Teachers, administrators and principals from Saratov, Russia joined SMU students and faculty for a discussion about Russian education on Tuesday.
Students were eager to ask Russian teachers about the parallels between Russian and American education systems.
“Our college model is very different,” Iritrina Ivanov, a college student in Saratov, said. “We specialize in one subject.”
Russia and other Eastern nations train students in one field or technicality. A Russian student majoring in electrical engineering may never have to take a class in English literature, history or economics.
“Sometimes our focused system is not the best,” Anton Federov, a Russian management student, said. “There is very little freedom in coursework.”
SMU and other American universities offer hundreds of electives for students to take each year. Colleges encourage math and science students to venture beyond labs and a weekly chemistry practical.
But there are advantages to remaining focused on a singular form of education, Federov said.
“I can become an expert at what I am passionate about,” he said. “I do not have to waste time taking classes that will be of no future benefit to me.”
Russian teachers in the crowd disagreed with the statement that Russian and American schools were far apart in educational experience.
“I was ready to see differences, but I saw similarities,” a Russian English teacher who had observed honors English classes earlier in the day said. “It made me quite happy.”
Russian upper level institutions employ American Socratic lecture techniques: open-ended questioning of subject matter, analysis of eclectic texts and student-led discussion.
Elementary schools in Saratov and other major cities teach core subjects —math, science, literature and history — much like American schools. Education has expanded to include more diverse subjects like ethnic anthropology.
Teachers said that intellectual freedom has improved since the fall of the Soviet Union.
“After the perestroika years of free enterprise, there have been large changes in our system of education,” a Russian high school teacher said.
After the fall of Communism, a new, more tolerant generation has emerged. Each high school graduate in Russia has a very different perspective of the world in comparison to his or her parents.
Russian teachers, however, had a final lesson for American educators in the crowd.
“We start teaching foreign languages, especially English, in the first grade,” Russian elementary school teacher Anfisa Ivanovic said. “It makes the language very easy to pick up.”
However, the quality of English teachers in Russia is failing. Because of low teacher salaries, gifted students are moving to higher paying professions in management, engineering and medicine.
Villages in the Russian countryside are suffering from a lack of teachers. Classrooms in rural areas have high student to teacher ratios and the majority of students do not graduate high school.
“Pay your teachers well,” Ivanovic said, “It is a great problem in Russia and everywhere else, and there are consequences.”
