Standardizing of Education
Boris Kagarlitsky
The Moscow Times, 20 April 2006
Velikhan Mirzekhanov, dean of the history department at Saratov State University, told Ekho Moskvy radio last week that he had been fired for speaking out against United Russia. Mirzhekhanov, who insisted that he had never publicly expressed his political views, was supported by a group of students who planned a demonstration on the grounds of the university. The ousted dean convinced the students to call off their protest at the last minute, but his conflict with the university administration continues.
A radical, left-wing student web site described the university's decision to fire Mirzekhanov as the action of a police state and likened it to Stalin's reign of terror in 1937. The young people who posted this commentary obviously had a rather vague idea of what really happened in this country in 1937. Otherwise, it would never have occurred to them to compare the persecution of a politically suspect professor to Stalin's purges. Mirzekhanov got the sack, after all, not a bullet in the brain.
Our education system is nevertheless in crisis. Whatever the real reason may be for Mirzekhanov's removal, you can't help but notice that it occurred immediately after he was criticized by Vyacheslav Volodin, a State Duma deputy speaker from United Russia. The response from Saratov State University officials was speedy even by Soviet standards, and today we supposedly have a multiparty political system. Moreover, as Mirzekhanov pointed out, deans at the university are elected by a faculty council.
While the administrators in Saratov are weeding out unsuitable professors, the bureaucrats in Moscow are pushing ahead with education reform. Most recently, they have proposed replacing university entrance exams in history with a standardized test. Professional historians have panned the new test, which assesses little more than an applicant's knowledge of important names and dates - and doesn't even do this very well. The well-known historian Alexander Shubin went on television recently and read a few passages from the test, which contained blatant factual errors.
Errors can be corrected, of course, but what do you do when the testing methodology is flawed? Under the guise of purging "subjectivity" from the social sciences, the government's reform program in fact aims to root out nonconformism and, more broadly, independent thought. For each question there will be one correct answer. No nuances, no considering both sides of an issue, no personal conclusions. One-dimensional knowledge for a society of one-dimensional people.
Curiously, the government justifies the introduction of standardized entrance exams as a measure to fight corruption in the universities, specifically bribery in the admissions process, which includes indirect bribes in the form of payments to secondary school teachers for extra tuition and exam coaching. Corruption certainly exists in our schools, and it is growing as the financing and prestige of education in society continue to decline.
At the same time, education officials act as though they are unaware that paying a bribe to the examiner is no longer the most effective way for well-off young people to buy their way into university. All universities and institutes reserve a certain number of spots in the entering class for fee-paying students, which they sell in full accordance with the law. The number of fee-paying spots will rise steadily under the government's current policy, which is supported by United Russia. In fact, this is the main goal of the ongoing reform program.
But the introduction of a standardized history test, like many other recent innovations, has nothing to do with combating corruption in our schools. We are witnessing the segregation of education, in which access to vital knowledge will be restricted for the majority of young people who can't afford to buy their way into the system. The new education system is not aimed at shaping free men and women and responsible citizens who are capable of independent thought, but specialists capable of little more than carrying out specific and clearly defined orders from their superiors. The mechanisms of social control also include advertising, television programming and the state-controlled media.
The ruling elite has no intention of abandoning its own scions to this fate, however. A few prestigious universities will be reserved for the children of privilege, and most of our future leaders will be educated abroad.
The main weak spot in this plan is the current transition period, when there are still teachers accustomed to thinking for themselves, and students accustomed to asking questions.
Copyright 2006 The Moscow Times
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