Does education suffer far from the urban centers and elite universities?

This week I expect to get my diploma – one more step in my higher education which began in 2006. I’ve been thinking a lot about what these years have meant, especially in terms of my decision to leave my original university and study somewhere else.

Several weeks ago I read an interesting column in a daily business newspaper where famous and respected economist Konstantin Sonin touched upon university ratings. The professor’s argument astonished me because he compared the Russian higher education system with its foreign counterparts and went on to say ranking Russian universities at all has basically no point! The reason, he said, is that in our country most university departments offer students a strictly fixed number of courses and disciplines, while there is more variety available to students in other countries. Those models let students adapt their studies to their interests, for example, and it can help them make the transition to working life more smoothly. Kathrin also talked about how this kind of flexibility is important to young people here.

If I hadn’t changed my university in 2008, the article probably wouldn’t have caught my eye. But even 3.5 years later, I remember others asking me: “Why did you do that?” or “Aren’t you dissatisfied with what you find in Smolensk?”

The same old questions suggesting I had made the wrong decision got annoying, and my typical answer was, “You may be right – but what are you doing beyond complaining and trying to frighten others?” I mean, on the one hand, I was seriously dissatisfied, but that can also be a great source of motivation. Either you take the mess and sluggishness that we face here (for instance, rules in most regional universities require high attendance records, which leaves fewer opportunities for flexibility, regardless of whether it’s a lecture that could just as well be followed online or a project discussion where your presence is actually vital) – or you demand a new educational model. I proposed one here.

A question for me - where will my path take me next?

A new, more open approach to education shouldn’t just be applied to schools. It could also be beneficial to cultural, social and economic life generally in Russia and may help us get rid of some stereotypes. As things stand now, we are too dismissive of people with certain issues. For example, I have a friend Nadin, who is a popular beauty-blogger. She writes about fashion and make-up; she adores communicating with people from different countries and trading insight. Using a wheelchair as she does, however, causes a wide reaction of sympathy – hidden or evident – which I find totally wrong and stupid! I’ll try to explain with a simple example: imagine seeing a person carrying a huge pile of books and approaching a closed door. What’s the better move – to stand there feeling sorry for them for having to carry such a heavy load or to open the door and get a thank-you-smile?

Another way to help reduce stereotypes is by studying abroad or popularizing universities in your country with foreign students. This is something Emmy discussed in this entry. The benefits of doing so are often underestimated.

These stereotypes about other countries or ethnicities and about people with disabilities remind me of Francis Bacon’s theory about idols. I believe the more educated a nation is, the fewer “idols” it has. By removing these seemingly fixed ideas, it helps create more opportunities for sustainable development and prosperity.

We could use a different approach to technical education

At the beginning of the week I was talking to my coworker Patricia about how education is approached in our country. She coordinates a regional program aiming to strengthen technical education in different fields, like math, science, industry-applied technology and school management. The program’s various groups in different regions of the country do not work directly with students; they work with teachers and school principals. The aim is to train educators and hence improve technical education by setting higher standards.Patricia was telling me how Gabriel and Alejandro, the head tutors in the school management area, have a liberal approach to education, and what a challenge it was to introduce these principles in technical education.

“They want to empower the student, work with the previous knowledge they have. You say this to an engineer, and he will frown and shake his head. Engineers think of their science as hard knowledge that cannot be approached through discussion. The problem goes even deeper: It originates in the conception of one perfect student that all alumni should try to live up to. This is not just a viewpoint from engineers, but from almost all actors in the educational system. Nowadays we are trying to uproot the concept of the model student, and we are working to introduce subjectivity into educational approaches,” she told me.

I knew what she was talking about.

Sergiu, a classmate from Berlin, gives a presentation on a sculpture in Florence

Doing my master’s in Berlin was the first time I encountered liberal education. It has many principles, but in general terms, we could put it this way: There are no professors, there are only classical texts; knowledge is gained through discussion and questions. A typical day started with a lecture from a faculty member, who gave his or her interpretation of the chapters we had previously read, and opened the field for questions and discussion. Then we would go on to our seminar group and discuss the text and our ideas on it. This was the method for core courses. For electives, we only had seminar groups. Furthermore, there were no exams – only essays.

This approach to education really changed me irreversibly. I strongly believe it develops critical thinking in students, a capacity to question everything (with a proper argument), and not just take in anything from whoever is saying it. It is about building skills for having rich discussion with well-developed ideas. And it appeals above all else to the students’ creativity, while at the same time it empowers them by valuing their capacity to reason and their previous knowledge.

Thinking of what Emmy said in her entry, that education in Kenya kills creativity, I believe it could strongly be related to how theoretical learning is approached. This is, I believe, similar to the challenge I was talking about with Patricia: How to introduce a liberal approach to education in hard science teaching. I think it’s not about denying the value and strength of theories, but, rather, finding a way to make the student aware of his or her own capacities and encourage them to use these as the principal motive to acquire knowledge.