During a
recent interview about life in communist Romania, Bill Muckler asked me a
pointed question about the quality of education I received under a totalitarian
system of government. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dkqlzM9USnQ
Aside from absurd
courses such as Scientific Socialism and Socialist Economics, courses which
were aimed at legitimizing an otherwise disastrous economic model of Five-Year
Plans which were put in place by the Communist Party, by apparatchiks who often
had grandiose pipe dreams but had no idea how to translate them into reality
given the lack of resources and education of those in power, I received a good
education in terms of the subjects taught. The indoctrination efforts did no
work on me at all.
I had three
years of Calculus in high school, eight years of various foreign languages,
Latin, English, French, German, Italian, studied world literature and history,
geography, chemistry, music, physics, physical education, and behavior. It is
true that we had labs but we were not allowed to experiment with anything, nor
did we have the money to do it, all classes were theoretical.
The
literature class in high school was highlighted by an elderly gentleman from
the old society that preceded communism. He came to class wearing an elegant and
always pressed grey suit with his old violin passed on from his grandfather. He
played with his eyes closed various classical compositions which he felt that they
fit the mood of the literary selection we were studying that day. It was
uplifting and I felt a sense of beauty and freedom beyond physical reach that
flowed from his violin strings. It was mesmerizing.
We did not
have calculators; we either figured complex calculations in our heads, with pen
and paper, or, in colleges of engineering, with a slide rule. We did not study
math based on the insane Common Core method which American students now largely
do despite parental protests around the country. Occasionally, the teacher
would demonstrate a simple chemical reaction with two elements which we were
allowed to watch intently but not touch anything.
Common Core
standards and curricula dumb down the education of American students. It is a
cleverly designed program that prepares students to become busy working bees
for various corporations and to destroy their own Christian faith at the
expense of the “superior” religion of Islam. When it comes to Christianity,
liberal educators scream about the division of church and state but welcome
with open arms the theocracy called Islam.
As A.J.
Cameron said, “Those behind the total, fundamental transformation of mankind
know human nature, and are wickedly smart, deceptive, patient, and determined.
Total control is the overall goal. They make sure we are chasing what they want
us to see so that they can sneak in behind us with what we aren’t supposed to
see. They also play both sides of the divides they deploy upon us, leading us
to believe one side is the enemy and the other side is our friend.”
Steve Jobs
limited his children’s use of the very technology he developed. “Why can’t
parents see that what is taught in the classroom and promoted in life by the
media is diametrically opposed to what they believe in and want their children
to believe in?”
Communists
believed that a student learned better if sports were included in the curriculum.
It was not the type of competitive sports like in America that would lead to a
football, basketball, or tennis career and millions of dollars in remuneration.
It was sports for the sake of exercising one’s body and fueling the brain with
oxygen from physical activity.
A few
students, who were truly talented, were usually vetted and picked up by the sports
associations existing in every large town, to develop their talent every day to
competitive perfection. Thus parents lost a child to a rigorous gymnastics
program that would eventually develop their progeny into an Olympic star. Parents
did no generally object; they were grateful to the party for giving their child
the opportunity to succeed and live better than they did.
Parents
benefitted in the sense that the Communist Party would give them financial
incentives if their child won international competitions. Nadia Comanici’s
parents were awarded a small apartment as a thank you when their child won
perfect scores in international gymnastics events. Tennis players were allowed to
keep some of their earnings in international matches and generally lived a life
that many Romanians envied.
To this day,
a lot of talented mathematicians, physicists, computer programmers, and
chemists come from Romania because they go through rigorous academic programs
and they have a good work ethic. Parents do not object that the curriculum is
too hard.
In this
country parents complain that Johnny is failing tests not because Johnny’s
talent or effort do not match the difficulty of the subject, it is because the
curriculum is too hard and the teacher makes unfairly difficult tests. If curricula
were dumbed down to Johnny’s level of comprehension and ability, Johnny would
have perfect scores too.
Communist
parents were shamed publicly during mandatory parent/teacher conferences if
their progeny were not doing their homework, not studying, or not behaving
according to the communist-prescribed code of behavior in and outside of
school. These parents came home and spanked and punished their children
because, unlike America, nobody put them in jail for doing so, and no child
services removed their children from the home because they were disciplined to
behave and speak properly.
Teachers and
administrators were allowed to use a ruler for punishment and many children
were made to stand in the corner for various infractions. Our principal, a tall
man with a booming and intimidating voice, often slapped boys who misbehaved
constantly and, on a few occasions, left a mark on their faces from his heavy
gold ring. He was so dedicated to proper education of children that he attended
every beginning of the year ceremony of the high school I attended, well into
his nineties. On my visit five years ago, he was present at the ceremony of the
remodeled school.
Students who
did not perform, did not behave, missed school too much, had poor grades in
some subjects, were held back to repeat the year. No pregnancies were tolerated
in high school, and no child care was allowed on the premises of a school.
During my four years of high school, I know of only one girl who became
pregnant and she was forced, three weeks before graduation, to repeat the year
during night school.
Night school
was offered at all levels for such students like her and for those from rural
areas who had never completed their basic education, or adults who never
actually went to school as children because they came from large peasant families
who worked in the fields and never had time for school or schools did not exist
in their remote villages for lack of teachers.
Communist education
did not emphasize individuality but the collective. We had to think and act
collectively for the good of the community; the root Latin word, communis, means “shared.” Individuality
and creative thinking were highly discouraged.
We all
studied hard but we knew from the beginning that we were weeded out from
elementary school, to middle school, to high school, and to college. College
was a privilege for the communist elites and for those lucky enough to get
placement in a highly competitive pool of other students who had perfect grades
and test scores, just as good as yours, but were lucky to get in first before
the number of places offered that year were filled. Often someone with a
perfect 10 got in but someone with 9.99 did not. When I tried to study
philology, there were ten spots available and thousands of candidates. So I
chose Economics instead.
American
journalist Lenora Chu spoke to NPR on September 28, 2017, about her experience with
her three-year old son who attended Shanghai’s most prestigious Chinese public
kindergarten. She was amazed how much better behaved he was and how, one day,
he came home with a red star on his forehead, a reward for better behavior and
how, her child refused to take it off and even wore it bed. It was a badge of honorable
behavior conforming to prescribed standards for that age group. This
conformity, she explained, extended to art classes where children were only
allowed to draw rain coming straight down as if rain never came down sideways. http://www.npr.org/2017/09/28/554157393/little-soldiers-examines-the-effects-of-china-s-military-like-education-system
Chu said, “I
realized immediately how they introduced conformity in the classroom, sometimes
by physical methods.” Corporal punishment is obviously something that American
parents object to vehemently and particularly liberal parents. I remember
having my palm wacked by my elementary school teacher when I used my predominant
left hand to write with – she forced me to learn to write right-handed. In a
move of defiance, I started writing letters and numbers backwards with my right
hand. I don’t remember how long that lasted, but it left an impression on me to
this day. In my old age, I am trying to regain some of the left-handedness.
Creativity and individual ability in the Romanian schools I attended were
highly discouraged.
Chu
emphasized the fact that the Chinese system “weeds out children” while in the
American system we are concerned with “not leaving any child behind.” This of
course can also mean that in America we tend to socially-promote students even
though they did not master the required skills to be promoted to the next grade
level thus graduating students who can barely read or write or are totally
ignorant of geography, history, basic mathematics, and literature.
Conformity
was clearly expressed in my elementary school teacher’s phrase. She always used to say when she taught us
addition, “two plus two is always four, children, even in the Soviet Union.”
Everything we did or said had to be connected somehow with the experience of
the Soviets because they were our role model of perfection.
Teachers in
America spend a lot of time on discipline because the children we are sending
to school are behaviorally challenged and are never raised to mind and respect
authority. Their parents never taught them to behave properly in public or in
school, no matter how bad they were, their progeny was always right and exceptional
human beings.
This
resulted in generations of students who believed they could do no wrong, always
demanding trophies for participation, and passing classes without any effort.
Failure was never an option for Americans even though it is part of life.
Nobody is
good at everything. Follow your dreams and never let anyone discourage you from
pursuing your passion are great catch phrases but, what if you are not good
enough for that passion, should you not pursue something else that you are good
at but not as passionate about and just carry the passion with you as a plan B?
My cousin
told me recently that Romanians are now experimenting with new learning
methodologies from the West (such as the Montessori school) as the quality of
their education system seems to be declining. It is not that the education
system has changed so much; it is the behavior of the students and their
supportive parents who believe that anything bad in their child’s behavior must
no longer be subjected to punishment.
The students
themselves are divorced from any sense of history, of their Romanian roots;
they are told constantly in school that they now must be global citizens. Since
Romania joined the EU in 2007, this strong feeling of belonging to the world
has superseded their feelings of belonging to their own people, family, and sovereign
borders of their own country.
As the old
adage says, education begins at home at an early age, and behavior and hard
work are still its lynchpin.
