Hesitant Generation Fighting for Proper Education: Russia Or India?
© Sputnik / Sandeep Datta
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God save me from meddling into the Indian debate about fair and just state exams, and also about that terrible, terrible young generation fighting its battles on the education subject.
It is easier for me to talk about similar trends in Russia, and let my readers decide, whether Indian young generation is really different from the Russian one.
There was a survey recently in Russia, done by the leading WtCIOM polling agency, that tried to range properly the values of people aged 14-35 years (the results are not yet available on the agency’s English language website). We can see now that the Russian youth values most of all financial independence, then comes health (rather mental than physical), while the third slot is taken by achieving professional success.
But then the cunning sociologists asked their respondents another question: exactly how achievable are these goals for you? Here we see that the young are not very worried about their health, thinking that they can manage that. Education seems to be achievable, too, more or less. But the main goal, overall professional success together with financial independence, is something of a problem, by the young generation’s own estimate.
So what, you may ask. But a lot of Russian opinion writers are beating the alarm drums. First of all, there is a stark difference here with priorities of slightly older or seriously older Russians. These elders value family as the top priority, while family and even love life seems to be very far from the young minds. Same with friendship and other important things.
We are dealing with a highly unusual hesitant generation, say at least two such columnists on different websites. That generation looks like a bunch of extremely individualistic personalities, very unsure of themselves and failing to communicate with others, these others being older or of the same age. And that is a paradoxical result of the infamous Information Age, when the young ones seem to spend their lives in social networking via smartphones. Needless to say, add the professional youth-bashers, that the result of these misplaced priorities could be a lonely, unmarried and generally futile life.
Here we have a typical case of a battle of generations, with granddads eternally grumbling about the wrong priorities of their siblings. But at least one point of their unfriendly analysis may prove to be valuable. Look again: there are youngsters, not very sure about their future professional success and, hence, seriously concerned about fairness and honesty of the procedures for getting higher education. Does it sound Indian enough? Maybe it does.
That question of fairness may seem to be eternal for all the humanity, but – to repeat – the Information Age adds up to insecurity. Simply speaking, the people of the smartphone generation feel that there is something wrong about themselves, and, hence, they need a special treatment when graduating from secondary schools and wanting more knowledge.
Needless to say, the opinion battle on that subject is only getting hotter in Russia, now when the education reform is really starting. The state graduation exams used to be the best social lift in the country, laments Mr. Nikolai Gastello from the gazeta.ru website. But now, he goes on, that precious thing is broken and turned into a scam. Sounds familiar, again?
The main subject of Mr. Gastello’s wrath is the strong tendency of all the universities in the land to disbelieve the numerical results of these state exams. And so the universities have devised an additional way of admitting ex-schoolkids, that is contests of all kind, hold for months on regional or even national level. The universities have managed to convince the authorities that about one half of admittances should be the victors of these national contests, state exam results be damned.
It is very easy to see university’s reasons for their resistance. The professors have noticed long ago, that previously they themselves could see very well the quality of knowledge of boys and girls talking to them or writing things at the entrance exams. But now the universities are being flooded with applicants, sporting the highest possible results of state exams, but being totally unsuited for admittance. Universities have to take them in, but about a half of these exam champions are doomed to drop off after the first disastrous year of studies.
Here we have a problem that has been recurring in human societies for centuries. There is nothing more undemocratic than the education process. We can see from the day one in school that some kids have natural talent for this or that subject, while others have not. And one group of thinkers say that education is a cruel process of selecting the best, whoever they are, so as to make your society prospering. While the other group tends to think that there have to be “social justice”, especially for kids from poor families somewhere from the countryside. And education is about giving the miserable and dispossessed their chance of achieving success in life.
Both schools of thought are right and wrong at the same time, of course, so it’s only a question of balancing their extreme ideas. That, by the way, is exactly what the Russian universities were trying to do, sabotaging the state exams when they could and lobbying for their complete cancellation.
The scale in that Russia debate seems to shift towards cancellation, since there is another factor in the limelight, and that is the teacher’s grievances. The Izvestia newspaper has published a report with plenty of statistics, telling us that 45 per cent of teachers are over 50 years of age by now. While the ones younger than 30 constitute only about 15 per cent. The trend stated long ago and is getting worse.
There are several reasons for teachers’ deficit, and inadequate pay with growing workload is just one of them. But, what’s relevant to our conversation about values, is also the excessive stress on rules and norms to be obeyed. As well as the fact that teachers are supposed to lead the class to state exams and show the best possible numerical outcome of these. That’s how universities are encountering applicants with wonderful state exams results, while these record-breakers are still not fit for higher education.
The teachers, until this year, were also not supposed to discipline the bad kids who were getting low grades themselves and were turning the classrooms into battle zones. School dropout cases were not supposed to happen, since the only problem was the above-mentioned social justice, meaning that the weak pupils were more important than the kids with real talents.
Each and every nation is doomed to debate the state of its education (and medical services). One may easily predict that such debate will go on in Russia, or India, hopefully making our nations wiser.
Dmitry Kosyrev is a Russian writer, author of spy novels and short stories. He also did columns for the Pioneer and Firstpost.com
