Soviet Teaching Methods Strangle Innovation

Whenever one visits a foreign country, danger always lurks in making judgments too quickly about the population. After all, there is unlimited data to understand about the culture, history, language – well, everything about the place. But one must function based on what one knows and sees to date. And so I write this entry with the caveat that I’ve spent a scant two months in Almaty and have gotten some impressions, many of which have been formed by contact with my students. So, let’s talk about them.

I teach two classes of undergraduates. Since our Academic Reading and Writing is a gateway course to the others at the university, it means we have students who are new to the university system, in other words, Freshmen. As odious as the task is in the U.S. to indoctrinate them into the culture of academic rigor and inquiry, it means they have practically zilch study skills, and need I say anything about writing ability? I have some students who have spent a year abroad in the states. They are much better at writing and critical thinking. The others have limited English and in some cases an even more restricted attention span or interest in being there. So, along with helping them learn to speak, read, write, and take notes in English, we have to answer questions such as “How many days can I miss before it affects my grade?”

KIMEP is an all-English university. (Most instructors are foreign-born and speak some version of English, many of whom are not all that intelligible to me. But that probably goes both ways.) As much as I find these students lacking in their English, they come out shining when compared to the students at the neighboring Agro University, I’m told, which attracts students from small villages who speak only Kazakh. Along with such lack of exposure to English comes their nonexistent exposure to Western teaching methods. That means they learn – and expect to be taught – by the very Soviet style methods I described in my earlier entry – arm up, stand up, recite, sit down. Repeat as necessary until all the exercises have been gone over. This is the entire class! Teachers do not dare stray from the drill-and-kill exercises in the book, nor do students expect there will be anything asked of them beyond getting the answer right. This of course flies in the face of the teaching methodologies more progressive institutions are encouraging, i.e., asking open- ended questions as well as encouraging dialog, self-discovery of answers, critical thinking about issues, etc. etc. Unfortunately, the Soviet-style system is self-perpetuating because teachers taught via the old Soviet system do not always know alternative ways of presenting material, thereby spawning another generation of students who in turn want their own children to be taught that way because “that’s how we did it.” I s’pose that way of thinking goes for any educational system in the world unless someone seeks out change.

The director of our MA TESOL program at is doing just that by offering seminars on reading, writing, and critical thinking to about 40 colleagues in the Language Center. I am particularly interested in assisting with these seminars since my training has taught me that organization and reasoning should be the targets of writing instruction, not the misplaced comma. We begin these seminars in a few weeks. I’m sure I will learn a lot too, thereby providing ample fodder for this blog. Stay tuned.

Best,
Nancy

Cheating Kazakh-Style

For those of you teachers familiar with the concept of cheating, I’ve got news for you – they have made it an Olympic sport in Kazakhstan, and, I should add, other erstwhile Soviet satellite countries. They learned well from Mother Russia.

While I have not had cheating incidents that I know of– yet—I have served on a disciplinary committee already that took five students to task for having cheated on their Intensive English listening exam. Five! They were from different classes, but they had all gotten the answers and pasted them to their notebooks, which they had placed conveniently on their laps. Although the teachers said they did not actually witness their using the crib sheets, their intention was clear. Several of the students in the meeting cried, but not because they’d lost face or were ashamed; they were just sorry they got caught. Actually, we found out that one of the students -- the only boy -- had bought the answers for $200 from someone on the street in front of the university. Only they were the wrong answers! This selling of answers is not at all unusual and has turned into quite a cottage industry. Too bad he had no return policy for his bogus answers.

Cheating seems to be one of those wonderful hand-me-down habits from the Soviet period when it was more important to appear to be right than to actually know the answers. Frank Thoms, who spent a lot of time observing the students in the Soviet system, wrote Through Their Eyes: Encounters with Soviet People, (don’t know if it’s published), said that students went to such elaborate lengths to cheat that they often spent more time preparing the cheat sheets than it would have taken to learn the material. He cites writing on their hands, thighs, the inside of their jackets, notes tucked inside the cap of a Bic pen, and so forth. One student at my university had apparently spent many, many hours writing formulas and what not on the long table in the back of the room where the teacher couldn’t see. With every seat in the room taken by examinees, he was certain to be able to sit in the back and have practically his entire textbook etched into the table. He was only found out because the janitor saw it one evening and told the teacher.

The system developed, Mr. Thoms suggests, because cheating “serves the collective. But unlike American students, Soviets do not cheat from one another but with one another [emphasis his], with the brighter students helping the weaker ones…cheating enables some teachers and their students to proceed through assignments with success.”

He talks a lot about the prompting that goes on. Students provide answers to those who lag behind. “Prompting kindles the collective spirit,” Mr. Thoms points out. “Prompting ensures that…slower students will not be left behind. Prompting provides for success at every lesson. It enables lessons to move along, to keep pace with the demands of the curriculum. Without it there would be silence, the dreaded silence of failure. There is no time for waiting in a Soviet classroom, no time for pausing, no time for reflecting.” He also points out that prompting replaces personal responsibility and initiative. Everyone learns to stay together and no one is allowed to get ahead, thus perpetuating mediocrity. “Excelling breeds envy.”

So cheating has a different etiology and a different purpose over here. Unfortunately the result is still the same – students don’t learn. The dirty little secret is that teachers collude with the students. They want them to succeed because it makes them look good. In fact, even the teachers who came to the disciplinary hearing tried to defend the students in that they “didn’t actually see them cheat.” Come on, folks. I only need to hear the quacking and I know it’s a duck. I’ll be on the lookout for cheaters. But then cheaters aren’t new to me. Just the reasons behind it.

Cheers everyone!