Ukrainian school children fleeing their country and joining classrooms in Italy and France are dazzling their new teachers with their maths skills, prompting debate about the slipping standards in western European classrooms.
As part of a wave of five million refugees that have fled Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, 10,000 Ukranian children are now enrolled in French schools and 16,000 in Italian schools where they have shown, in general, that they are a year ahead of their peers in the same age group in maths.
“Ukrainian students are much more comfortable at doing mathematics than French students,” Pierre Priouret, a maths teacher from Toulouse, told French the news outlet BFMTV.com.
“All my secondary school colleagues who have Ukrainian students say they perform better,” he added.
A second French maths teacher, Marianne, said she had “rarely seen students who succeed so well,” adding that the Ukrainians were a year ahead in maths and able to pick up languages fast because they already spoke both Ukrainian and Russian.
“I met some who spoke better English than me,” she said.
The glowing reports from French teachers were noticed by the Italian educational site Orizzontescuola, which has received a barrage of similar comments from Italian teachers after posting them.
“We were inundated with posts from Italian teachers agreeing with their French counterparts that these kids are a year ahead,”Andrea Carlino, an employee of the site, said.
The Italians had some ideas about why the Ukrainians enjoy a better mastery of numbers.
“Over there they teach like we taught up until 20 years ago,” wrote one teacher, while another who spent two months teaching in Ukraine said: “The text books are similar to those our parents used back in the 1940s.”
Apart from old fashioned text books, the teacher said discipline in the classroom was key.
I feel like that says more about our school system than about the Ukrainian one.
Ahh yeah W*estsplaining… “How could those savages from eastern europe perform better”.. on a more serious note, you see a small group of people who could afford to flee their country. Ukraine is massive in size so not everyone can afford to flee. So both can be true – you can see better results in small group of students and at the same time country’s average level can be lower
Western Europe being surprised Eastern Europeans are academically capable, episode 535636775.
Sorry to break it to anyone, but the notion of the academic superiority of the West relies mostly on the language barrier and heavy private funding of the academic institutions. If you were to take those two away, I can assure you there’d be little left to feel superior about.
Math is the “king” class in eastern-europe I’d say it;s one of the few good things that we got from communism.
It’s not like the west it;s not full of mathematicians,physicists,doctors and programmers from eastern-europe. US and Canada have a lot of them.
When they arrive in Canada, Ukrainian children will discover a horde of illiterate and feral children.
Czechia adopted progressive Western education approach and decline is staggering.
>“There was silence in the classroom and the canteen and teachers were more respected by parents,” he wrote.
>“Before leaving class, a student would ask the teacher if he or she had behaved well. The parent would be waiting outside. If the child had not followed the lesson or had disturbed other children they would be punished by the parent.”
>Rosamaria Lauricella, a headmistress in Rome who has worked with Ukrainian children, agreed that they were well behaved. “They really respect the rules, they are very disciplined, and this helps them learn,” she told The Times.
Teacher’s paradise
Tldr; Ukrainian top students get randomly assigned to mid-range to shitty schools and shine.
Did people really think Easter European children are somehow dumber than their Western counterparts? I’ve never experienced that. But then again, I don’t really have any kids around.
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Ukrainian school children fleeing their country and joining classrooms in Italy and France are dazzling their new teachers with their maths skills, prompting debate about the slipping standards in western European classrooms.
As part of a wave of five million refugees that have fled Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, 10,000 Ukranian children are now enrolled in French schools and 16,000 in Italian schools where they have shown, in general, that they are a year ahead of their peers in the same age group in maths.
“Ukrainian students are much more comfortable at doing mathematics than French students,” Pierre Priouret, a maths teacher from Toulouse, told French the news outlet BFMTV.com.
“All my secondary school colleagues who have Ukrainian students say they perform better,” he added.
A second French maths teacher, Marianne, said she had “rarely seen students who succeed so well,” adding that the Ukrainians were a year ahead in maths and able to pick up languages fast because they already spoke both Ukrainian and Russian.
“I met some who spoke better English than me,” she said.
The glowing reports from French teachers were noticed by the Italian educational site Orizzontescuola, which has received a barrage of similar comments from Italian teachers after posting them.
“We were inundated with posts from Italian teachers agreeing with their French counterparts that these kids are a year ahead,”Andrea Carlino, an employee of the site, said.
The Italians had some ideas about why the Ukrainians enjoy a better mastery of numbers.
“Over there they teach like we taught up until 20 years ago,” wrote one teacher, while another who spent two months teaching in Ukraine said: “The text books are similar to those our parents used back in the 1940s.”
Apart from old fashioned text books, the teacher said discipline in the classroom was key.
I feel like that says more about our school system than about the Ukrainian one.
Ahh yeah W*estsplaining… “How could those savages from eastern europe perform better”.. on a more serious note, you see a small group of people who could afford to flee their country. Ukraine is massive in size so not everyone can afford to flee. So both can be true – you can see better results in small group of students and at the same time country’s average level can be lower
Western Europe being surprised Eastern Europeans are academically capable, episode 535636775.
Sorry to break it to anyone, but the notion of the academic superiority of the West relies mostly on the language barrier and heavy private funding of the academic institutions. If you were to take those two away, I can assure you there’d be little left to feel superior about.
Math is the “king” class in eastern-europe I’d say it;s one of the few good things that we got from communism.
It’s not like the west it;s not full of mathematicians,physicists,doctors and programmers from eastern-europe. US and Canada have a lot of them.
When they arrive in Canada, Ukrainian children will discover a horde of illiterate and feral children.
Czechia adopted progressive Western education approach and decline is staggering.
>“There was silence in the classroom and the canteen and teachers were more respected by parents,” he wrote.
>“Before leaving class, a student would ask the teacher if he or she had behaved well. The parent would be waiting outside. If the child had not followed the lesson or had disturbed other children they would be punished by the parent.”
>Rosamaria Lauricella, a headmistress in Rome who has worked with Ukrainian children, agreed that they were well behaved. “They really respect the rules, they are very disciplined, and this helps them learn,” she told The Times.
Teacher’s paradise
Tldr; Ukrainian top students get randomly assigned to mid-range to shitty schools and shine.
Did people really think Easter European children are somehow dumber than their Western counterparts? I’ve never experienced that. But then again, I don’t really have any kids around.