A Tale of Contrasts,
or How We Studied in an American School
It so happened that we spent a whole academic year studying in an
American school (because our mothers were on a business trip there). The school was in
downtown north-western Chicago, on Oak Street. And what we wish to tell you is not some
sort of an essay on the American system of education in general. No! We do not want to
present ourselves as learned sociologists. It will be a “stream of consciousness”,
made up of impressionistic observations and mini-sketches, in other words – just an
impartial statement of facts. All the facts, however, will be based upon things that
struck us as unusual; the styles and patterns of behaviour we were not actually used to.
But so much, then, for the introduction.
Early in the morning, when we were marching to school, the police
ladies, dressed in bright yellow, were already waiting for the children several blocks
ahead, carefully guarding the approaches to the school from the North, South, East and
West. The cars were stopped; the smaller children were helped across the street; words of
encouragement were pronounced. Pupils who lived far away were brought by special yellow
school buses.
There was a police lady (the same person all the time) who worked at
school on a permanent basis. She was responsible for discipline; this, perhaps, explained
the fact that she was shouting all the time, and was often making use of her whistle. She
never smiled, and everybody was afraid of her. She used to repeat the same aphoristic
phrase: “This is a free country; but we have rules”.
A very kind-hearted and mild Polish lady was responsible for teaching
the children of immigrants. Since we were from Russia, we fell into that category. There
was a boy from Bosnia called Dino, with whom we became very friendly. There was also one
Russian boy, Ilya, who was so proud of being an immigrant that it was difficult to deal
with him. And we were not immigrants! For a whole month we were reading a book about a boy
from some country that was struggling for liberation. The boy in question had been
suffering from poverty, hunger and general humiliation, until some strong and friendly
people arrived on a helicopter and took him to the US.
This program, with the Polish lady, was designed to help us with our
English, and on the whole to help us adapt to the new life. We loved her dearly – she
was our second Mom! – but, nevertheless, we rebelled and refused to read the book about
the happy boy. Besides, we were quite confident about our English.
As far as we remember, we were detained for this... Detention is a
punishment which means that you have to remain after school, to sit in the special
detention room (a very comfortable room, by the way) and do something nice like reading a
book, or just thinking about the meaning of life. In fact, we were lucky because we were
never required to come on Saturdays for detention (as was customary in some other
schools). Another punishment was suspension. Suspension means that you are not allowed to
attend school for some days (usually two). So, in fact, you are given extra holidays! Much
to our surprise, apologising before the offended person (either privately or in public)
was never practised in our school as a means of repentance and improvement of character.
As a result of our rebellion, however, we were transferred to the
general class. We acquired new friends. We played on the school grounds after classes. We
stayed at school till four o’clock, and sometimes longer. In order to help us to excel,
one of our mothers was perusing the school material with us, making us poor boys read
properly, understand absolutely everything, retell the passages brilliantly and without
stopping, and answer all the suggested questions. This particularly concerned the subject
“Social Studies”, our favourite one. Sometimes these sessions lasted till midnight.
But then very soon we – being rebels by nature – started to protest, and we presented
very weighty arguments.
One of these arguments was that we were never asked to discuss
anything, or to retell anything, or to make a report on this or that issue. Instead, we
were just given a multiple choice test! So we did feel that much of our effort was just
wasted, and being normal children, we could not possibly welcome any overwork.
The other argument consisted in the fact that no one ever did any
homework, no one was – even theoretically – supposed to do it. In fact, the notion of
homework did not exist at all! Probably, the situation in other high schools was
different, but in our school you were supposed to finish everything during after-lunch
self-study sessions! Troubling parents with your education was not considered a proper
practice. And perhaps this is where the key to the quality of education in Russia is to be
found. Our parents and grandparents want us to be smart, and are ready to sacrifice
everything – including leisure and personal life – for the sake of their little ones!
The issue is, of course, to be studied further, but perhaps we do owe at least 50 per cent
of our success to the aspirations and efforts of our dear grandmas and grandpas!
And one more point – this time strongly in favour of the American
educational system. Our mothers were there on an exchange program, so it is needless to
say their salaries did not meet the general requirements of American standards (to put it
mildly). Everyone was supposed to fill in a certain form, among other things stating the
income per person. The following day we were told that we were to get our lunches
free-of-charge. Mind you, no documents or papers were ever required to prove the point.
The word was enough. And we have to tell you, those were very tasty lunches, indeed!
By Igor Merkudinov,
Alexander Vasilev
|