From: arto@leland.Stanford.EDU (Artavazd Khachikian)
Subject: Re: American Education/Soviet Education
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 92 02:20:42 GMT

In article <DDqPRB1w165w@halcyon.com> mashina <novost@halcyon.com> writes:
>  I think many of the problems in the American Education System
>are due to poor teachers in the lower grades.  Some of this is
>due to two reasons 1) The courses required at the Colleges and
>Universitys here to become a teacher are not very difficult and
>2) the pay for teachers in the lower grades is too low to 
>attract good qualified teachers.  As a result, many students
>are disillusioned, confused, or are not taught many of the
>basic skills in the lower grades, and the lack of basics
>plagues themselves thrughout the rest of their school years.
>
>I have a highschool friend who received a BA degree from
>college by making Physical Education his major.  He is now a
>teacher and teaches somes courses in Math (when he took
>mostly sports oriented classes at the University).??
>
>                 Jeff

	Here are some of my observations in regards to the American
education and its negative sides, made during the years of study
at Stanford University. Together with all the positive aspects,
I think that the main negative traits are:

	1. Lack of system. In each particular subject and
in between the subjects. In each subject, in the Soviet Union
we used to go from the simple to the complex, covering one
field after another. A is followed by B, 1 is followed by 2
and not vice versa. If you study history, you start with the
Ancient World, the Middle Ages then the New History etc. 
If you study Linguistics, you start with phonetics, then
morphology, then syntaxis etc.

 	In  Soviet    schools   and    Universities
the same subjects are thought for years in conjunction
with each other, so that by the time the students  learn trigonometry
in the math class they can use it to learn vector physics in the
physics class, or by the time they learn organic chemistry they can
use it in biology and genetics etc.

	In America, you can take a course in Math N, then Math X, then
switch to Physics Z and Chemistry Y and then to the History of Poland
from the 1989 to 1991. 

	Yes, there is a price for everything - in USSR the price
we paid was no freedom of choice combined with little practical
skills, but on the other hand the price you are paying in America
is superficial, uncomplete and unsystematic knowledge matched with
the immediate short-term practical application.

	2. In Soviet schools and Universities the process of education
is more of a process of transferral of knowledge, where knowledge itself
and the process itself is a value. "What's in it for me" was
left out for a while.
There were PROFESSORS/TEACHERS designed to share, transfer the KNOWLEDGE
to the third party - THE STUDENTS. There was the SOCIETY, whose
regeneration this process was supposed to ensure. 

	 In the American interpretation,
it feels more like there are some STUDENTS competing with other STUDENTS
for getting better grades from some PROFESSORS competing with other
PROFESSORS, hired by the University competing with other Universities,
to get better diplomas and better higher paid jobs.

	Yes, there is a place for competition and pragmatism. But there is also
place for cooperation and moral stimulation. 

	Briefly, the atmosphere in the Soviet establishment was closer
to the "temple of knowledge", in the American one - closer to the super-market
where you go in, take what you want, pay your bill and get out to
be able to pay other bills. 

	3. I do not know about the situation in sciences, but in the
"fuzzy" subjects, on top of everything else, there is also another
problem. In USSR you had to LEARN, to ANALYZE, come to CONCLUSIONS
and PROVE them. In America, you are thought to develop your own OPINION
and know other OPINIONS, ARGUMENTS and INTERPRETATIONS. 

	In the USSR, if you open a chapter on the World War II, for example,
it would go like this: The causes of the War ->- The situation on the verge
of the War ->- The beginning of the War ->- The Course of the War etc.

	In America, it would look like this: Part 1 "Was there really a War?"
by D.B. Robenstein, Part 2 "Could the War have been avoided?" by
F.D. Krunerberg, Part 3 "Robenstein, Krunerberg, Freud, Aristotle and the 
Potsdam conference" by K.H. Freder. 

	The price? In the first case you ossify yourself in one point
of view and are reluctant to look at things differently, although you
have a solid, fundamental basis under yourself. 

	In the second case, you are not sure whether the battle of
Stalingrad followed the seizure of Paris or the other way around,
but you are sure that Krunenberg thought that if Stalin would have been
dead by 1943, the Yalta conference would have been much smoother.

	Many, many things ...