A couple of days ago I had a dream in which I owned a school in Varna. I had hired the brightest international professors to teach. My students were occupied with various extra-curricular activities. It felt great until I woke up in the morning and checked my e-mail.
My friend had forwarded me a link to a YouTube video of Bulgarian high school students in an English class from March 2008. They were yelling, insulting and even beating their female teacher. They were, what seemed to be, celebrating the cultural decadence and lack of values of their generation. The video was more than shocking.
I browsed through YouTube only to find an abundance of similar videos. During high school classes, students were demonstratively talking on the phone, dancing and playing games. By the teachers' faces, I could see this was the routine and not an exception.
I went back in time to remember my personal experiences in high school. Yes, students were chatting, passing notes or eating in class. Yes, they were napping, arriving late or leaving early without any valid excuses. Yet to me it seemed they were not paying attention in a respectful manner.
The student behavior that I saw online, however, exceeds all norms. After watching the video, I instantly put the blame on the students. Then, I decided, it was the home environment that played a major role in shaping such identities. Parents, who work until late at night (or even abroad) to provide for their families, don't exactly have the chance to be role models. More often than not, what they bring home is bitterness and anger. So, when it comes down to it, the governmental inefficiency is to blame the most for the current state of the next generation of young people in Bulgaria.
Naturally, this is no surprise for anyone remotely familiar with the Bulgarian government. But what I, personally, found surprising in my realization was its possible universality. I can easily picture the same situation taking place in other countries in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. Another YouTube browsing and I discovered similar aggressive and degrading behaviors in schools in Romania, Russia, Serbia and Greece.
The implications of a such broader trend are truly scary. They even make me dream of not getting into academia but in politics.
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3 comments:
"we are, we are... the youth of the nation"
Dobra tochka, baby. Education has abs no value in a country like Bulgaria. And, we can't judge kids for grasping that concept from an early age.
Diplomas are 180 lv. Talk about education value.
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