Schools

From Sergei

My feelings were twofold. On one hand, I was amazed how well-wequiped the British schools are. I just wish I had 1/10 of their equipment not in my class but in the whole school!

One the other hand, I didn’t see much creativity, imagination and enthusiasm during the lesson I had attended. The teacher relied much on hand outs and the BBC video and I suppose the questions she asked were taken from the teacher’s manual.


From Tanya

I certainly wouldn’t like to be an immigrant in the UK, and would certainly demand more rigorous curriculum at school. Why such limited knowledge, why so minimal homework? Can’t imagine it is same at Eton??? I think I understood James’s infatuation with his memory-boosting/ parrot-repetition exercise only after I realized how little is expected from students at school….My Bulgarian friends’ daughter(her third year in England, her GCSE’s next year) has literally forgotten her maths skills, knows nothing about world history, has been to Paris on a school trip but her knowledge of geography is pathetic, has learned how to cook muffins but her written English is worse than that of most of my students…Well, hers is not a grammar school, is in Kidderminster, that explains a lot but still…She was an excellent student in Bulgaria.
There is something about the English schools I cannot put my finger on but that bothers me as profoundly unfair to people – is there a political agenda behind all this minimalism or it is just me being ethnocentric again, applying my own ways of what is right, fair, etc.