I sincerely doubt that teaching matrices in 7th grade raises "understanding and awareness".
It did at least in one case. I'd also have loved an intro to lambda calculus in the later years. Things have advanced since the 60's/70's but the curriculum adjusts in the opposite direction for some reason.
I have to say that you seem to make the mistake of regarding quantity equivalent to quality. [...] I find it pretty hard to believe that you [...] actually read and not merely skimmed them.
Well, I personally didn't read all of them, only the ones I *knew* I was going to be questioned on (like War and Peace, for instance). This usually amounted to like 50% of the list (we had a liberal teacher). But, since the "examination" was quite deep and required an actual understanding of the plot, characters, historical context, and many other dimensions of the book in question, you *had* to *read* and *understand* the book or risk getting a bad grade. Then again, my cute neighbor read *ALL* of them!
Feel free to ask someone, who went to school in Moscow or St. Petersburg (don't know about other cities, but I'd wager the situation was very similar), if you need confirmation. I know it's hard to believe for someone used to sparing the "poor kids" and providing them pre-chewed information laced with the teacher's opinion, instead of pushing the kids to solve problems on their own.
we usually cover one book per month during lessons (if that much) but in detail.
Yeah, I remember being bored on the second week of some of Duerrenmatt's or Lessing's (shorter) works, when a minority came prepared and we were reading the whole book in class (especially great, when it's that idiot, who never learned how to read properly and couldn't bind two syllables together), instead of discussing the plot, analyzing the literary style, etc. We were "reading" The Judge and his Hangman for 3 (three!) months. Seriously! WTF?!?
What I'm trying to say here is that maybe it'd be worth a consideration by the education panel to give a list of 20 books and let the students choose at least 2 of them to read over the holidays, but no, that'd be against the almighty law of not giving them *any* homework over summer. ; )
Judging by my (subjective, of course) experience, I'd say the general literacy of the population that went to school in the USSR is way higher than the general literacy of the "average German". I wouldn't expect otherwise, after I've overheard parents in DE say things like: "Oh, I really don't think my kid should go to a gymnasium, the load's too high (LOL), he/she's better off in a real [10 years total] or hauptschule [8/9 years total]", or a teacher deciding where your kid's going instead of you and/or the kid.
Eventually, when people get out of school, their prospect is to find an apprenticeship as a salesman or some other job that's going to be virtually non-existent, when RFID & Co hit the market, or their job as a construction worker get's automated away by an oversized 3D printer.
I never understood why the level of expectations in DE is so low in general.
As a comparison, in 2010 the attainment rate of tertiary education in RU vs DE is 54 (1st place) vs 25.4 (23rd place) percent for (25 to 64 year olds) source: OECD interactive tool.
Regarding PISA, of course you can dump most of the results, if they come during your last lesson and say whoever's finished can go home...*facepalm*
And regarding matrices (and other concepts): it just raises the student's general understanding and awareness of subjects. It's just one example of the "level-difference" that really stood out and that's why I mentioned it. I wish someone would have shown me this, back in school too, but maybe I'm just a nerd.
In the USSR summer vacation used to be roughly three months, however children got a list of books to read (and I'm not talking about one, or two. More like 10-15 mandatory and another 10-20 optional) and, come September, were questioned on them.
9th or 10th grade (don't remember) contained such gems as War and Peace (the complete four-tome!), Crime and Punishment, Eugene Onegin, Queen of Spades, and other quite serious works.
I've experienced several school systems and neither Austrian, German or US systems came even close to teaching as much as the Soviet did. I went to "good" schools, some of them quite expensive. In the latter three countries, students were quite vocal about objecting to having more than one exam in a week, even though they had to be announced up front. In the USSR, you just *had* to be prepared for *each* class or risk getting a bad grade for the quarter.
The Soviet system also separated literature and language, as well as math and geometry, whereas the other three systems lumped these subjects together into language+literature and math+geometry.
All in all, the Soviet system was *much* more satisfying and intellectually stimulating than any other system I had the "pleasure" of experiencing.
A short anecdote: we've learned matrices in 7th grade in the USSR. When I was called to the board to solve a system of linear equations in 9th grade in AT, it was quite amusing to experience the surprised teacher say that this is something people learn in University for their STEM degrees.
On the other hand, I had to catch up a year of Latin there, so I guess that even out the surprise. When I later moved to Germany and asked the principal there whether Latin is part of the local curriculum, he asked me if I was planning on listening to Radio Vatican. I thought that's funny at the time, but my little knowledge of Latin still helps me understand a great deal of languages I don't speak and I wish I'd have learned more.
The US school I visited was a jack of all trades, more focused on creative education and quite boring, as I've already went through most of the curriculum in other countries (i.e. it lagged behind all other systems! You people there really gotta work on that, before it's too late.).
BTW, Austria had two months of summer vacation, and Germany around 3-4 weeks (it sucked big time, so unproductive and slow the whole year!).
For my kids, I'd prefer them to go to school in Russia and Austria, as that's a very good mix IMO.
I've heard the Japanese school system is even more intense (with students even committing suicide over the workload, etc.). Maybe someone would like to provide a short comparison in a reply.
And in those circumstances, you are the one being unethical.
Here's a universal truth for you (i.e. no matter what the marketing and law shills are telling you, this applies at the base level).
There are three main categories of freeloaders:
In all three cases, chances are that the person consuming a media product has friends who will be willing to go to lengths to pay for a specific product and get a collector's edition, because the freeloader told them that the product is worth consuming.
Also, most true (for common values of true) artists, could't possibly care less if someone paid for their work or not, as long as they get as much exposure as possible. And if you do care, go to your studio/distributor/manager and tell them you're upset that categories one and two don't have a possibility to pay for your work, and/or sue them for the difference in missed opportunities.
Fast, cheap, good: pick two.