Traveler, Writer, Aquarius, Peace Corps Volunteer
The evidence
<< previous next>>
When I asked to teach at a school of higher education in Ukraine, I had a picture in my head of crumbling Byzantine edifices with towering spires piercing the sky, whose hallowed halls echoed with the academic chatter of the pursuit of learning. I imagined the professors, venerable crusty men with full beards draped in tweed, a pipe in one hand and brandy in the other, translating Pushkin and Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky into various other languages. I thought of classes on the quad in the spring, dinner parties with the faculty and my superior students, and all the things that one thinks of when envisioning the collegiate millieu.
If this sounds like a straw man lead, then you are on the nose. The buildings are crumbling, all right, but picture austere Soviet architecture that makes American strip malls seem "edgy" and "modern." I should add that I actually work at two campuses: the main one, which if you squint hard enough can pass for a school, and the pedagological campus, which is a one-room school house over the river and through the woods that I teach at every Friday. I think that place used to be a barn or something before they put in flooring and painted it.
The professors in my department, or predpodavytel as they're called, are mostly between the ages of 22 and 25, and come to work when they feel like it. Their english skills range from adequate to very good, but no one is exemplary, which underscores why students here have such a hard time speaking english: because for the most part, their teachers can't either.
See, here's the problem: teachers get paid next to crap here. Something like $40 a month. So there's no incentive to work. So they don't come in that much. So the schedule is constantly in flux. So literally, I have come to the Institute every day since February 2nd and guessed at which classes I was going to teach. And as much as this sucks for me, imagine what it's like for the students...
But this illustrates another issue with the Ukrainian education system, which is they don't even start planning their classes for the semester until a week or two before it starts. Ukrainians love paper, erasers, and white out. They don't love planning. It doesn't make any sense to them. The idea of having a course bulletin and class schedule a semester ahead of time isn't viable here. Students don't choose their courses. They're told what they're taking when they get to school. Each group goes through all four years together (five if they go on to be specialists) and takes all the same classes together.
This, I decided, is all a Soviet legacy. People here are not used to planning, working hard, or making decisions for themselves. They come from a world where "what's the difference if something gets done or not?" "Why plan when you never know what tomorrow brings?" It's not so much a culture shock, but there is a major divide between east and west here, and it's not surprising that Ukraine, a country with so much to offer in terms of intelligence and educated work force, can't get their shit together. Most of them truly don't know how.
All of this is interesting for me, but as you can imagine, extraordinarily frustrating. I remember before I came here, I heard other volunteer stories about showing up to school and finding that the classes were cancelled for one reason or another and how angry the volunteers were for not being told. I thought, angry for what? It's a free day! Go out and play. Or go back home and get some sleep. But you know what? It is aggravating when it actually happens to you, especially on a regular basis. And especially for Americans, who are intrinsically wired to require order, practicality, and a certain work ethic.
Which brings me to my host dad, Valery. We argue about the same thing every night: how much I work. I try to explain to him that having only ten classes a week is hardly anything. At 40 minutes per class, I feel like I'm not really working. He shakes his head, frowns, and tells me that seven or eight classes is already a lot. Now, in Valery's defense, he is a chemistry professor. His lectures are often an hour and a half of just him talking, and then he has lab work as well, besides his independent work on his dissertation. My classes are just speech practice and conversation, which is a fancy euphamism for just hanging out and talking about different subjects. But he really, truly believes that a normal work week should only be about 20 hours.
So we butt heads on most everything work-related. Not only is he beside himself that I have ten or so classes (and the truth is, I'm supposed to have 18, but again, the school can't get their act together), but the fact that I teach extra classes on the side -- three evenings a week and one on Saturday -- is beyond comprehension. And when he hears that I'm doing all of this for free, it's too much. He has to have a cigarette (which is also really funny, because he sits down on the floor of the toilet room to smoke. In Ukraine, they separate the room for the toilet and the room with the bathtub and sink).
The pay thing is another interesting situation. People here don't understand the concept of volunteerism. Or more specifically, they don't understand the concept of working for free. They have this idea that if you're not getting paid for something, then you don't really care about it. That is, you only work hard if you're getting paid. Which I guess is actually true in America too. Except that I think in America some people still have the idea that a job worth doing is a job worth doing well, and that eventually hard work will pay off in the form of a raise or promotion, or for volunteers, in just helping others. In Ukraine, where socialist ideology reigns, a job worth doing can take forever to get done and doesn't have to be particularly good.
For one of my specialist classes, a girl brought in an article on the salary discrepancy for teachers in America. New teachers, on average, make $27k. The average salary for a teacher is $42k. She couldn't understand how this could be. "If I'm a new teacher and I am good and work hard, I should get paid what everyone else gets," she argued. I countered that when people first apply for jobs right out of school, they get less pay because they need to work their way up and prove themselves. She felt pay should be strictly merit-based. Who knows? Maybe she's right? Maybe I've been thinking about things in a far too western paradigm and should approach this from a socialist perspective. I think I'll head to McDonalds, have a nice fat, juicy capitalist cheeseburger and coke, and work on the answer.
Other interesting stuff
Stay in touch
Lewkraine Productions
"Making the world a safer place to play."