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This is a blog by JustRussian about learning Russian. You will find useful tips for learning Russian, Russian courses available in London, information about Russian culture and links to websites with information for students of Russian.
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Russian education: higher school.
By Vlada 29 April 08
More stories from a Russian teacher in London, or things you may be interested to know but won’t learn in a Russian course.
Two students meet: “Oh my God! We’ve been told we’ll have to learn Chinese!!” – “Hold on, don’t panic, when is the exam?”
That joke pretty much sums up students’ life… Fun, stress, short periods of hard work and long holidays! Oh, how stupid we were to be wanting to graduate and go to work!
So, what defines students’ life in Russia?
Entering a university
Until recently, there were entrance exams in all colleges (“instituty”- now all called “universitety”) and universities, traditionally in the Russian language, history and two other subjects, according to the specialisation of the faculty. One or two of the exams were written, and the rest oral (a presentation in front of a panel of teachers). In the last couple of years, a new system has been introduced – the so called “unified” final school exam, the score from which is used instead of the entrance exams. Moscow university (the biggest and the most prestigious university in the country) has resisted this system (rightly, in my opinion!) until this year, but now the “unified” exam will count towards the score at the entrance exams (although will not replace them) even in the Alma Mater itself of Russian higher education. Some faculties of Moscow University are notoriously difficult to enter. The competition is tough, so the entrance exams are designed to filter the applicants and accept the ones with the highest score. When I entered the Faculty of Philology in 1985, the competition was something like 9 or 10 people per place, and was not the highest on record!
The cost of education
Higher education is free for all citizens of the Russian Federation. Moreover, students are given “stipends” – little salaries which can be scrapped in case of bad academic performance. You can’t live on it, but it’s better than nothing.
With the advance of the market economy, however, many universities have opened fee-paying departments, and some fee-paying private colleges have appeared. The standard of education there can be lower, paradoxically, than in free state universities, but they are easy to enter, since they operate on a commercial basis.
Having said that education is officially free, I should however mention that in order to enter Moscow University I had to have private lessons with university tutors for 2 years, because of the huge gap between the school curriculum and the university entrance requirements. So my parents paid a lot of money to give me a chance to enter the university of my choice. Does it count towards the cost of higher education? Strictly speaking, I could get a less prestigious place without having the additional tuition.
The structure of education
A typical course of higher education in Russia lasts 5 years (6 years for doctors). So the degree that Russian graduates get corresponds to the British Master’s degree. There is generally no equivalent of the Bachelor’s degree. Some colleges have recently introduced shorter Bachelor’s courses, to follow the Western fashion, but it is still rare.
At the end of the course of study, a graduate has to “support a thesis” (“zashitit’ diplom”), which is a rather scary procedure involving presenting your graduation paper to a board of teachers who ask questions and give a final grade. Those who get an excellent grade get the red-coloured certificate of a university degree (corresponding to the British “honours” degree) and those with lower grades get a blue one.
Those who don’t want to leave the university after five years (yes, there are enthusiasts of this kind!) can stay on for another 2 years of full time postgraduate studies (“aspirantura”), provided they have been good students all along, and present a PhD thesis at the end, thus becoming a “kandidat nauk”, or a Doctor of whatever science or humanity they have studied.
Learning in Russia is still respected (just about…) and the postgraduates, as well as university teachers, can make a decent living out of giving private lessons, the most expensive of those are language lessons, including Russian.
Students’ life
Most students live at home, because most of them go to the local colleges and universities. Free places in the halls of residence are given to students who come from other towns/places. Moscow University’s halls of residence used to be a jolly place (I am sure it still is!), full of parties and gossip, with philosophy students regularly falling out of the 20th floor windows, after speculating about the meaning of life too much…
Being a muscovite, I was a “home” girl, and only visited the halls of residence to see my friends, who usually suffered from severe lack of sleep and no home dinners (whereas I didn’t have the freedom!)
Whatever your lifestyle is, as a full-time student you have to be at University every day and sit in lectures and seminars, and do the homework. Being expelled is quite possible, for bad grades and absences.
Each year is divided into groups who have most of the lessons together. During the semester, each group has:
•Lectures – given usually for the whole year in a big lecture room;
•Seminars – in a group of 10-20 people, where you are supposed to interact with the tutor;
•Colloquiums (colloquia) – same as seminars but with students answering the teacher’s questions;
•“Zachyoty” – exams without a mark, just “pass” or “fail”;
•Exams at the end of semester/year.
Summer holidays are long, from June to September, in June some students are required to do “practical work” (“praktika”) which usually consists of hanging around the building, shuffling papers in the administrative office or doing something clearly not related to your future qualification.
The exam periods at the end of a semester (in December-January and in May-June) are crazy times. We had several exams and tests, mostly oral ones, in each semester, with hundreds of exam questions and thousands of pages of literature to read, especially in literature courses. So it was our usual practice to get together in a group and divide the question list, so that one student prepares cheat-sheets and shares information on certain questions (so that you do 20 questions rather than 100). Talk about a team building exercise! Cheating was elaborate (with special devices like secret pockets and specially constructed clothes) and inevitable, because no human mind could embrace the amount of information we were required to know. So who knows how we turned out to be quite well-educated people…
Russian education: secondary school
By Vlada 30 March 08
More stories from a Russian teacher in London, or things you may be interested to know but won’t learn in a Russian course.
… “And the person who will come to the board and read the poem to us is…”
The teacher looks at the dreaded book called the “class journal” to select a victim’s name from the list. Thirty pairs of eyes look down, hoping the teacher will forget all about them. No one wants to recite the wretched poem and half the kids haven’t learned it anyway. The teacher looks at the page, choosing the surname with the least marks against it. A few seconds of tense silence.
“Ivanov!!”
A sign of relief from everyone but the hapless Ivanov, who gets up and shuffles to the blackboard. He’s got to face the class and recite a poem by Mayakovsky by heart. He will of course forget half of it and will sound so dull that only the severe look of the teacher will keep the class awake.
Does this sound familiar? It’s a Russian secondary school!
Here are some aspects of Russian school education which might be interesting for those who want to learn Russian and deal with Russians.
School age and types of schools: Russian children start school at the age of 7 (or sometimes 6) and finish it 17. I find it hard to understand what a kid can be doing at school at the age of 4, but I suppose it’s a cultural tradition. In big cities children are supposed to attend the school nearest their house, but if parents think a local school is not good enough, they will go to all sorts of trouble to enter their child into a better school, perhaps a “specialised” (“spetsialnaya”) one. All schools are divided into ‘ordinary’ (the majority) and ‘specialised’. The ordinary ones follow the general curriculum, teaching pupils the required minimum in every subject. The specialised ones teach certain subjects (for example, foreign languages or physics) in depth, and such schools generally have a better standard of teaching. The best ones are very difficult to get into, and kids often have to do a preparatory course before entering such a school or sit an exam or an interview. Schools are known by numbers, rather than names. I went to Moscow school number 488!
School schedule: The Russian school day is not very long, but home tasks are numerous and tedious. A lesson lasts 45 minutes. There are breaks between lessons, a couple of short 5 minute ones and a larger one in the middle. During the long break, kids can go to the canteen to eat. In my day the food was so bad it took courage to try it but I hear it is much better now. Younger kids have lessons from 8.30 or 9am until midday. As kids grow up, school days become longer and can run till 3 pm. There are no boarding schools in the English sense of the word; all children live at home and usually walk to school. Boarding schools are called “internat” and they are for those kids whose parents cannot look after them for some reason, or for those who live in very remote areas and can’t travel to school every day.
School holidays are generous. The whole summer is free (a 3-month break!), and most city kids go away to dachas or summer camps.
Cost of education: Education is free and compulsory for all children. When I went to school (in the Soviet times), secondary education was genuinely free, but today schools, which are badly financed by the state, require parents to collect money for various purposes: school equipment, trips, gifts for teachers at the end of the year and special occasions. In Russian culture, gifts and flowers are an important part of any celebration, and teachers get them all the time – for the beginning and the end of the school year, exams, birthdays, women’s day (traditionally, most teachers are women. The only men at school are usually PE teachers). In the old days, we had to collect money for the gifts and flowers too, so everyone is used to it.
School subjects: All schools are supposed to offer the same range of subjects: Russian, maths, literature, history, music, biology, geography, sport etc. Russian lessons are held every (or almost every) day. The Russian language is considered one of the most important subjects, together with mathematics, literature, history. Pupils do not have the option of choosing the subjects they want to learn, all subjects are compulsory. The “unimportant” subjects, such as drawing, music or PE, are often taught in a rather relaxed way, and are easy to get good marks for. I am pleased to say that Russian grammar is still taught to the full extent, with detailed study of all the cases, conjugations and the same rules and tricks we used to learn many years ago. Among the new subjects there is of course IT, but in most schools there is no free access to computers or the Net. School computers can only be used during the IT lessons, and most kids (in big cities) have computers and Internet access at home. In Moscow there is also a subject called “Moscow studies” – “moskvovedenie” – which covers the history and the culture of the city.
School teachers: I am sure everyone can remember a good teacher and a really dreadful one! I had a good one in Russian Language and Literature. She knew what she was doing and everyone was terrified of her, which meant class discipline was perfect. I absolutely hated the guy who ran “military training” (they don’t do it any more, but in those days we were supposed to be able to shoot – God knows why and at whom – and assemble the Kalashnikov machine gun. It was kept locked in the cupboard and the boys loved playing with it, whereas the girls used to break their nails on it and were generally not interested…) and of course the PE teacher was a complete jerk.
There is a shortage of teachers now, even in Moscow – especially language teachers: foreign languages and even Russian teachers. It’s a hard job, badly paid, and people with university degrees prefer other careers. So Moscow schools are now full of teachers from Ukraine and other ex-Soviet states, because the locals don’t want to work there. My Moscow friends who have kids of school age often complain to me that the teachers have awkward accents and are badly educated. (to which I say – “And would you teach at school?” – “Oh, God, no!” – “And neither would I, so what do you expect?! Should be grateful to whoever is willing to do it!”)
School discipline: The Russian system is much more old-fashioned than the British one. In class, pupils sit in rows, two at a desk, and are supposed to keep quiet and pay attention through the lesson. Whether they really do depends on the teacher of course! In some classes, you can hear a needle drop as the kids are too scared to misbehave. In others, hell breaks loose: there are dusters (we still have blackboards and chalk) and even chairs flying around the class and the shouting hurts your ears. The teachers can and do call pupils all sorts of names and can kick a naughty boy out of the class, with a kick in the backside to help him on his way (girls are exempt). Bullying occurs, although I can’t remember anything too outrageous in my class, apart from one guy being constantly thrown down the stairs… My personal dream was to study in a single sex school, not to be inconvenienced by fighting boys all the time, but we didn’t and still don’t have those.
Every couple of months parents’ meetings are held, where the performance and discipline of every pupil is commented on.
School uniforms: In the old days, we had a strict uniform: brown dresses with white cuffs and collar for girls and blue suits for boys. As girls grew bigger, the skirts grew shorter… Jewellery and make up were officially prohibited but some girls got away with it. There were (and still are) no regulations about shoes, so high heels were almost a must at the age of 16… Now there are no strict uniforms any more, but pupils are required to follow a school’s general guidelines on what kind of clothes to wear. Some schools require jackets of a certain colour, some want black and white clothes. Some schools have uniforms made to order for the whole year. And of course, the rules are much softer about make up and any “extras” added to the uniform. As a result, children now look more cheerful but sometimes totally inappropriate!
The system of grades: The traditional system is the grades from 2 to 5: 2 is poor (fail), 3 is satisfactory (a pass but not great), 4 is good and 5 is excellent. The pupils at the top of the class are called “otlichniki”, from the Russian word for “excellent” – “otlichno”. 1 is a joke super-bad grade, it officially doesn’t exist but is sometimes given to outrageously bad pieces of work. Some schools experiment with other systems of grades but it’s rare. Every pupil has a “diary” – “dnevnik” where all his/her grades are recorded for the attention of the parents. Also, the grades are entered into the class “journal”, and at the end of the term one general grade is given, which is usually the average of all grades received in the term. At the end of school there are final exams, the grades for which go towards the certificate of secondary education. According to the new scheme, they are taken into account when a school graduate applies for university entry.
Well, what else can I say? I myself went to a very ordinary school in a working class area of Moscow. When we graduated, the gap between the best and the worst performing pupils was huge: some of us were genuinely very well educated young people, familiar with the best of world culture, and some could hardly read and write. So I can’t generalise on the school standards, it’s up to the students to make the best of the system.
I went to school on my first day crying because I was scared and left it crying because I didn’t want to leave… Go figure!