to be of no use to anyone. In my own department, over the 10 years that have passed before my eyes, four teaching positions have been reduced. After endless distribution of resumes, going to universities, I became convinced that parochialism - the system of appointment to a position in accordance with the nobility of the family, abolished at the end of the 17th century - has not gone anywhere. “Has the mighty asked this city for you? Whose patronage are you? So what if you have recommendations, articles, 95% of the dissertation originality? There is no load, you know what the situation is in the country!"

At the same time, in front of my eyes, universities and elite schools, upon a call from those who are probably the best in this world versed in science and teaching, took yesterday's students without work experience and degree, with solid triples in their diplomas. Now I work at a school. For a salary of 12 thousand rubles for one and a half rates, where no one cares about the quality of teaching the subject, but only cares about the ratings that can be obtained for participating in Olympiads, Internet contests, speaking at teachers' councils. I have visited all sides of the educational barricade, except, unfortunately or fortunately, top management, and I am well aware that with the current trends of segregation and social Darwinism, a specialist who simply knows well and does his job with a soul, and not “selling services” and who is not someone's protégé, will be ranked among the ranks of "collective farm nags, not Arab horses."

There is no life without education. Without a Teacher, Educator, Teacher, there is no education. Pay them decent salaries ?! Allow me! They must dress in childish love, pay for the apartment with gratitude of students, feed on the contribution to science … What is most terrible, not only officials think so. This is what the parents of those we teach think. I am 28. I love and know my subject, students and children loved me. I intensively improve my foreign language and prepare for emigration. Like all the acquaintances of my circle.