Why I'm not longer going to school in Smolensk

It is a shame that the government-run public schools in Russia are left to the fraudulent bureaucratic side of things where the common bonus structures lead to corporate corruption, fraud and other forms of unethical behaviour involving headmasters and their deputy directors. At the same time school teachers live at or under the federal poverty level; as we can see, it is almost impossible to reverse the moral degradation of school staff here once it has taken hold.

Surprisingly, being within the poverty threshold, public schoolteachers in this country never resist role as 'concealed administrative resource' in Russia's national elections. Unfortunately, putinism  has transformed the teachers into slaves of a particular type — the slaves are struggling for the right to remain slaves. It looks like a kind of pareidolia in which teachers respond to a stimulus, by perceiving pattern of patriotism where none exists.

Why do school headmasters ask you to do something unethical in your job? Why do teachers publish in "sham" journals falsify data? Why do school staff members and administrators ignore pupils' misbehaviour? Why do teachers actively cheat in their school records which leads to a huge personal tragedy for the children and their parents when unscrupulous students beat out honest, hard-working applicants for university spots? Answers to these and similar questions will clearly contribute to better understanding the depth of the problem.

Similarly, the pupils are affected negatively thus their future prospects are compromised. The teens feel frustrated with the status quo, pessimistic about the possibility of change, and torn between their dreams for the future and the rigid bell-ridden schooling designed to prepare indentured servants harvesting for the party elite. That said, this goes with lowered productivity and absenteeism.

To make things worse, last month the school told that the teachers could keep their position only if they were fully vaccinated with unproven Sputnik COVID jab in two doses. But, legally, no, you can't be forced to take a vaccine; you're not going to be physically restrained and given a vaccine by any legitimate public health authority...

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I simply could not cope up with this toxic unethical school culture and refused to work for any who did this. That's why I left school.

My Writing Techniques

    So I decided to risk writing this blog post focusing exclusively on recycling my literary wares. I still don’t want you to think that learning to write with clarity, emphasis, and style is easy. It’s not.

    1. Create a vivid expression
    Listen to your language . Well-chosen words can make your writing memorable. Here is a title by Margaret Mitchell with one word altered.

    Gone With the Snow.

    Here is the original tittle.

    Gone With the Wind.

    Can you feel the cold damage done by the former security agency contractor Snowden who has no regrets from leaking the biggest cache of top-secret documents?

    2. Write with detail
    Move beyond generality and abstraction.

    World Cup gave Putin cover for pension-age increase.

    Immediately after Russia’s 5-0 victory over Saudi Arabia in the opening game of the World Cup, president Putin’s government pushed for a bill to raise progressively the national pension age, thereby steadily decreasing the probability of surviving until retirement for more than 5 million elderly people.

    Which of the two sentences above makes you think?

    3. Appeal to the senses
    Don’t tell the reader; show the reader.

    Change “There are still a lot of wild animals and birds of prey in the forest. ” to “Bears and wolves lurk in the thickets, and white-tailed eagles circle above the forest canopy”.

    4. Collect good words that are just right for your intended meaning
    After listening to hundreds of teachers tell their stories, I have reached the conclusion that there is one deciding factor that makes the difference in whether the teachers in any given school will lean toward positive and productive or desperate and crushed: that factor is the administrator.

    Change “factor” to “element”

   After listening to hundreds of teachers tell their stories, I have reached the conclusion that there is one deciding element that makes the difference in whether the teachers in any given school will lean toward positive and productive or desperate and crushed: that element is the administrator.

     Some other techniques are outlined below:

• appropriate level of formality; delete “that” for rhythm and flow; avoid indefinite negatives; eliminate wordy references to time; don’t trust modifiers; use strong verbs and don’t nominalise; unstack those noun stacks; prefer the active voice; keep your verbs near their subjects and avoid mid-sentence shifts; punctuate for emphasis and use dashes for dashing effect; use ellipses for compression; use semicolons to both separate and connect; delight your readers with classic two-way setup; use antithesis; build towards climax; trim sentence endings for closing emphasis; end with the thought you intended to develop next; use three-part paragraphs (topic, development, resolution) to frame your thoughts; write in sentences but think in paragraphs; use parallel structures to create rhythm; use periodic sentences instead of loose ones to create suspense; use anaphora and epistrophe, anadiplosis and isocolon, analogies and comparisons; return to your metaphors and similes; avoid cliches; write with personal and style; add a light-hearted touch to your writing; know your options for comic effect; go beyond clarity to eloquence and grace; develop your persona to be Christian; 
• and finally, start with something old and end with something new.

     If you’re a teacher, feel free to skip around. Assign the techniques in any order that suits your purpose. Use my examples to create your own.

Russia’s Education Woes

     We will often find that the reformers of  our education system including Olga Vasilieva, the Minister of Education and Science of Russia, went to traditional school. I believe they perhaps had a few boring teachers, or they felt education was too traditional for them, so they come out and spent their lives trying to reform the education system as best they can. And they mistakenly think that the Russian children nowadays are receiving the same eduction as the one they did.
     However, the result is that they create the situation where a number of children no longer have access to that essential ‘bag of goodies’. A bag of goodies which they themselves got from their traditional educations and have benefited from this bag so well throughout their lives. In other words they climbed the ladder to the top then ‘unwittingly’ pulled the ladder up from under them.
     A number of reformers in our education system believe, for instance, that we are educating our children for the 19th century world. But it would be a mistake to believe that our classrooms are like the 19th century classrooms: there are no canes, no inkwells, no cursive writing, no memorisation, no rote learning, no chanting – no; there’s lots of group learning , there’s lots of asking the children what they think of their teacher and so on – nothing like the 19th century classroom.
     I believe that in fact the problem is that the reformers    misunderstand what ought to be in that bag of goodies –  they misunderstand the essential parts. Let’s take Eton, for example. For super-wealthy Russian MPs, education at one of Britain’s top traditional boarding schools has become as desirable as a pad in Mayfair. Kitting out your little Boris or Svetlana in boaters and blazers has a particular cachet, and that is unlikely to change even if sanctions affect Russia’s relationship with the West (in Sep 2016 Eton boys secured private audience at the Kremlin with Vladimir Putin).
      Eton has very traditional education;  and I’m sure everyone would agree that this is an extraordinary school. Though Eton has two interactive white-boards in its school – we have more interactive board in any primary school here in Smolenk than in Eton. Yet, in the state sector every classroom has in interactive white board, every teacher (there is an expectation) should be using those interactive white boards.
     In Eton where there is a very good education, children will learn Geography instead of taking Travel & Tourism courses: in Eton, they are doing Geography, Ancient History and Latin, and so on.
     One can hardly accuse Eton of  not being able to create creative thinkers when the likes of George Orwell, Hugh Laurie and James Bond himself (or rather I suppose I should say Ian Fleming) went to Eton.
     There’s a quote that I like which sums up what I’m saying: “The education that is best for the best is the education that is best for all.” And I believe that only when we understand the concept of rejecting some reform and embracing some tradition, only then will we be able to move our schools out of chaos and place them firmly in the 21st century.

Degradation

The days of chivalry and respect seem to be long gone these days. Over the past 15 years or so many people who live in Smolensk have become more rude and disrespectful. I believe there are many contributing factors that have led to this rudeness. Selfishness and greed for money have led to many other byproducts such as disrespect to people and the lack of accountability to anyone. Kids treat their parents and teachers with disrespect and also treat each other badly. 

I am a school teacher and have been for about 4 years now. For just the time I have taught at school I have seen a complete turnaround from when I came. The disrespect and attitude that some of people have is crazy.

We don’t question the conventional wisdom that childhood is in crisis; we want to say that poverty and terribly low moral standards that engulfed substantial majority of families and darkened their lives have become a new issue for the state system of education. It is not simply about raising the price of education; many more fundamental problems arise – schools know much more about the state of Russia Olympic Team than they do about the state of their children. It shows that there is a lot of hypocrisy and double standard practices within the national education system.

Even further, this seems to be the age of tolerance and acceptance because we are all forced to accept someone's wrong-doings. Society is in fear about being accountable and being able to tell someone else that they are doing something wrong. The Moscow Patriarchate headed by ecumenical patriarch Cyrill has allowed this to creep in the very fabric of Russian way of life, where we get the ‘feel good’ gospel and sin is overlooked and become accepted by every civilian institution.

There are many things to blame on this but it all comes back to selfishness. All good manners can be summed up in one sentence: Do unto others as you would have them to do unto you. In other words, treat others as you want to be treated.

School Theatre Goes all Shakespearean

PROLOGUE.

Great tensions produce great art. 1606, the year the Gunpowder Plot produced, besides Macbeth (an allegory of the Descent into hell), also King Lear (sacrificial, all-forgiving death) and Antony and Cleopatra (an allegory of the Resurrection). The transition from the Roman Catholic Church to Protestant Reformation profoundly influenced Shakespeare’s work. By the time he began writing plays himself, dramatization organized by the gilds was dead and buried...

ACT I

[Enter School teacher]

SCHOOL TEACHER. Shakespeare was a protest playwright who portrayed the world with expressiveness and dignity and the size of the plays in the biggest possible terms and pictures. Now, can I paint two little pictures for you? And you promise not to snigger. Can we do that? I am going to be very monosyllabic indeed. OK…

CHORUS I. Shakespeare was perfectly aware where the revolution ended / Inducing paranoia and suspicions / To an unparalleled degree / – In hell, / Where the ghost of Hamlet’s father came from. (Fig. 1)

CHORUS II. To be or not to be: / Is it better to live or die? / In  a world that feels so 'weary, state, and unprofitable'. (Fig. 2)

SCHOOL TEACHER. But while great art can mirror great tensions, it cannot disperse them: from this time English society became increasingly polarized between Catholics and Protestants, loyalists and revolutionaries, old feudal ways and new bourgeois ambitions.

ACT II

[Enter King, Queen, Polonious, School teacher]

SCHOOL TEACHER. We may suppose that Shakespeare felt the tug of revolutionary tendencies and to some extent sympathized with them. Thus there is real passion in Hamlet’s attempt to cast the light on the false King Claudius. And so the scene was set for the English revolution:

HAMLET. What, frighted with false fire!

QUEEN. How fares my lord?

POLONIOUS. Give o’er the play.

KING. Give me some light. Away.

POLONIOUS. Lights, lights, lights!

CHORUS 1, CHORUS 2.

  But man, proud man,

  Dress’d in a little brief authority.

  Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d –

  His glassy essence – like an angry ape

  Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven

  As makes the angles weep:

  Who, with our spleens.

  Would all themselves laugh mortal.

EPILOGUE

Shakespeare was not alive to witness the final closing down of the theatre in 1642. The whole of this solid Globe came to great crisis of morals, religion and government and the sprawling of the egalitarian and liberal bawdy culture in the modern world.