The system of secondary education in russia

Phonetic exercise: practice the pronunciation of the following words and then transcribe them:

foundation

biology

astronomy

chemistry

foreign

majority

facilities

auxiliary

pioneer

minority

librarian

financial

Secondary school and extra-school activities

The secondary school provides the Russian youth with a solid scientific foundation and it is on this basis that the higher educational bodies have been able to produce the scientists, engineers, doctors and technicians, who have impressed the world with their achievements. There is general recognition that the scientific technological revolution has placed greater demands on the secondary school.

Thus, mathematics, the key to all sciences, is regarded as an important instrument in training highly skilled specialists. It is, therefore, quite natural that from the very beginning, the Russian educational system concentrated particularly on this vital subject.

Mathematics is a compulsory part of the curriculum throughout the eleven-year school. Maths is now taught with a more functional approach. Greater stress is now placed on concepts and methods having to do with natural science and technology.

Physics (from 7^th to 11^th grades) is taught on a higher level. Astronomy (11^th grade) is closely associated with mathematics and physics, as are chemistry (8^th to 11^th) and biology (from 6^th grade on).

The standard curriculum of the Russian secondary schools includes the Russian language, literature, mathematics, history, social sciences, nature study, geography, biology, physics, astronomy, mechanical drawing, chemistry, foreign language, art, singing and music appreciation, physical training, shop, extra-curriculum subjects.

The secondary school further expands the programme. In addition to physical training two hours a week in all grades, sports from field and track to skiing (a mass sport here) and ice-skating, swimming, wrestling are extensively and intensively engaged by the vast majority of students.

Here, too, extra-curricular facilities exist on an incomparably more extensive scale than in the United States. It is hard to think of extra-curricular activities in any sense as being “extra”. They are regarded as a natural auxiliary to the secondary school. The average Russian child or youth does not use the city streets as his or her playground. There is no need to. After school you find the Russian children on the sports fields, in the parks, in the Palaces of Culture, in various club houses. In Russia any casual visitor has observed children constitute the “only privileged class”. All that American school kids of working-class and especially minority group families dream of, the Russian children enjoy as realities. Here is the “auxiliary” to the Russian classroom: music and art schools, the Palaces of Culture, stations for young technicians and young naturalists, tourists and excursion places and sports schools.

A world of libraries. One would imagine that with the serious reading problem faced by the American schools everything would be done to expand reading facilities. But libraries were further curtailed in the USA. Kitty Horne, a librarian in San Francisco, pleaded on T.V. for financial assistance. “It is crushing for a child to come to the library and find that such a children’s favourite as Three Little Pigs is not on the bookshelves,” she told her T.V. listeners. “We have no money to order books but the demand for books continues. Keep our school libraries alive,” she pleaded.