Nomadic Amateur-Teach and Learn With Georgia-part III

A typical Georgian public school consists of grade 1 to grade 12. They don't have separate buildings for Elementary/Middle/High School. The building itself is a typical Soviet-era edifice. It looks sturdy and imposing on the façade, but crumbling to pieces inside-perhaps an apt representation of the Soviet Union during its last years. Electric wires are hanging out of the ceiling, lights don’t work, chalks are usually unavailable in most classrooms, wall paint is chipped everywhere, the hallways/stairwells have random potholes, and the bathroom visits are best saved for dire emergency cases only (even then, think it over again), etc. At least my school has heaters that actually work. Some of the fellow volunteers have told me that in their schools, the heaters were never turned on even in freezing weather.

My co-teachers are all women, in their 40s-60s. I think the youngest teacher at school is 37. Most schools have very few male teachers because, as men are the “bread-winners” in Georgian culture, they can’t afford to be teachers since the salary is quite low.

In my school, most grades start at 9 in the morning, while the younger students (1st and 2nd) come later in the evening for a shorter schedule.
Not everyone can afford books, and apparently their families don’t care so some of them just come in and sit there without doing anything the entire day. Most students who speak English pretty well have either taken or are taking private lessons. The teachers' unabashed display of favoritism and casually hurling disdainful expressions at the others-"he is very lazy"/"she's very weak in Georgian, too"-can be quite shocking, to say the least. Perhaps my mind has been poisoned with the encouragement-based American education system. The wasted years thinking that I could do anything I wanted...

One thing I found quite interesting is that the other volunteers were horrified to see the students go ape within a few seconds during the 5/10-minute breaks between classes. I guess I should mention that during my Elementary school years spent outside of the U.S., I was one of the buffoonish monkeys. We had no recess so I allocated my time very wisely during the breaks to innocently beating up boys, non-homoerotically lifting up girls’ skirts and running away, and/or being chased around. Let's just say I busted my face open a few times in school.
I, however, feel like it helps releasing the extra physical energy that kids have, and focus better in classes-when I came back to the States at the age of twelve, I was shocked to find kids acting out during the class with complete disregard for the teachers. Well, at least we had the detention system in the States to keep kids in line. Here, the teachers have very little authoritative power over controlling students’ behavior since they don’t have a strict enforcement system. It mostly has to do with the fact that school grades don’t matter when it comes to entering universities and neither does a teacher’s recommendation. The college entrance system changed while I was there, which I will cover in details later on.

The students routinely, even during a completely unrelated lesson, ask a few rhetorical questions: Do you like Georgia? Do you like Tbilisi? Do you like khinkali (boiled dumpling)? Do you like khachapuri (cheese-filled bread/pastry)? The answer is, whether you mean it or not, always a yes. Then to produce a few giggles, you throw in random Georgian words/phrases you know. Write a few Georgian alphabets you can remember and you got yourself some adoring Georgian fans. To my defense, it was done unintentionally on my part.

To give you an idea of how brilliant their learning materials can be, I present an excerpt from the 11th grade textbook, a very flattering comparison between the British and the American:

Britain and America
1. Americans aim to do three things in life: 1. Look after themselves; 2. Live forever and look beautiful and young for as long as possible; 3. Make lots of money and/or become famous. They will do anything to achieve these goals.
The British are very different. They would like to be quite rich, but are happy to accept their life as it is. They would never dream of putting themselves before others and this is why they like to queue so much and allow people to go in front of them in all kinds of races.

2. Americans love food in large quantities and endless varieties. American plates are very big, but many American meals don't even fit on them. Americans buy food that is already prepared and ready to be cooked in the microwave. This is true unless of course they are Californians, in which case they eat what they call "raw energy food," and which the rest of the world calls salad.
The British only eat food to survive and would never dream of enjoying it. They prefer to cook their food for twice as long as necessary just to make sure it's done, and they don't have too many choices on menus as they find it difficult to make up their minds about which ones to choose.

3. Both British and American parents are proud of their children, but here the similarity ends. American parents publicly admire their children, and they like to tell everyone about their successes because they assume that everyone else is interested. If they don't like the way they are, they change their children by, for example, straightening their teeth or boosting their self-confidence by organizing extra activities for them.
British parents think that, if they gave their children too much praise, this would make them overconfident. British parents are happy to accept their children as nature wanted them to be, even if it means their teeth look terrible.

4. America has thousands of TV channels because most Americans have a very short attention span. TV and film companies won't film any one who isn't blonde and beautiful, who's slightly overweight or who doesn't have perfect teeth, unless they are appearing on a talk show.
Britain is well-known for its comedy, drama and award-winning commercials and the fact that it has only five TV channels. However, as most British people would never want to appear on TV, they don't need more than five channels.