Friday, March 7, 2008

Learning From the Soviets

Brian Mickelthwait interviewed Mariana Bell about education in communist Romania. Four hour school days, a lot of hard work, and if you didn't make the cut, they put you in a vocational school. Sure, it was coercive, but not much more so than the current system in the West where we like to pretend everyone is smart and can do anything. Meanwhile, about half the class can't really read and a huge chunk of the day is taken up by irrelevancies.
I don't recommend any coercive system, but this is instructive in one sense:

How does one go from principle to application?

No comments: