Skolashi: Part 2

Yesterday marked the start of the second week of school for this new semester, and as such it's probably a good time to finish my thoughts from a post a long time ago, in a blog archive far far away...

As mentioned previously, I'm not an education major, or a trained teacher. These are all just observations as someone who made it out of the American public school system relatively unscathed, so you might want to take all of this with a grain of salt.

Anyway, geronimo!

Every single issue I've encountered thus far in my school can be summed into one nice and tidy word - culture.

What I mean by this is that it's not only a language barrier, lack of comprehensive books, or a strict adherence to a pretty meaningless timetable that render most English classes in my school as unproductive, because all of these play a huge part in the issue. Yet the cherry on top is the biggest problem I've run into, and unfortunately it's the one that I'm really incapable of changing. It's entrenched itself into the very existence of all my kids, their parents, and indeed the very infrastructure of this little country.

I'm about to blow all of your minds right now. Are you ready for this? Ok, here it goes...

Georgia's culture is super different from English culture.

Whoa. I'm going to let that one sink in for a minute.

You back now? Ok. Allons-y!

So, our dear MacMillan books are published in Britain, meaning that my kids are all speaking British English. They're learning words like "maths" and "lorries" and are being yelled at if they don't use "has got" in sentences. There are questionable uses of "so" as a conjunctive, and I absolutely hate hate hate that they say "rubbers" instead of "erasers." The dialogues don't really teach useful conversational vocabulary, and the CD's with accompanying audio speak so fast and are so heavily accented that there are times that it takes me, a native speaker, a minute to figure out what the fuck it is that they're saying.

But I can deal with these things. They're workable. What isn't workable is the apparent battle of east vs. west that is taking place in the more abstract sense. These books are written by British English speakers, probably white, and are mass produced only in English so that they can attempt to be universal in the teaching English world, which, spoilers, isn't really westernized...

You might be saying to yourself, "Jobags, this is all pretty obvious. You're not telling us anything we don't already know." I get that. You're a smart and educated person, and I'm not trying to belittle you.  I'm just trying to make sure you're with me when I tell you that before these books, my kids have never seen a multiple choice question, and that they've never seen a fill in the blank style activity with vocabulary words, and that word banks are something that haven't been in their scholastic lives ever until now. Things that you and I take for granted because we are part of a society in which we learn how to correctly use a dictionary to find the letter we want are exactly the things that make these books less than ideal for here, because none of those things are really taught or encouraged.

In America people that don't score well on multiple choice tests are considered "stupid."1 This is because from a very young age we learn how to navigate multiple choice questions. Every single class in elementary school has some kind of multiple choice element, and kids get practice with it constantly. We're taught the most effective ways of scoring points on larger exams, and that the results of these exams will not only dictate what kind of university we can hope to get into someday, but how much external funding for our future education we might be able to receive. On the whole, we're brought up to practically do multiple choice in our sleep. The same goes for a plethora of other activities to test our knowledge about a subject. Every textbook for every class in public schools will ensure that kids are able to properly apply their new found knowledge in a bunch of different ways. American schools are grade centric; every thing we do gets a score on it, and we have progress reports, parent teacher conferences to discuss how we're doing in class, and report cards on a regular basis. We lose points for missing class, for being disruptive to our peers, for not knowing material. There are a million little factors that constitute the letter grade we receive, and we're highly aware of all of them.

But that's not the case here. Attendance in school isn't really heavily enforced - I've got one girl in second grade who maybe came to class a third of the time before break, and I have yet to see her this semester. I asked my coteacher if she was ok, and Natia gave me a look like I was insane and said, "Yes, she is fine. Lizi is just a very lazy girl and does not like school, so she does not come." I wish I had that option growing up, because I definitely would have just stayed home and read and watched documentaries on the Discovery Channel. My teachers have gradebooks, but they don't write down numbers for each kid every day, instead only sometimes giving 9s or 10s for the students that participated a lot in any given class period. Forget homework scores, because I'm pretty sure if my teacher likes the student and they messed up a bit they will still get a higher number in their notebook than a less cute kid who might've gotten a few more questions correct. So homework scores are arbitrary and ultimately meaningless because the scores for these exercises don't get transferred to the official gradebook anyway, which beckons the question, "What's the point?"

Parent-teacher interaction is limited to teachers writing down disappointed feelings in students notebooks for them to show their family. Occasionally a parent will drop their kid off at class in the morning and they'll stay and chat with us for a minute, but it usually is to tell me I am a beautiful and good girl instead of any kind of interest in how their child is doing in class. I haven't seen a physical report card, or anything resembling an actual grade, and the only type of test I've seen my kids take, outside of the ones Lamara gives my older kids, was an optional standardized test which you a) have to pay for, and b) have to go to Tbilisi to take, which drastically cuts the number of children who are even eligible to take it down by an astronomical amount.

And speaking of tests, my kids are terrible test takers. Lamara will use examples pulled straight out of their workbooks, which means that the tests are, verbatim, exercises they've done, in formats that they've seen and familiarized themselves with for a few years now. With only a handful of exceptions who actually complete the tests, most of my kids hand in their paper having only finished a question or two. In a 45 minute period. I was really perplexed by this, so I started paying attention a bit more during their next test and found that this seeming lack of effort wasn't that at all - when one of my kids gets stuck, they just stare and stare at the question, hoping to think of the answer. If they can't, then they just never move on, resulting in only one or two questions having any kind of a response. It was a bizarre feeling, having to explain to my classes that if they don't know an answer right away to go onto the next one and come back later, since that seemed like just such common sense to my standardized test centric American brain.

But it's not common sense for here.

There are so many little things that I've done since I was young that just are not a part of educational life for my lovely, tiny Georgian kids. Simple things, like copying down full words or sentences, and paying attention to copying them down correctly, is probably one of the hardest things I can ask them to do, other than spell words on their own. It's really, really weird, and I've never seen anything like it.

Also hard for them are independent creative thoughts. And I'm not even asking them to write the next great American novel. All I want are simple sentences using the vocabulary or grammar that we JUST went over, and they look at me like I might as well be asking them to write the next great American novel. My kids are amazing and wonderful at memorizing things and spitting responses back to you so long as you follow the same script they memorized. The answer to the question, "How are you?" is always, "Fine thanks, and you?" Even if they're not fine. One of my first graders lost their father over Christmas break, and that was still the answer he gave me. And not to be culturally insensitive about this, cause I realize that it's a private matter and all, but YOU'RE NOT FINE!! Say, "Not good," or, "Bad." Hell, I will even take a, "So-so!" Anything, as long as it's not the bullshit, "Fine thanks, and you," that I am just so fed up with hearing. All of my kids do it. That's how they always respond to that question, and it drives me nuts. No variation. No deviation. Always, "Fine thanks, and you."

Once I realized that my kids just memorize specific sentences and phrases, I decided to check out a Georgian textbook for one of their other classes. I just happened to look at the one for their history class, and a lot of things clicked. Like how at the end of chapters there are no review questions. There's nothing that asks for any sort of recall on the material you just read, no questions that make you come up with your own thoughts that have to be substantiated by the prior material. I borrowed my host sisters biology book, and it was the same sort of deal - absolutely no questions at the end of chapters. The same is true in every book I've looked at, with the notable exception of math texts. Aside from not getting to speak a lot of English each week (we're still at about 20 minutes a week of class time where they get to actually speak), they also are only encountering these types of prompts in one of their books, so they're not getting any kind of decent practice and familiarity with these question formats, on top of the fact that the books are only in English with no kind of Georgian direction or anything. Can you blame them for being so confused? Because I sure can't. Especially when the way in which they learn every other bit of information given to them by school (i.e. memorizing) just doesn't cut it anymore for this ONE class in which they have zero idea what the hell is going on ever cause it's in a different language and it assumes a different basal understanding than what the kids themselves have!

And it's not even like the memorizing standard is unique only to my school. Numerous other volunteers have noticed it, and I've even seen it inside my own family, whose kids go to another school in town. Watching my host sister and brother do their [non-English] homework is very strange because they just read over something a bunch of times, and then start saying the text aloud, and then when they can recite it all to their mother from memory they're done.

...Uh...buh...? What?

That doesn't do anything! Memorization, straight up, is not the correct way to test your understanding of a subject! My kids can sit there and say the alphabet all day long and say it correctly, but independent recall of stand alone letters? Nope. They're lost. And it's great that they're memorizing whole phrases, but when we need them to make up a new sentence they're just hopelessly lost because they don't understand how verbs and adjectives and nouns all work, and what you change or anything like that, because the books just aren't built for it. So I'm sitting there in class, playing remedial grammar, in Georgian (you know, that language I DON'T speak!), so that my kids can see what all is happening in the English sentences. And even then, once I get them sort of on the same page as me, my host teachers get frustrated with them that they can't commit to memory the nine new words we gave them. I've tried to get them to use flash cards, but teaching my teachers how to do drills with them has proved pretty fruitless. I keep trying every so often, but Lamara insists that having Georgian on the cards is detrimental and that they should be able to just remember what the words mean immediately. The woman has been teaching for 47 years, and I'm her third English coteacher. I highly doubt I will be able to change anything with her.

This might seem like a highly critical entry at this moment, and it's really not meant to be. I'm just trying to paint you the picture of the kind of shit I'm dealing with at school so that when I ask this next question you might be able to help me out with finding an answer.

Given the numerous differences between Georgia and the English speaking world, why do we assume that imposing a western educational system on an eastern societal infrastructure will work?

I get that MacMillian's decision to sell their books only in English is a very smart move from a business perspective. And you know, these books would actually be fairly decent if the teachers were trained to use them. But they're not. My coteachers don't understand all of the activities even. They don't ever deviate from what's in the book. They're very focused on maintaining a certain amount of material to go through for each grade, and if kids are left behind then it's just too bad. And since kids aren't really motivated to do well in class unless their parents are really urging them, the ones that fall behind tend to stay behind.

Realistically, last semester made me understand two things.

1) The money for the program I am a part of, the program that brought me to this awesome place that I love, and is paying for me to be a part of not only these kids lives but also my host family's, would be so much better spent right now on Georgian teacher development. I understand the desire to have English speakers in schools for pronunciation reasons, but bring them back in a few years. Right now, focus on having the actual local teachers able to deal with these books in the correct manner. Give them ways of dealing with behavioral issues, question formats, and external activities that all can be applied to an eastern world instead of just trying to hammer the proverbial square into the circle over and over again. Also, if you are going to use a curriculum which is highly dependent on audio disks, make sure that you can supply all of your schools with electricity so that they can actually utilize these resources. In other words, as my friend so succinctly put it, "If you are going to demand western expectations, provide western infrastructure."

2) The story of the schools, and how things are run here, is in no way unique to Georgia. In fact, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of parallels to inner city underfunded public schools in America. Education (ready for a blanket statement to end all blanket statements?), in most of the world, is really a privilege of those who can afford it. The average Georgian is unable to afford it, so many families don't really put that much emphasis on it, especially when teachers just write off kids as being "lazy" or "slow" if they don't understand something right away. It's a really vicious cycle, and it's going to take more than anything I can ever hope to do to change it.

But at the end of the day, it's not really up to me to fix everything in the Georgian educational system. All I can do is try to work with my coteachers, who sometimes very handily regress in their English speaking abilities, and stay as positive as I possibly can with the kids. I just got all of them little notebooks, and I told them I want between one and three sentences that they come up with every single day. The sentences can be about anything they want - the weather, what they want, where they went, how they feel, a cat that gets superpowers and goes to fight crime. I don't really care what it is, so long as it's in English, and that they are slowly able to realize how much they actually know versus how much they think they know. The news of these journals has been met with both excitement and confusion, because I'm pretty sure no teacher in the history of their lives has ever asked them to just write silly little phrases five days a week, but there you go. I'm a weird American, who encourages weird American things, so if it will help them learn this stupid ass language which you and I are fluent in, then that's all that I care about.



1. And no, I don't agree with it. Personally, I'm rubbish with multiple choice tests because I get super stressed out about them and tend to just fucking forget EVERYTHING I EVER KNEW ABOUT ANYTHING except for obscure Star Trek history, or something else that's totally useless for my completing the exam with any kind of hope for a decent score. But on a whole, our "smartness" is usually boiled down to a stupid number that just means we chose a bunch of circles correctly.