 U.S. vs. Ukraine Education By Anastasia SHCHEPETOVA |
Editor's Note
Ms. Shchepelova is 19 years old and presently in her second year of attendance at Wisconsin University (humanitarian, liberal arts) in Kyiv. At age 16 she began her senior year of high school in Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA. She completed her 2000-2001 school year graduating from Fort Wayne's Snider High School where she attended as an exchange student under the U.S. Future Leader Exchange Freedom Support Act (ACCELS). For our non U.S. readers information, Fort Wayne is a Midwest city with a metropolitan area population of approximately a half million. Other than her living experiences in and around Fort Wayne Ms. Shchepetova's travels in the U.S. were limited to one additional brief visit to Lubbock, Texas (which may bring a smile to some American faces). Anastasia who was nicknamed "Stays" by her American classmates is from Zaporizzhya. While not attending the University Stays works part time as a bartender and waitress. Her future plans include obtaining an MBA from an American University.
"Significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them"
- Albert Einstein
As a high school student I was always told that the best place to get an education were the countries of the former Soviet Union. I heard all the time that "our" education is the best; "our" specialists are the smartest. I am sure that a lot of people still believe this! But what kind of specialists do they think about? Chemistry, physics and math specialists? What about other fields? Why then is the demand for foreign specialists growing so rapidly? Being a part of the Soviet Union we could easily say that we were the best, as we didn't know a lot about other countries. It is the same as being a champion on a desert island.
But things haven't changed a lot from the times of the Soviet Union's system. "Significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them"-Albert Einstein.
Now Ukrainian students have opportunities to experience other ways of education and to compare. One of the programs that give this a chance is the Freedom Support Act. This legislation was developed by the U.S. government as a part of cultural exchange programs with the countries of the Former Soviet Union. Thanks to this program I was able to experience another form of education on my own.
The first problem I faced was choosing what I wanted to study. In Ukraine everything is done for you, there is a special program developed that cannot be changed. In the U.S. I could choose anything starting from arts, music and choir to even my calculus and macroeconomics courses. I realized that there are so many occupations I never even thought about. So it broadened my choice of future profession. Another great thing that I've discovered was the ability to then apply material I'd learned in practice, doing real research, projects, experiments, etc. For example in my chemistry class I was best in theory but I failed to perform even the easiest experiment. I remember in my Ukrainian school our teacher described all the details of the experiment, even a color and structure of participate particles. But the teacher never demonstrated it for us. We still continue to waste time learning the structure of complicated molecules but not knowing whether "herbalife" is good or bad, whether politics is a profession or mere instincts, whether business is about money or is it a lifestyle. Is our education system this good? It depends on what you expect from it. In general, it is pretty stable. All the exams still keep being passed, the Olympiads still being won, even international ones. But is it what we really want?
Our life and values have changed rapidly over the past 10 years, but our schools are still the same. Poor teachers produce poorly educated children. Nowadays all the parents want their children to get a higher education. It is prestigious to have it. But they never think that after getting a diploma Ukraine will gain one more unemployed specialist and their family will gain one more parasite.
It is already the 21st century but have you noticed any changes in our educational system? Just like a church is separated from government, our school is separated from real life, promoting theory but not giving basic valuable skills. A student still gets the same information as his parents received twenty years ago.
An old educational system is like an old car. One day you realize that you just need to buy a new car. In our schools 20 % of the material is real world explanation and 80% is just statistics. The amount of information that is given to each student is unbelievable. It is impossible to memorize all the theoretical information the school tries to present. When studying history we learn all the war and birth dates, and in the sciences-equations. Who remembers them? We know from childhood that p=3.14. Do we really need to remember this? In fact, in1914 the senate of Indiana (a U.S. state) ratified
a law according to which p=4. Guess what? None of the buildings have crumbled, none of the trees have died, and all the factories are still working. The world hasn't changed and science development hasn't stopped. We need to teach people to think and make decisions.
Yes there are reforms in the Ukrainian system but they are all undeviating from the norm. My aim is not to criticize our national education system, but I want educators to realize that if Ukraine is to enter the competitive contemporary world market, it desperately needs young professionals brought up on educational principles that are different from Soviet ones. That's why we need to take a critical look at our system. We should not be too proud to recognize some beneficial aspects of foreign systems. We need to use these opportunities to learn, to experience from them, and finally to apply this experience in order to not only - be able to say we are the best, but to actually be the best.
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More in the section:
Dollars On The Dnieper and Other Wacky Stories
Read also previous issue' articles:
Are Ukraine's Political Habits Unique?
Is Ukraine's Economic Growth Speculation-led?
Ukraine is Drifting to the West - Slowly but Surely
The Unfinished Orange Revolution?
Vacuums, Reforms and the Need to Regain the Initiative
Pirates of the 21st century
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