More the twenty years
ago the educational reform in the US has started, four Presidents in a row made
the reform the national priority, but the truth is we still have lots of
problems in this area (*). I used to teach a problem solving class and I
believe, the more clearly we see the problem, the more chances we have for
beating it (in addition it helps sometimes to turn the emotions off when
analyzing a problem).
Respectfully yours,
Valentin Voroshilov,
PhD in Education
Physics Department,
Boston University,
Boston, MA, USA
617-353-2602
Three Ways to Speed up the Reform of
Education
Billions of dollars
have been spending to reform the system of education during the last two
decades, but nobody can say the significant improvements were achieved. Yes, we
get closer to the old competitor, i.e. Russia. According to the Trends in
International Mathematics and Science Study (nces.ed.gov/TIMSS) the differences
in average mathematics scale scores of eight-grade students between the U.S.A.
and Russia was 24 scores in 1999, and reduced to 4 scores in 2003. This is not
a big surprise considering the political and economical difficulties which
Russia has been meeting during the past twenty years, but, still, even now
Russia is ahead of the U.S. Nowadays other competitors are getting more
significant role on the educational scene, like Singapore, Republic of Korea,
and China (including Hong Kong). Comparing with them the deference in scores is
87 on average (not in a favor of the U.S.A.) and have
been remaining the same since 1999. Considering the fact that every year the
U.S. educational budget is almost ten times as greater as the Russian, it seems
we need to find some radical ways to move the reform ahead. In this article I
would like to introduce three possible ways to do that.
I.
The first way is being
reforming what must be being reformed.
I like using
analogies, in particular, jokes to help to clarify my ideas.
There is an Old
Russian joke.
A policeman is coming
to a drunken guy which is creeping about the side road
light and asking, “Sir, what are you trying to do?” The guy is answering, “I am
looking for the keys to my apartment”. “How could you loose it at such a light
place?” said the policeman. “I didn’t loose them at this place, I lost it
somewhere over there”, said the guy. “But, for the God’s sake, why are you
looking for them over here?” said the policemen. “Because”, said the drunken
guy, “it is lighter at this place.”
Where have we been
looking for the key to the educational reform?
Two major goals are
wanted to be achieved by the reformers: a) to make more and better educational
tools (textbooks, learning aids, educational software, etc) to put more
knowledge into the students heads and to train students to solve effectively
certain problems; b) to make better teaching environment (school buildings,
hardware, teachers, etc) to put more knowledge into the students heads and to
train students to solve effectively certain problems.
A perfect example of
trying to achieve these goals is the boosting the development of early high
schools by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (an early high school is a
good educational environment filled up with good educational tools). It is a
good initiative, indeed. It will help many boys and girls to enter into a college.
The result will be good for those boys and girls, but it will not be as good as
it is being expected for the economic and civic health of the nation.
The Foundation’s logic
is simple. The nation needs a bigger number of educated people. Where are educated
people coming from? They come from colleges. Hence, we have to help high school
students get into a college. The result of this logic is $ 30,000,000 being
used for “by fall 2008, more than 170 early college high schools will exist
throughout the country, ultimately serving more than 65,000 students”.
The only problem is
that it does not mean that the total number of college students all across
America will be increasing by 65,000 students, and it does not mean the public
high schools are going to work better(**). The actual
increasing will be significantly less. The actual result of building 170 early
college high schools will be the redistribution of the high school students
between the “old” public schools and the new early college high schools. But,
the total amount of high school students well prepared to a college will remain
almost the same.
This is one example of
the common logic of the reformers. They keep saying (and this is obvious) that
in the third millennium the leadership in education is the basic condition for
the leadership in technologies. The world becomes more complex and difficult.
People should solve much more complicate problems and use more information to
make decisions. Therefore, we can
hear often, today students should receive much larger amount of knowledge and
we are trying harder and harder in order to pour more information into a
students’ head (this idea is the main reason for boosting the amount of new
textbooks and curricula, which in a year will be replaced by a new textbooks
and curricula, which in a year will be replaced by …).
Let’s use an analogy
again.
A space shuttle really
looks like an airplane. However, it is impossible to invent, to construct a
space shuttle just by making better and better airplanes. Even the very idea of
a space craft (including a shuttle) cannot be derived
from the ideas leading to the creating of airplanes. Scientists and engineers
had to find out an absolutely new principle to just start thinking on the
possibility of getting off the Earth.
Today in the field of
education we have to use a new leading principle to get the new direction in
reforming the system of education.
It is useless to
increase the amount of information “pouring” into students’ head, because the
amount of information is not the most important thing needed in order to
make/construct a complex, complicated, and having an influence
decision/conclusion/solution. Rather, a correct and efficient using of the
information is the most important one. To be successful today (and especially
tomorrow) a person has to be able to analyze received information, build a
variety of reasoning, evaluate the probability of possible results and the
consequences of making conclusions/decisions, etc. In other words, a
contemporary person must be able to think intensively and effectively.
Therefore, the main teachers’ goal is to teach students to think and to make
(to create!) conclusions (decisions!). Hence, the key to the school reform is
not a “knowledgebuilding” but another “building”. But what should be being
built?
Any lasting system
changes are based on significant changes in a system’s structure. For example
by changing the structure of atoms of Carbon we can transfer the pencil
stuff/filament into a diamond. The
lasting system changes of the system of education must be connected with the
change in the structure of education as a whole. We have to refocus the
education. But what has to become the new focus?
Let’s use another
analogy.
If we want to develop
the students’ ability of running we could work on the developing of students’
lungs, but first of all we need to work on the developing of students’ legs,
because legs are the main instrument for running.
What is the main
instrument for thinking? The answer is obvious. The main instrument for
thinking is a brain. A brain is the physiological basis of thinking. Hence…
The developing of a brain has to
be the long-term focus of the educational reform.
It does not mean we
have to forget about making kids knowledgeable/skillful, it means they have to
become both – knowledgeable/skillful and brain developed, and achieving
of the latter has to automatically include achieving of the preceding.
Keeping in mind the
new goal, the first thing we should be concerned of is the influence of
training/teaching methods/techniques on the functioning of a student’s brain.
I will use an analogy
again.
Let us assume that students have been
doing for many years one type of physical exercises only, which are squats.
Then at the end of education, they could squat many times without any
difficulties. However, all the other muscles, which are not involved in squats,
would be highly underdeveloped. Students would not be able to perform any other
exercises effectively.
A brain works the same
way. If for years the majority of school lessons have been based on memorizing
and reproducing/recitation, other kinds of intellectual activities would be
difficult for students to perform (and, please, keep in mind that the getting
well with the college Algebra, for example, a brain has to be able to
juggle/joggle with a big number of thoughts simultaneously, and this specific
skill must be trained specifically).
We can find today lots
of publication on necessity of developing problem-solving skills, but the
authors do not focus on the brain development. I believe that any school
subject must being used firstly as a tool for “brainbuilding”, and only
secondly as a tool for “knowledgebuilding” or “skillsbuilding”.
“Brainbuilding” has to
be the motto for the reform of the system of education.
The well
trained/developed brain is able to solve difficult problems. The underdeveloped
brain can deal with easy tasks only. The thing is, at the age of 14 – 15
the human brain – as “a muscle” – is at the end of its development.
It means, to make a significant progress in the further brain development,
significant efforts and time are needed. Hence (I know it sounds sad, but the
hard truth is better than the sweat lie), if a high school student is not able
to enter into a college after an ordinary public school, it is unlikely he or
she will be able to do that after an early college high school (or other kind
of a “super” school; plus, entering into a college does not necessary mean
being able to keep doing well at the college).
All I just said does
not mean that the current reform of the system of education is useless. In
particular, it does not mean that early college high schools are useless. The
existence of those schools will give the positive effect. Every school of that
kind will become a center of attraction for high professional teachers and
highly motivated students. The public schools around an early college high
school will be feeling a pressure of a competition from the early college high
school (but, it is kind of hard to compete if your bets students and teachers
are gone). The officials will have to find the ways to support public schools,
etc. And, of course, lots of boys and girls will find a better educational
environment at the early college high schools. But, we have to understand that
we will not achieve the significant structural changing in the results of
educational system as a whole.
If we want to increase
nationwide the total number of high school students well prepared to a college
significantly indeed, we have to increase the number of high school students
having the well developed/trained brain. To achieve this goal we have to go
onto the preschool and elementary school levels and reorganize them making
accent/stress/effort on the students’ brain development (this is what the early
childhood education must be about!).
We do not have to pour
into the child’s head a larger sum of knowledge (rather the structure of
knowledge and the ways of obtaining it should be changed); a head is not just a
storage for information, but rather the place where new thoughts are being
created (the
best way to store information in one’s memory is to deal with it, use it, but
not just to memorize it ***). We have to exercise/train the child’s brain
by using different tasks/problems/exercises to help it to become as developed
as the Mother Nature allows do this.
We used to say the
health of the Nation is based on the personal health of the citizens, we force
kids doing exercises every day helping them to keep their physical health, we
try to keep kids in a good mood and give them a good sense of self-respect in
order to keep their psychological health, we debate the ways to keep kids in a
good social/moral health, way do we not care about the intellectual health of
our students?(****)
And must importantly,
there is no contradiction between developing a brain and developing the
knowledge bases during the school years. To work on developing a brain a
teacher has to use exercises. When taken from a specific science area the
exercises can simultaneously provide the knowledge of a subject. It is just the
matter of priorities (what is education about?) and of the creating curricula
according to the priorities.
One of the
consequences of the offered view on the educational reform is that one of the
most important problems of educational science is the problem of the influence
of training methods on the functioning of a student’s brain. I consider Math
and Physics as the best subjects able to be used as a brain
developing tool. I’ve been reading two major magazines oriented on
teachers, i.e. “Journal for Research in Mathematics Education”, and “The
Physics Teacher”. But, so far I have not seen any publication on the
“brainbuilding”.
II.
The second way to speed
up the reform of education is that reorganizing the educational research making
them more helpful for teachers.
Let's carry out a
mental experiment. Let us assume, hypothetically, that we have created a group
of the best designers/inventors of car wheels and gave them everything that
they have asked for doing their job. Then we have separately formed a group of
the best designers of car engines. Plus, we have independently formed a group
of the best car body designers. Etc. All the groups have invented finally the
best car wheel in the world, the best car engine in the world, the best auto
body in the world, etc. Now, ask yourself, what would turn out, if we tried to
put all these best auto parts together? The obvious answer is nothing! They
will not match to each other.
The absolutely same
situation is happening now in education. Someone writes fine textbook for
middle school students. Other person independently writes a collection of
problems for high school students. A third person creates an electronic
encyclopedia for students at the college level, and, etc. Each didactic tool
can be helpful for students of a certain grade, but they do not match to each
other! Hence, they do not make a big change in the results of education
(instead of having a car schools have a bunch of different car parts which do
not fit to each other). Furthermore, if we combined together the newest and the
best existed learning instruments and tried using them
in a class we would create a terrible situation for our students. Why?
Learning is a long and
complicated process; as any process it has stages and phases
which are based on sequences of learning actions like “reading the text
of the problem”, “making a sketch”, “listening to a teacher”, “writing the
question”, “observing the data”, and many others. Each learning action takes a
certain period of time (different for different students, by the way). An
effective/efficient learning process obeys to the certain timing, which means
an effective/efficient teaching process must obey to the same timing. However,
you will not find a researcher today who would care much abut the time frame of
using of his/her newly invented learning tool. Maybe, this textbook or that
collection of assignments is good indeed, but a teacher is just unable to fit
them all in the existing time frame of teaching. If he/she would try to put all
new learning tools into the lessons, the whole learning process would be get
just broken down. So, we have lots of new and good educational instruments, but
they are useless (*****). And instead of trying to reconstruct the learning
process in order to make existing tools more useful, the main effort of the
majority of educational researchers is concentrated on creating more and more
new but functionally disconnected learning tools.
The main reason of the
“crisis of variety” of educational instruments is that there dose
not exist yet a remedy/means to combine/cooperate/unite all the creative
works in educational research.
What, for example, had
made united all the scientists, engineers, generals and all the staff of
Manhattan Project? If you said “The mutual goal”, it would not be specific (too
general). And, such a goal as “Making a new high destructive weapon” could only
separate people because everybody has the own idea on “high destructive
weapon”. But, the goal “Making a U-bomb” had made people united, because this
goal was an absolutely specific object/outcome, which “everybody” could see,
touch, use. Analogically, “Making a good education” is not the uniting goal. But
“Making a certain/specific educational environment” could be the one. The
efficiency of the result of the achieving the goal would depend on the
specificity of the goal, i.e. the environment chosen to create. If we want
significant/structural changes, the goal has to have a nationwide influence
(******). It means, the government has to make a decision on this matter, but
so far officials do not pay enough an attention on this side of the educational
reform and keep spending millions on creating more and more teaching tools with
no system in the sets of the tools (if the Government would stop tomorrow those
funding we would get two results; the huge roar on the “irresponsible behavior
of the Government” and the schools working as usual with no sliding down test
results).
III.
The third way to speed
up the reform is making it revolving about the person who is really interested
in the succeeding of the reform.
It seems, the majority of the people involved in the reformation
objectively do not interested in the finishing the reform. Of course, I am
talking the worst–case scenario here, but who knows?(*******).
There is a simple for
understanding but far leading fundamental principle, that is, one of the
strongest properties of any biological system (including a human being) is an
aspiration to keep the own existence (simply saying: nobody wants to get killed
and even hurt - sounds pretty obvious, isn’t it?). This property governs the
functioning of a system throughout all the living cycle of the system. There
are rarely exceptions from this “rule of life”, but those extraordinary systems
usually do not have a long life because of their self-destroying tendency.
Simply speaking, every biological system, including human beings, wants to be
alive as long as it is possible (does not sound strange, does it?). But, to be
alive a biological system must utilize some resources like food, for example.
Where can a system get a food? Only from outside itself (it
cannot eat itself and keep a long life). In the contemporary social
world it means usually – from other people; but instead of taking an
actual food or something, we take money as the universal equivalent for goods.
The only problem is that we do not print any money by ourselves. Other people
give them to us, and usually it is not a gift, usually other people give money
to us in the exchange for something they need from us. So, the logical sequence
is simple; to support our life we need resources; to get those resources we
need money; to get money we need to give out to other people something they
need from us.
Let’s say it shorter;
to support our life we need to be needed (!), and it is not just our wish, it
is a strong motive for our activities that is hidden deeply inside of a human
nature.
We are successful
until we are needed; we are successful until there are other people who want
something from us. This idea governs our life from a birthday to a death.
Everybody obeys to this “rule of life” unconsciously, just because we are all
biological systems.
It is good to be
needed, but what if we feel a risk to become being not-needed? Our brain can
always feel these things and when it does happen the brain starts looking for
any way to escape that kind of a risk in order to keep us being needed –
even if consciously we do not have any suspicions on what is going on. Can you
imagine what people are going to do if they see/understand the risk of becoming
not-needed (recall all the movies on CIA or so, where
some bad guy from the agency wants to blow up civilians pretending terrorists
would did it only because the government wants to cut the budget up)?
So, people always want
to be needed. Sometimes to keep themselves to be needed people even fake
(consciously or unconsciously) the necessity of the work they are doing. I mean, they do everything to convince other people
that the work they are doing is really important and useful and promising and,
etc, etc, etc. But, some times the truth is that the work is needed to the
authors of the work only (and of course, they just like doing it). Two kinds of
professionals (beyond just salesmen) used to be very persuasive in convincing
of importance of their work – politicians and researchers. The difference
is that politicians usually do it on purpose (absolutely consciously), though
researchers usually do it unconsciously.
But, the fact is that today you can find lots of research, which are not
needed to anybody but the authors, including the field of educational research
(********).
There is, of course,
an important question, how can one estimate the valueless/value-ness of a
research? There is not a general answer on this question, but I would offer my
view on an educational research.
Talking abut education
and all matters connected with it we should consider the whole system of
education as a “salesman – customer relationships” system. The main rule
for that kind of relationships is that; if customer does not want to buy a
product, hence, a salesman must invent something new to sell or go out off the
market.
Who is a central
person that must being considered as a most important costumer among such
professionals as teachers, researchers, officials and politicians?
It might sound
strange, but researchers, officials and politicians are not really interested
in significant improvement of the system of education. Why? Because if
everybody had already a perfect school, perfect college and had got a perfect
education, all those “big fishes” would go out off job (hence, out of money). I
do not want to say that every researcher, official or politician is faking the
importance/necessity of his/her work. All I want to say that there is a
tendency – hence, a possibility – that the person can do that (we
do not care about consciously or not the one does it).
However, there does exist
a professional, who would appreciate a significant improvement in the teaching
techniques. This professional is a teacher. It is obviously, that the better
school, college, textbooks, curriculum, etc, etc a teacher has, the easier the
teacher’s job. Only a teacher (among professional educationalists) is really
interested in the getting reforming job done.
This logic leads us to
a simple conclusion. In the system of education a teacher must play the role of
a customer, whereas researcher (official, politician) must play the role of a
salesman. As a customer a teacher must make a decision on what
textbook/curriculum/research/etc he/she wants to use to do the teaching work as
good as it possible.
Accepting this
principle, we have to reconsider relationships between all the players on the
field of education, but it is really hard to expect form politicians, officials
and especially from educational scientists to consider a teacher as a number
one figure in an educational system (of course, the control system must be
balanced, hence parents and students have to be able to monitor teachers’ work
and demand necessary corrections *********).
Now, I hope, you can
see we need to make some huge changes in the ways we are performing the reform
of education. If we are not going to do this today, the moment of truth will
come tomorrow, when the American economy becomes desperately looking for
millions of high educated (which means firstly “brain-developed”) workers,
trying to keep the leadership from competitors, who are getting closer
(**********). But wouldn’t it be too late?
* P.S. I used to teach
Physics at a small college in MA. My students are smart and hardworking, but 99
% of them have serious problems with Arithmetic, and even more serious problems
with Algebra. The only reason for that is that my students were taught in a
wrong way (so, I have to re-teach them). I keep reading different publication
on the way to improve education, but I see the huge gap between what
researchers are talking about and the every day needs of teachers. I used to
teach Math and Physics to any possible grade of students, I am a good teacher
and I know what a teacher needs. It seems, the vast part of money spending on
research on ways how to improve results of education do not help to do that in
a real school life.
** P.P.S. There is The
Theory of Multiple Intelligences, which is becoming more and more popular among
educators. One of the reasons of the growing popularity of the theory is one of
the interpretations of the one that sounds like “You can’t think? Relax, you
can run pretty fast” (which means a poor teacher has a good excuse for the poor
teaching job done in the class). It is a huge trivialization of the fact that
human beings are capable of solving complicated problems in different fields
including sport, music, design, art etc. But the fact that a person likes to
dance more then anything else and can do it better then anything else does not
mean that the person cannot or do not have to learn the multiplication table.
The only reason that a good sportsmen do not know a
basic Algebra (if it happens) is only the poor performance of the Math teacher
who has to be responsible for the intellectual damage done to the student by
the poor teaching work. There is a definition of “a good physical health” and
if a doctor has some damage done to the physical health of the patient, the
doctor gets punished very hard. Is it a time to make a definition of “a good
intellectual health” and start to worry about intellectual health of the
Nation? (*********)
*** P.P.P.S. There is
no contradiction between making kids knowledgeable/skillful and brain
developed. There is a contradiction between teaching methods used to be used
for centuries and the new goals and challenges education stands in front of. We
don’t have to be deep theoreticians and study the theory of constructivism to
understand the fact that learning is something much more complicated then just
listening to a teacher, ad hence teaching is something much more complicated
then talking to students (even when using the contemporary technologies). Let’s
again consider a simple example. You have never been riding a bike, and now you
want to learn how to do it. You can read the books about how to ride a bike,
you can watch educational movies about how to ride a bike, you can watch
competitions where famous biker are participation in, you can attend a lectures
“riding a bike for Dummies”, etc, etc. Will you be able to ride a bike after
all of these learning actions? You know, you will not. Of course, you will get
lots of information about how to ride a bike and even about how to teach to
ride a bike or about a history of bikes, or about how to build up a bike and a
bike will not be a scary thing for you anymore. But to learn how to ride a bike
indeed,
you will have to eventually start riding it. Of course, you might fell several
times, hurt yourself or a bike, but there is no way to learn how to ride a bike
without actually riding it.
We don’t have to be a
scientist to understand, there is no way to learn how to solve problems (any
kind of problems – Math, Physics, Linguistics, etc) without actually
soling them. But (this is a very important moment!) when solving a problem we
have to use both – a brain and a specific
information! Hence, the solving of a sequence of specifically constricted
problems let us to achieve to goals simultaneously, i.e. to make a kid
knowledgeable and to develop the kid’s brain.
This point of view on
education leads to one more remark. When preparing a course students have to
learn, we have to start from the full list of problems students have to be able
to solve after the course is done, and after making this list we can start
working on the curriculum (nowadays the situation is practically opposite).
This idea seems even more relevant if we accept that after all there is only
one way to measure the level of students skills, that is to give them some
problems to solve (a problem is understood in a general meaning like any
assignment to solve which students have to use specific knowledge and skills,
including questions to answer which students have to do something else except
for recalling the memorized information).
**** P.P.P.P.S. There
are many examples of a really interesting work aiming to help kids to get
better education; just log on the web site of any university and you find
examples of summer schools for kids, learning centers for kids etc. All those
initiatives help to the specific groups of kids but they are not working on the
improvement of the school education as a whole. We really need to separate in
our minds two different things; a) helping specific group of kids to get better
education by taking them out of school for additional learning (which is a good
social practice, of course) and b) reforming the system of public education
which means reforming public schools making them work better (which is
involving the school oriented educational research).
***** P.P.P.P.P.S. Of
course, it is too strong assertion. When a teacher begins to use something new
there is a positive effect. But it is hard to say the effect is because of the
new tool or because of the teacher got better understanding of the subject when
learning how to use the new tool.
****** P.P.P.P.P.P.S.
Personally I think, the most effective environment for redeveloping an entire
system of education is an On-Line Open Public School (at least a high school).
The School has to be the combination of Internet, TV and in-paper published
tools by using which EVERYBODY (at least potentially,
as “a horizon”) could be able to get an education from a scratch to the level
enough to pass SAT-I (at least). Concentrating the efforts on that kind of
educational goal gives us as the outcome a logically and technologically
connected grade-to-grade sequence of educational instruments.
*******
P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. This is again a too strong statement. Of course there are
people for whom giving the better education to kids is a passion and the
meaning of the life. There are schools and even districts where the reform is
practically done comparing to the rest of the schools and districts. But haw
big is the total number of these schools, especially comparing to the twenty
years of the reform?
********
P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. As a person who has a good math/physics education I wonder
sometimes on psychologists. After Sir Isaac Newton we have in Physics three
fundamental laws, which allow us to get derived lots of particular
consequences. Today it would be just a loosing of time if somebody undertook
research on measuring the relationships/dependencies between masses, velocities
and angles of colliding billiard balls. Any possible relationships for this
situation we can derive from the Newton’s laws.
But, in psychology we
can see often before-Newton methodology of making research. Many psychologists
want to investigate each and every single possible particular
event/action/situation instead of deriving the results from some fundamental
psycho–physiological principles, like “exercises make cells/muscles more
developed”. I think it is time to find a very close connection between
educational psychology and neurology (the new gold mine for researches).
*********
P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. There is a reason for politicians, for example, being
suspicious on the role of a teacher in the reform. Teachers are conservative by
the nature of the job and they do not like constant changes (and they do not
like VERY MUCH being judged, even when they do it every day many times a day).
But this is the Government’s job to make teachers want changes, to make
teachers demand new good teaching tools from researchers. The hardest, the most
important and the most promising job of the Government is creating the system
in which a teacher would be constantly motivated for a continuous improvement
the results of the work.
**********
P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. Two interesting comparison, which are not in the favor
of the U.S.A., can be made.
America is so much
richer then Russia that she does not care too much about effectiveness of using
the money. Hence, the percent of money directly used on the visible/observable
improvement of the system of education in the U.S. is less then in Russia.
Russia just cannot afford spending the money on anything too theoretical or too
philosophical (plus, the main ideas on education are already said and any
additional theorizing cannot improve significantly our understanding of
educational processes).
For the last twenty
years (at least) intensive research on constructivism in education have been
performed in the U.S., but you will not find at any school a textbook built
completely on the principles of constructivism. On the other hand in Russia for
the last ten years the sets of textbooks and workbooks for elementary and
middle school grades based on the theory of developing
education (which is similar to constructivism) have actively been
creating and implementing in schools.
The gap between the
U.S. and Russia in the using of computers in school is gradually decreasing and
soon the number of computers per a school will not be a parameter as important
as an efficiency of using of those computers. Russian government dose not have as much money as American, but the way of using the
money is different. The major financial support can get only a research that,
as part of the research (the final phase of the research shown in the research
plan), will be able to prove the efficiency of its implementing during one year
of the real school practice. So, if you are the great educational scientist but
you are not going to implement the results of your research directly at the
certain school, sorry, no money for you. Of course, it is not done in exactly
this way, but this is the main approach. There is a time to theorize, and there
is a time to focus on the practicing. I think, the
theorizing time is already in the past. We need educational engineering (or
re-engineering).