Education and Work

Russian education and generational transmission

School education

Since I worked at a university and a public school in Perm, I can talk about my experience and my analysis there. First of all, the Russian educational system is very qualitative and world-wide that is one of the Russian national prides; and if listening to Russians carefully, they are the creator of everything in the world: all technical inventions came (and still do) from them.

Today, the Russian school programms are very complete, even if less than the past generations. The intensiveness of the programm can be said as too much though: 8 hours of classes every day, 5-6 days a week, with only 20min for lunch. After school, pupils usually go to extra-curricular classes (sports, music, drawing). In France, pupils are also obliged by their parents to go there, but Russian pupils rarely enjoy these courses, as they are sometimes more disciplined than at school. Furthermore, all of the school years prepare for a very hard national exam determining if a pupil will (or will not) study afterwards; it is adding studying hours with tutors. So the children are usually very tired, stressed, and under pressure – real robots or zombies.

School teachers

If retired but still working (as most Russians do for a symbolic salary) - you can imagine their motivation at work, I often heard from teachers: “I’m used to teaching, I can’t do anything else; I have to make a living. Who’ll help me? Not our government. What pupils think about me doesn’t matter: I endured worse discipline”. If they are young teachers, they usually think of changing career to make more money or to start a family.

University professors

The first time I was invited to a French class at a public russian university, the teacher was a mature woman, raised with an old educational method only based on discipline, authority and control. And I swear that she gave such an atmosphere of fear, stress and anxiety in the class, that even I was afraid to express myself in my mother tongue! It’s no surprise then that students are afraid to speak foreign languages, how much they apprehend any eventual mistake. Moreover, they have more homework in a year than in my entire 10 years of studies at the university; they don’t sleep enough and the worse thing is that they are never taught to think on their own! And that’s a disaster for their future professional life: they’ll obviously wait for instruction from the hierarchy and do only what they are told to do, without any personal initiative, not wanting more responsibility – there could be a risk of making mistakes.

Of course, I’m only talking here about the sector of foreign languages; it’s very famous of being a rigid one. Other disciplines at the russian university might not be so stressful.

As far as me being a teacher at the university, it took me several months in order for the students to trust me and themselves, go through and over their fear of speaking, and accepting that making mistakes is the best way to learn. And as I kept repeating to them - if they already knew everything and didn’t make any mistakes – what was I there for?

I can remember my first students’ shock in Perm. They welcome me to their class with respect and silence; they were happy, surprised, impressed and proud to have a native speaker who could teach them French. I came and sat right away on the corner of the desk; they looked at me with big round eyes and with a face of incomprehension (might be related to an eventual interpretation superstition too).
I said: “Hello there, my name is Natacha. I come from France and I will teach you once a week. On the contrary to many other people, I cannot remember faces or names and I apologize in advance. Secondly, it is a class – not army, not prison, and it is the university. You are here to learn and to enjoy the discipline you chose to study. You are adults and should be already prepared to go in life by yourself and take responsibility for your choices. Therefore, and maybe against the internal rules of the establishment, I won’t check who is present in the class. If you are here, it is not because you have to, but because you want to. If you don’t want to – please, leave. I guarantee you won’t get any bad consequences on the administrative point of view. If you stay – it is to learn something, to make mistake, and to talk a maximum. You’ll slowly leave your habits of translating everything, of answering just according to the teacher’s expectations, and judging French only according to classical texts. We won’t write much, won’t read much, we will speak, because it is what will be needed when you travel abroad. When we get into a discussion, I don’t want you to agree with me – never ever: there’d be no debate then. And if you do, find an antithesis – think! Who is ready to work with me that way – Welcome! If not, please don’t come next time. The choice is yours. It is more unpleasant and too much energy to work with a half of the room sleeping or yawning.”

After this speech – everything was clear; next time, 1/3 of the students were present, but we had a very effective, interesting, and fun class the entire year!

As a result of accumulating fears while studying at the university, graduate students have no initiative and become closed people, afraid of everything, full of complexes.

The notion of working

In the past, Russians were not used to get pleasure from Life, to rest and think for themselves. Like Picasso said: to get results, you have to “work, work, work”. I heard the same quotation has been said by Lenin. The majority of French don’t know this citation - except if interested in Art history, while many people lived for years under the authority of Lenin and his method of “working.” The impact is thus very different: most old Russians don’t even understand that it is possible to go to Dachas to rest, enjoy nature, the air, and banya; they hardly accept it is sometimes possible to go for a walk, sleep, or relax, doing nothing. A friend of mine came back to Moscow from a provincial city, where he comes from. He went to see his parents at their Dacha for the week end, and told me: “Unbelievable – they cannot even imagine to enjoy life, without working.”

Until the Perestroika, working at the Dacha was useful to have vegetables, fruits, and berries for the family or for selling. And whereas I was raised in France with songs talking about princesses, bears and flowers, other children in Russia were used to listen to a cartoon song – Antoshka. At the beginning of it, a boy is lying down under a sunflower eating seeds; a group of kids with gardening tools in their hands come to him and say: “Antoshka, let’s go dig potatoes.” Please understand – I’m not saying it is good or bad, just different educations; and I don’t think anybody was unhappier in one way or the other, as none of us knew any other way of living.

To conclude on this chapter, here is a proverb that the majority of Russians know. It comes from literature, but is often used as soon as people talk about abroad or with foreigners: “Everywhere feels better, when we are not there.” The idea is close to the English proverb: “The grass is always greener on the other side.” But as you can see, the way of saying the same idea differs a lot and tells us a lot about how the Russians see and feel about themselves, and about their eternal dissatisfaction in life.