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
|