View of a Russian Mother

Vladyslav Bondarenko
Doctor Contreras
English 10 H Period 2
September 9 2012
The View of a Russian Mother on American Education Today My mother, Maryna Bondarenko lived in Sverdlovsk, Russia for the first 6 years of her life. The Ural Mountains was a home to her, she clearly enjoyed the bright crisp of the air in the chilly mornings of fall. It would snow early, somewhere around November and the snow will keep falling and lay until beginnings of March. Then her dad, Sergey Kaldyaev, had to move away to Ukraine, Evpatoria because of work issues and other financial instabilities. He worked as a railroad engineer until recent retirement. Soon enough, my mother and my grandmother left all the family in Sverdlovsk and had to come to Evpatoria because according to Sergey, life was getting better near the Black Sea. They settled in a small community of middle class people right in the middle of the city. My mother breathed within the walls of their small apartments of the big five-story building right behind a somewhat mini little playground. In Evpatoria, she made her first step of the long trip of education. She was a short, well-mannered, blond girl, with green alligator eyes, which my dad noticed in the first couple of weeks of seventh grade. My dad and mom met in 7th grade of School № 6 Mathematics and Physics. From then on, my dad flirted with her until in 10th grade they finally decided to date. My dad liked her because of her neatness and organization skills. She had every minute of her day planned out: 8 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. was school, after school she would rush home, make lunch for herself because usually her parents were not home, and then head out to musical school, which lasted until about 7 p.m. Afterwards she would come home and finish her daily homework. Lastly, she would try going to sleep as early as possible. She always had been a perfectionist. She carried all her books and notebooks to every class, along with her pens and other utensils. Neatness and organization skills were taught to all kids from first grade and because of these skills, she was a straight-A student. Sometimes she would have free time and would devote it to dancing, clearly a hobby she has enjoyed all her life. She would perform at concerts and theatrical performances. Clearly, one would see that my mom was and still is a very busy person with little time on her hands; she uses every little bit of it in an effective way.
In the Russian school education system, one is required to have at minimum of two notebooks for each class. One called the “black” notebook, in which you can practice all you want, and the other the “clean”, which you turn in to the teacher with perfect homework and assignments neatly done. My mother once told me that she would be sitting there, at the table in her room, rewriting her homework 5 to 6 times to get everything to perfection because if there is at least one drip of ink or a mistake on that paper, the teacher will lower your grade by a full mark. If there were too much mistakes, the teacher would hand back your clean notebook and ask you to redo the assignment. There were no punishments, just peer pressure. Your own friends would discriminate and bully you for being stupid in class. They can take you out of their group or clique just because you did not do your homework countless times. You were forced to do your best by your fellow peers, family, teachers, and by yourself because you knew that if you did not finish homework then you would not be able to go outside and relax in the last sunny days before the cold winter frost comes in.
To conclude, my mother strongly believes “The American Education System does not educate children organization, carefulness, planning and neatness as much as the Russian Education System of the 1980’s”. Someone has to teach our kids the elementary things –organization, planning, and neatness. This uncontrolled chaos of education on little scraps of paper, without full-on fully filled notebooks of pure notes is soon going to be passed on to the next generation of unorganized, untidy little people. My mother thinks that our generation is slowly demoralizing. She said, “I’ve been taught for 11 years in school to know how to organize and plan not just my things, but my brain too, and some people have been taught for 12 years and still cannot do it.”