Главная страница «Первого сентября»Главная страница журнала «Английский язык»Содержание №19/2006

YOUTH ENGLISH SECTION

Learn in order to appreciate

We often make conclusions and form our perception of other countries according to hundreds of movies and cartoons television offers us. Personally, I have always had an idea about American schools and students from the movie Beverly Hills 90210. “Though a lot is really true, still, life differs from movies,” Joy Armstrong – “a very American name” – she smiles – stated on the 26 of April, when YES-Club members had a fascinating chance to learn about the whole system of education in the USA.

Joy actually is a real expert on American education: not long ago she was within the system – she just graduated from college this winter. In addition, she managed to try different types of schools: public, private and even home school. But let’s start from the very beginning.

American school education is divided into three parts: primary school, middle school and high school – 12 years of definite effort to learn something. You also have a choice between public schools, where education is free and private one, where you have to pay.

Primary school is the first step. Students stay there for 5 years from the age of 5 to 10. They are taught numerancy, literacy, some arts and other basic subjects. Here children have their permanent classmates. But Joy admitted that she never tried that as she was schooled at home, which is possible but uncommon for the United States. Joy and her younger brother and sister were taught by their mother. Joy guesses that took a lot out of her mother – sometimes she (like her siblings) didn’t want to do anything! Despite those difficulties, everyone having a high school certificate can teach children at home. There are a lot of curricula that you can use for teaching, which means that home education can be efficient enough. Joy really liked home school as she didn’t spend time on traveling to school and back and “could always see her favorite TV shows”. Besides, she was the only pupil in her mother’s class.

After the home education experience, Joy went to middle school where students study for three years. Joy was studying at a public school with about 2000 other students. Though students have to learn a certain number of obligatory subjects like math, English, science and so forth, each of them has his/her personal schedule! For example, he or she has math with one group of children and literature with another. In addition you may take several extra classes: journalism, arts, music.

Joy told us that there’s something in schooling she never tried – punishment. Children aren’t usually punished in the USA, but if you behave really badly, you can be prohibited from attending school, that can lead to repeating the year. If you miss a certain number of classes you have to take the course again. And that is considered to be humiliating.

After middle school, Joy moved to high school to spend four years there to prepare for college. Joy studied at a private school, which she really liked. Since very few students study at private schools, everybody receives a lot of attention from a teacher. In the last year of high school students face a problem of choosing a college. Usually students try to visit their possible future schools and to understand which they really like. To enroll in a college, you have to pass an exam for a certificate which is then to be sent to different colleges.

If you are good enough and study enough money you can go to college, where you have to take a number of obligatory subjects and extra subjects that you choose if you’ve already decided on your future profession. In four years students get their bachelor’s degree and then they can continue their education studying two more years for a master’s degree in some specific field.

For me it seemed astonishing the way Joy talked about school. I can only marvel at her enthusiasm! She was speaking greatly about teachers and the whole system – making us feel that it is the best in the world. The only problem she pointed out was the fact that teachers in the USA are underpaid – something that seemed jawdropping for me. What can we say about salaries in Russia then?

What brought her to Russia? “It was Russia that made me stay in Russia.” Joy visited her friends in Moscow a year ago and fell totally in love with the country and now she is doing her 2-years internship with Global Hope Partners. She likes Russian people a lot, because they focus on a person: “If a Russian person talks to you, you feel that he really listens, while Americans are often preoccupied with something else not related to you.”

Although Joy is a true patriot of the USA, she can objectively think of problems and drawbacks of her country and people. She thinks that Americans lack curiosity; they don’t travel much and are not in general interested in other countries or cultures, so “they are proud of the US not because they really appreciate what they have, but because they have seen nothing to compare it with and don’t really want to”.

This idea expressed by the charming young lady is not only about Americans. It seems to me it is about each of us. All people lack curiosity towards things around them. Of course, to satisfy your curiosity you should put much effort in order to find ways to satisfy it, but instead of looking for answers we are looking for good excuses. We say that we are too busy, too tired, don’t need this and that… Let’s look inside ourselves and realise that we are simply lazy and because of that miss a lot in life.

Darya Dorozhkina, Lyubov Gribanova