As the spring approaches, thousands of people, who have not so far been concerned about the economic crisis, political problems and global depression, are getting seized with horror. Those are senior pupils who will have to take the Single State Examination.

This examination itself is a bad piece of news. But the way Andrei Fursenko, Minister of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, is introducing the exam makes this piece of news still worse. Before conducting the experiment the Ministry keeps inventing new educational rules and instructions which mislead even professionals. In short, nobody can realize how the government reform will be carried out and what its sense is, but nobody doubts that it will be carried out by hook or by crook.

It has been known for a long time that this testing system does not show how much the pupils have learned. That’s why the tests have always been used (both in Russia and the West) only as an extra system of determining the pupils’ grounding and mainly in the issues having very simple, formal criteria, for example, knowledge of the multiplication table, historical dates or the countries’ capitals. The complete replacement of traditional examinations with tests makes the exam results very questionable as well as it is at odds with the common educational logic that remains unchanged in Russia. An extra year at school resultant from transition from a 10-year to 11-year secondary education system is used for no better purpose than to reorient teen-aged pupils to new tasks related to the Single State Examination without giving them any fresh knowledge. In keeping with the best traditions of a market economy, the development of tests is privatized and it is profitable business for the companies, which are close to the Ministry of Education and Science but have nothing to do with the educational process. The last year’s semiexperimental introduction of the examination produced extremely significant results. There were very many unsatisfactory marks and it was found that, according to the Single State Examination system, good pupils had the best chance to get D marks, while poor pupils turned into high achievers. The reason is simple: as the introduction of the examination breaks down the educational logic completely, the children, who were the best pupils within the framework of that logic, become the first victims of the reform. Last year several young people committed suicide. I would not like to make similar predictions, but this year the same things are likely to happen again.

Meanwhile, the pupils, who entered the institutes of higher education due to their successful passing the Single State Examination, do not cope with the curriculum, fail the exams and do not know the rudiments necessary to study at universities. Some of those “A-students” were expelled as early as during the first academic year. The ambivalent system, rather than those people, is to blame for this.

The Russian higher education system faces its organizational, methodological and financial crisis. During the common economic depression this crisis will become still deeper. Andrei Fursenko’s experiments would be the last straw.

It’s no wonder that as the Single State Examination approaches, the young people become more and more upset. Teachers panic, schoolchildren’s parents lose their heads, and the schoolchildren themselves are indignant. The Internet forums have a lot of calls for resistance to which tens of thousands of young people have subscribed. However, in practice, the resistance boils down to some small rallies passing insipid resolutions. Adults are responsible for this state of affairs in a large measure. Children do not know how to arrange rallies, what is more, they have not come of age, and therefore, have no right to do that. So the Moscow and St. Petersburg school activists turned to the Communist Party of the Russian Federation for help as “the only opposition party”. As a matter of fact, the party helped them but in such a way that made the rallies quite pointless. The elderly MPs and experts told the young people about the Communist Party’s advantage over other political forces and about the necessity to vote for this party in the next elections, which will be held in more than three years. All problems will be solved when the Communist Party gets the parliamentary majority. Since the Communist Party’s faction has become smaller and smaller after each election, it follows that the situation will never be improved.

Those who will finish school in 2009 have nothing to hope for, even if the Communist Party becomes a powerful parliamentary force by some miracle: the authorities will ruin the schoolchildren’s lives this spring.

However, approaching of the Single State Examination, which concurs with the crisis deepening, will have to change the people’s mentality. Moscow resembles neither Paris nor Athens, our climate and traditions are totally different. But some coincidences are possible. While I was at the rally listening inarticulate speeches delivered by politicians, some teenagers near me discussed whether they would be better off simply breaking the window of the neighboring McDonald’s, at least, to warm themselves.

Boris Kagarlitsky is Director of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements

February 27, 2009

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