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Gary and Alla

Another summer over

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Filed: Citizen (apr) Country: Ukraine
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What shocked me is when they don't even do any instruction anymore. Everything is a "team assignment" that gets emailed in.

What a scam!

what you and 1HappyGuy say are correct. Most of Alla's classes amount to working with her classmates on a project, her home work is to write two "comments" (be the original poster) on a topic on a college posting site...kind of like being assigned to make two posts on VJ, and then to review and make comments on two of her classmates comments. Imagine VJ off-topic...but you have to be nice! :rofl: The teacher comes in and out of the room, doesn't like to answer questions, won't stay after class to help with something ("send me an email") but they sure as heck collect their tuiton up front.

What 1HappyGuy says is correct. In Ukraine we have two good friends that are both teachers (husband and wife) they are paid a paltry amount, have gone up to 6 months without pay or with only partial pay. Last year they got a new Principal and he fired whichever teachers he didn't like. They also tutor children to make extra money. They stay after school and clean the school WITH the students, but they take no prisoners when it comes to education. Pasha was bumped up TWO grades just a couple months after arriving here, that is how far ahead they were in education. A full two years just to get into stuff he hadn't already been taught!

VERMONT! I Reject Your Reality...and Substitute My Own!

Gary And Alla

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Filed: Country: Russia
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I am not complaining, yes it is a good education. When he tells us about this, Alla will say "Well, next time study more before the FIRST exam and you won't have to do it twice!" No sympathy!

Alla was shocked at the college education here. They have email for all their instructors (Vooooooowhat??!!!) And the instructors tell them "If you are not going to be in class, just email me before and let me know" Vooooooooowhat????????!!!!!!!!!!! In Russia/Ukraine and the USSR you did NOT skip classes, they will toss you out and send you to trade school so you can be a plumber or one of those guys that cleans the room where they kill pigs, at y'know, that place where they kill pigs for pork! :rofl:

I think this must be specific to where Sergey goes to school and Alla's experience in the Soviet education system. Most people I know enrolled in universities in the FSU show up only to the exam, and if they don't pass (and how could you, if you don't go to a single lecture????), you can just pay the teacher "x" amount of money and get the grade you want. I know one girl who didn't show up for ANYTHING and bribed the administrators with cognac for years until they were just like, "ENOUGH. We can't let you be enrolled here anymore." Whenever I talk to my students about this sort of thing, they're always shocked that bribery and cheating ARE NOT accepted in American higher education, and in fact are cause for scandal. People are trying to reform the system, but it's met with a lot of resistance.

As for America, you get what you paid for. I went to a top boarding school and then a top college. Pasha would not have been skipped ahead two years at my school; we had a fairly large international student population and almost all of them were in fact a year or two older than the rest of the students in the class. Even for art class, if you didn't spend 3 hours in the studio outside of class for every hour in class, you'd be resigning yourself to a low C at best, because the teacher considered it "wasting their time" if you didn't want to work. And yeah, I had to do those "responses" on the internet too in college, but that was in addition to 50 pages or so of other written work. The only group projects I did were short films for Russian class.

I guess like a lot of things in America, it depends on $$$. Live in a wealthy area with a wealthy public school system, or have the means to pay for a great private school? You'll get a top-notch education in America, and then go on to pay out the @$$ for a great private university. Don't have the money or the brains to make the school want to foot the bill for you? No wonder so few people on the internet can actually spell. I grew up in a relatively affluent area, and when I saw what kind of education the public schools there provided, I was in shock. The teachers just don't seem to even care. I think public education in Russia and Ukraine is way better until the university level, but after that I'd have to award the points to the US, unless you're like Sergey and get accepted to a really top school. And then if he's planning to move to the US anyway, it'd probably be better to transfer to a US school because if he's in a job pool for an entry-level position, and there's a guy with a degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a guy from Moscow Institute of Technology, guess which MIT will mean more to an American? But that's 45,000$ a year or so versus less than 1000$, so your call! :)

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Filed: Citizen (apr) Country: Ukraine
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I suppose there are specifics I am not aware of. And I doubt the education now is the samew as during the Soviet Union, at least at most schools. I have heard of students bribing teachers, easy to do when they are paid something like $150 per month and it takes at minimum $700-800 to live (in Donetsk).

Sergey's school is a little more than $1000 per year. That was room and board I was speaking of, tuition is another whopping $3000 per year. Still an outstanding deal. We have discussed this at length, really. He is in the 4th year of a 5 year Master's program. At the end of this year he will get a Bachelor's degree AND the opportunity to receive a Master's degree in only one more year...BUT as you have pointed out, even though his Russian education WILL be evaluated as equivilent by ECE, for example, having a US master's degree would be very good. So he has now taken his GRE and TOEFL exams and we will be pursuing him finishing his master's degree here...even though it will take TWO years as opposed to one. He is still very young and will finish his masters degree at age 22, even here. Wherever he chooses to live he will have degrees from both a top Russian and (hopefully) a top US school. I think we can say we have then done our best to prepare him and from that point, the ball is in his court.

Alla is attending a private college with very high ratings in linguistics, many stuidents come from all over the world to attend this MA program in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (MA-TESOL). I am really glad she had this opportunity which I didn't even know existed until she was preparing to come here. But she is comparing her experience in college in the Soviet Union vs. a liberal arts college in a liberal state.

While your private school may have been way ahead of public schools (no doubt) Vermont's public education is nearly as good as it gets in terms of public education in the US. The methods vary, Ukraine tends to start teaching various subjects at an earlier age. They also cover a lot of subjects in one year. For example, in 7th grade, Pasha had algebra, geometry, trigonometry in Ukraine. Here...no algebra until grade 9. Then Geometery in grade 10. Then trigonometry in grade 11, etc. So transfer a kid to grade 8, and they have to test him up to grade 10 to find domething he doesn't already know. Pasha is a good student, but not a great one. Where Sergey is not happy wih anything less than a 5.0 average, Pasha will gladly settle for a 3.1 ...and lacross, basketball, kayaking and snowboarding. Only by pressuring him does he maintain a B+ average.

VERMONT! I Reject Your Reality...and Substitute My Own!

Gary And Alla

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Filed: Country: Russia
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While your private school may have been way ahead of public schools (no doubt) Vermont's public education is nearly as good as it gets in terms of public education in the US. The methods vary, Ukraine tends to start teaching various subjects at an earlier age. They also cover a lot of subjects in one year. For example, in 7th grade, Pasha had algebra, geometry, trigonometry in Ukraine. Here...no algebra until grade 9. Then Geometery in grade 10. Then trigonometry in grade 11, etc. So transfer a kid to grade 8, and they have to test him up to grade 10 to find domething he doesn't already know. Pasha is a good student, but not a great one. Where Sergey is not happy wih anything less than a 5.0 average, Pasha will gladly settle for a 3.1 ...and lacross, basketball, kayaking and snowboarding. Only by pressuring him does he maintain a B+ average.

Aren't the schools more specialized in the FSU, though? I know lots of people who went to special mathematics-focused schools, English-focused schools, etc. In my school in the US, we were divided by level. People with low math ability did the algebra in grade 9/geometry in grade 10 track. Those who were good at math did them earlier. As someone who failed seventh grade math as it was, I would have never survived algebra/trig/geometry in seventh grade! I was/am very much oriented toward reading/writing versus anything requiring math/science. But also they start school a year later, so someone in seventh grade there is a year older than an American seventh grader--and for mathematical abilities that makes a big difference; sometimes your brain just isn't "ready" for the kind of thinking algebra requires. Algebra I in eighth grade was the norm where I went, so same age as Ukraine there.

Is Sergey's school on the specialist/kandidat/doktor model, or did they switch to Bachelors and Masters and PhD? Some schools are starting to make the change. I suppose that the Russian system is more like the 3+2 year model of Bachelors + Masters that are available for some fields.

Edited by eekee

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Filed: Citizen (apr) Country: Ukraine
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Aren't the schools more specialized in the FSU, though? I know lots of people who went to special mathematics-focused schools, English-focused schools, etc. In my school in the US, we were divided by level. People with low math ability did the algebra in grade 9/geometry in grade 10 track. Those who were good at math did them earlier. As someone who failed seventh grade math as it was, I would have never survived algebra/trig/geometry in seventh grade! I was/am very much oriented toward reading/writing versus anything requiring math/science. But also they start school a year later, so someone in seventh grade there is a year older than an American seventh grader--and for mathematical abilities that makes a big difference; sometimes your brain just isn't "ready" for the kind of thinking algebra requires. Algebra I in eighth grade was the norm where I went, so same age as Ukraine there.

Is Sergey's school on the specialist/kandidat/doktor model, or did they switch to Bachelors and Masters and PhD? Some schools are starting to make the change. I suppose that the Russian system is more like the 3+2 year model of Bachelors + Masters that are available for some fields.

Yes, FSU schools were more specialized. Alla was diverted into her eduction as a teacher of Russian/Russian literature when she was in 7th grade. They had done tests to determine where the students would be best utilized. It was presented as "How would you like to be a teacher of Russian and Literature? You will get to read lots of books and you don't have to take math and science anymore?" Her reaction was "Wow, really? I LOVE this country!!" Her transcripts have no math or science to speak of. Lots of language items, history, even "military training" but very specialized classes for language. This was fine with her, she hates math and science. Her single mother was a civil engineer, the district boss for Donetsk region, yet they lived in the same apartment house as teachers...so why not do something you like? No one was getting rich working anyway. People tend to overlook the fact that it really didn't matter what you did for a living in the USSR. People will act all appalled to learn that the "government chose your job for you" but forget that the people didn't know any other way and were going to live more or less the same whether they were a teacher or a doctor. Alla would have preferred a greater choice in clothes and shoes than in careers.

Sergey's school offers bachelor's, masters and doctoral programs. I do not know if that is a recent change, not that I am aware of, it has been that way since he has been going there. Ukraine is switching to an "American" program in their education, at least they were. Going to grade 12 and then to college. I do not know if the new government will change that. They had switched to requiring all classes be taught in Ukrainian language and now they dropped that, so we will see.

VERMONT! I Reject Your Reality...and Substitute My Own!

Gary And Alla

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Sergey's school offers bachelor's, masters and doctoral programs. I do not know if that is a recent change, not that I am aware of, it has been that way since he has been going there. Ukraine is switching to an "American" program in their education, at least they were. Going to grade 12 and then to college. I do not know if the new government will change that. They had switched to requiring all classes be taught in Ukrainian language and now they dropped that, so we will see.

I'm wondering if dropping the Ukrainian language requirement is because the current President can't speak Ukrainian? :devil::rofl:

By the way, Lena started her fall classes yesterday. On instructor said she has no office hours available, don't call her at the school and she has no email. In other words, don't bother me, if you have a question ask it in class and leave me alone.

Edited by 1HappyGuy
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Filed: Citizen (apr) Country: Ukraine
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I'm wondering if dropping the Ukrainian language requirement is because the current President can't speak Ukrainian? :devil::rofl:

By the way, Lena started her fall classes yesterday. On instructor said she has no office hours available, don't call her at the school and she has no email. In other words, don't bother me, if you have a question ask it in class and leave me alone.

Could be. I am not sure it was ever enforced in Donetsk Oblast anyway. They had received some sort of deferrment while the people tried to learn Ukrainian. Our teacher friends also do not speak Ukrainian and they were wondering exactly WHO was going to do the teaching and WHO was going to listen! Of course, there was going to be no raise in pay for learning another language and teaching classes in it. :rofl: In Donetsk, it would be like ordering all the education of North Dakota be taught in Spanish.

Alla's teachers have email and insist on being emailed for questions, but then they do not answer. One refused to answer her questions in class, told her to email, when she did, she was told in writing she was "rude" for interrupting classes with her questions and the question was never answered in the email! So now it is our inside joke. Every time she says something to me, I answer "You are kind of RUDE aren't you?" :rofl: She claims she is NOT rude, but she IS sarcastic and "not nice". I asked her if she thinks her teacher talks about her to his wife like we talk about him. She said "Yes" I said "What do you think he says about you?" Her answer? "B!TCH" "FVCKING IMMIGRANT"

(funny how they learn all the bad words)

VERMONT! I Reject Your Reality...and Substitute My Own!

Gary And Alla

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Just got a call from my wife. She's so happy because she qualified for financial aide at the college. You would have thought I won the lottery. At least she now is properly registered (they didn't have her SSN on file) and she seems pretty happy. Now she has to walk home in 103 heat. That's not too bad though, should be about 3/4 of a mile.

I'm not really too surprised by Alla's comment about the instructor not wanting to respond to student questions. It seems they just want to show up and collect a paycheck. When I was in school it was rare to have a non-participating teacher. I guess I'm just another one of those from the old school era. We sure have been dumbing down our educational system for a long time. I use to teach at the local university and prepared up an exam for the department staff to type. I thought I would have some fun with the exam and gave the name of the company as Phlat Tyre Co. The secretary called me to ask if I wanted her to correct my spelling errors. After telling her they were intended I thought, "What is she use to dealing with regarding university professors?"

My time there was short, which I don't regret. Too much politics and not enough education.

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