The education system in Romania has been stuck in a vicious circle for decades. The poor results of the students, which were observed especially after the international tests, are, among other things, the consequence of a deficient teaching method, but also the result of an infusion of poorly trained teachers. Which, in the beginning, were poorly prepared students, say education experts.
Students enter college already tired. Archive
This is the reason we tried, together with two university professors, to create the profile of the student entering the first year of college from the point of view of his level of preparation. The bottom line? Young people are divided into at least two large categories: the very poorly trained, who come out of high school without a bit of general culture, and those who, although they are intelligent and educated, have an almost visceral sense of everything that school means. The reason? These children came out of an education system corseted in decades-old paradigms, where there was never enough time for critical thinking, freedom of expression and value judgments.
Therefore, the high school students were soaked to the brim with information, but without having time to digest it, assimilate it, assimilate it, and then apply it in everyday life. So working in the classroom quickly before and after an extremely busy schedule has produced, over generations, children who do not have the ability to cope in everyday life.
First year students, at a level of absolute mediocrity
“My biggest takeaway at every first-year start is when I interact with students mine, is the almost complete non-existence of information related to the general culture”, Bogdan Bucur, sociologist and professor at SNSPA, told “Adevărul”. The teacher explained an exercise that he practices frequently and with the help of which he manages to probe the level of education of the young people on the spot. “I open the YouTube app and play them a famous aria from a popular opera, for example, ‘La Traviata’ by Verdi or the ballet ‘Swan Lake’ by Tchaikovsky. And from a room of almost 30 people, hardly one or two of them recognize these songs. And the examples can go on: young people do not differentiate between architectural genres, they cannot distinguish between a Gothic and a Baroque building. And we are not talking about small buildings, but about the great constructions of humanity, which are masterpieces of European civilization”, specified the specialist.
Likewise, he continues, young first-year students do not identify the main styles in terms of visual arts, the main musical genres. “And I mean symphonic music and opera music. I do not know the great writers of the world, nor well-known works of universal literature. I know almost nothing about national and European dramaturgy. Many have never read a Shakespeare play in their lives.”
What is the reason for these cultural gaps? First, the education system that provided these children with almost no such information. Or, if he did, they were not assimilated, on the one hand because of the lack of time allocated to study at school, on the other hand because of a deficient and outdated teaching method. University professor Ovidiu Pânișoara stated in this sense that today’s school must be built for today’s student. “Kids now have information a click away. Go to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. And the school has to keep up with the times, with technique, with technology and digitization. And they have to deliver their information in such a way that it reaches their children. Do you know how school is? Like a chef who only knows how to make schnitzel with mash, and oily ones at that. For a while, the child only ate from this menu. But at some point, fast food appeared. And our chef couldn’t keep up anymore,” the specialist explained the state of the Romanian school.
However, Professor Bucur believes that the Romanian pre-university system overperforms in relation to the resources it has and the low salary level of teachers. “You can issue claims of dissatisfaction when you allocate resources and they are wasted, unutilized, when they are not used properly. But you can’t criticize a system where for almost 20 years only poorly trained teachers enter, in the idea that the good ones, because of the low salaries, go to other fields”.
The consequence of this almost disastrous mobility on the labor market and which directly affects education is the poor preparation of students who leave school without any general culture. They are parachuted directly into the faculties’ banks only on the basis of grades and in order of Baccalaureate averages. In the most fortunate case, because there are many faculties that also accept students who have failed the matriculation exam. Only the top universities, which you can count on your fingers, still organize exams. It is the reason why many of the young people entering the first year “I am at a level of absolute mediocrity, not to say ignorance,” confesses prof. Bogdan Bucur. The teacher told us that his mission is a very difficult one, because he has to take these children and raise them to a higher level. “The teacher’s mission is to take the student from where he is and make him reach his maximum potential. But, beware! The job of the education system and the teacher is not to get everyone out of grade 10. If the student is grade 2 and you, as a teacher, manage to raise him to grade 6, you have ticked off a huge achievement. If you take it from grade 1 and raise it to 4, it’s still a performance.”
Young people have grown up in a culture of deep demotivation. “We must cure them of lehamites”
University professor Ovidiu Pânișoara believes that today’s young people are smarter than those of past generations. And that’s because they live in a world of progress and science, they have access to information, to technique, to technology, they were born and live in a modern world, developed on all levels and which continues to develop with a terrific speed. “The problem with which students enter college is related to a kind of lehamites that these children have inherited from their pre-university education. I come with a certain state of saturation given the way the school is done. And here the teachers are not necessarily to blame, but school programs which do not allow the teachers to build a thorough knowledge, but only transmit it and that’s it”.
Ovidiu Pânișoara stated that today’s student is connected to the information that he comes to possess instantly thanks to the technology he is exposed to. “In certain situations, he doesn’t even have to memorize it because he already has it. However, he must be motivated. And this is what I struggle to do: to remotivate these children who grew up in a culture of deep demotivation. I have to remodel them, dismantle them to the last piece and rebuild their motivational structure. Because these young people are no longer motivated by anyone or anything. He is in a deep state of lethargy. Not all of them, obviously. But I’m referring to a trend I’ve been noticing for some time.”
Therefore, continues the specialist, first you need to cure the lehamitis disease that children suffer from, and then build their motivation. “And the pre-university system here lost a lot: it put this mission of motivating children’s spirit last.”
Ovidiu Pânișoara confesses that in the case of a student who comes with informational gaps but is motivated to recover, the teacher’s battle is won from the start. “But what do you do with a child who has a lot of information, but wants nothing more from life?” The teacher bitterly admits that this lehamite is deepening and spreading like a plague among the youth.
Solutions. Change comes from society, not necessarily from the system
What should be done to stop the expansion of this madness at the level of the education system? In the idea in which it has not already made an appearance. “To have teachers who can motivate students”believes Ovidiu Pânișoara. However, these teachers must also, in turn, be motivated “The man who came to education came to change the world. As long as the world allowed itself to be changed and was grateful for it. The salary was low, but for many it was not an impediment. We are talking about people who entered the system because they felt valuable to society. Because they wanted to change things for the better. The problem is that the system is very obtuse about the value of someone who wants to change something. And I’m not necessarily referring here to the education system, but to society itself, which doesn’t give a damn about anything.”
Change, therefore, must occur here. At the level of society’s mentality. “The people of education they also leave because they are disappointed by a system that does not let them build. They go there happy that they will build a cathedral, but once they arrive, all they get is a wheelbarrow of adobe”.
And then, when a dejected, indifferent teacher enters the classroom, with no desire to get involved, no heart, how do you ask the children to take wings and fly?
