Further to the previous entry, the group has been promptly cancelled and I shall not enter a Bulgarian school for the time being. I was allowed inside a classroom a couple of times, however did not come to open the coursebook or start work with the children. The brief chance to look inside a state school got me thinking about the differences and similarities of private and state schooling. An entry I've been meaning to write for awhile.
School in Bulgaria, in general, has always brought on mixed feelings, mostly of anxiety and imagined illness, that would excuse me from attending. It's odd how instantly when I was invited to meet up inside the school I did not feel at ease. I wondered would they really stick to all the old rules of blue uniforms with white collars and red scarves (for the young pioneers)? Would the students on call, ask the group to greet me, and report on the absent students, as we used to do in high school? Would there be an enormous portrait of Todor Zhivkov (former communist dictator) hanging above the blackboard? Would there be a blackboard with chalk and a mouldy wet rag by a bucket or a whiteboard with a marker and eraser set? Would I be asked to quiz students verbally and enter subjective grades in a big green roster called "dnevnik"?
When I finally entered the school corridor I felt happy, there was nothing dreary about it, plenty of potted flowers and plants; amazing murals I thought only existed on UNAM's walls; a school cafeteria with a nice menu I'd not seen in years; groups of noisy children running about or sitting on the floor drawing. It almost reminded me of an artsy club we used to go to to look at art, listen to music, and watch short films. What with its parquet wooden floors, light flooding through enormous windows onto rows and rows of hard-back chairs, poster and drawings adorned walls. Schools if you look at them holistically are palatial, and certainly a hub of all art forms.
So, on the whole I quite enjoyed all interviews and the near close encounter of teaching at a state school. From what I could take in it differed little from the private schools where I've had the opportunity to teach, not in Europe but in Latin America. In terms of resources it seemed low on technology, I didn't see a computer lab. Despite this, I recall that our Bulgarian state high school, had a lab with the first Pravetz-82 computers. Oddly Pravetz is the home-town of above mentioned Bulgarian president Todor Zhivkov, famous for its (now closed) computer plant. On that note, I'm certain a good percentage of Bulgarian state schools provide PCs for their students, be it Bulgarian or foreign.
On the other hand, in Mexico I remember it was impossible to get students to use the computer lab on their own, unless of course it was for the purposes of computer class. For which there was almost never a teacher, as it is a small town and quite low on teaching staff. As well as it might have been equipped the technology was misused and underused. At that age it is something students still take for granted. My university students who pay tuition fees through the nose are hardly ever found behind a computer or in the library, unless it's for a last minute project, let alone high school students who aren't required anything more than the occasional writing assignment. I hate to be a prophet of lies, but if they spend as much time on the Internet as I do researching their major I would be out of all classroom presential work.
What I found most off-putting, and this is something that I've not been able to avoid at primary and secondary school level, is the aggression used to project the teacher's voice and get student's attention. I've always felt like a demented out-of-control mother with more children than she can handle, when shouting at students. The aggression then translates to the students' and teachers' home environment and it can become quite messy and unpleasant. Mexican schools provide a more caring environment, because they are Catholic colleges. Their society revolves around the Catholic church. A teacher achieves respect because his/her vocation rests on the Catholic faith. Classically, Mexican teachers, in their majority, are priests or nuns.
Bulgarian schools used to place emphasis on Marxist teachings. This is what formed our thinking, morals and self-discipline. Now that there is so little faith in a newly-formed democratic system, I can't say how students are disciplined at that age. Without a doubt, however, the head-teacher's voice, at one point, sounded quite hysterical. Making it again a strangely hostile environment that I would mind going into.
What do we usually consider when entering the process of choosing a private or state school? Family tradition (not necessarily a custom in Bulgaria, but a factor in Mexico); expensive tuition fees, which according to an article I'm reading as I write, are not more expensive than housing next to good state schools. Although, I remember living far away from the state junior and high schools we attended with my brother in the US, and this was resolved by an efficient school bus system, so even that shouldn't be a problem if there is a well-funded educational system. I wouldn't necessarily agree that independent schools have a broader curriculum. In smaller teaching communities the same teachers are employed in both state and private schools, and their training and the criteria set by the educational body are the same. The same annual school academies are attended by both state and private institutions and this is where the curriculum is defined. As a result equality in the curriculum is achieved. To be fair, the standards set by the US state schools I am familiar with are higher than the standards set in the schools I've attended and taught in Mexico and Bulgaria. Of course I have no knowledge of American independent schools, or any European educational institution outside Bulgaria, and it is still difficult to compare, in that sense. Group size could certainly be a factor. Private schools have the upper-hand here, they do manage to have smaller groups of pupils. They have higher selection criteria which reduces classroom size. This could improve weaker students' academic performance who would be left lagging behind in a less-disciplined environment with bigger groups. Exam results are possibly better in private schools, and so are the social advantages. Mexican schools have excellent exchange programmes between schools of the same religious order. State schools don't cater as well for students with special needs, so that too should be considered.
The biggest strain if a family decides to enrol their children in a private school are the fees. There are payment plans, of course, and scholarships, but most families manage by carefully budgeting and doing without quite a few luxuries. What I find fundamentally wrong is that education has been turned into a business, and the emphasis is placed on a very capitalist concept that of money going to money. I was brought up in a communist society where the option of private schooling was only available abroad, and has only now become a trend. My first experience of private education was as a teacher not as a paying parent abroad in Mexico not at home in Bulgaria. Therefore, these ideas are still quite rudimentary. To paraphrase another source, it is unlikely that a government designed system is more foolproof than a system created by market forces. It is an eye-opener for me that a free market builds quality. I am still a learning novice, mostly privately-funded and often state-schooled.
The following links provide further reading:
http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/iadeghe/entry/private_vs_state/, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article591256.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1
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