Talk:History of Romanian education

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It is more content about higher education. Hope to insert sonn some details about pre-university.

The article is quite bad - first, it overlaps with Education in Romania, providing lots of unneeded information about the present (which would be better suited to the main Education in Romania article) while providing almost nothing in terms of history. Plus, the assessments of quality based on "olympiads" (which are fairly limited, and for the most part, stuck in the '70s) has little to do with real life - better provide UN and EU indicators. --Xanthar 00:04, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

This comment was done prior to my rewrite, and is intended for the original author. You can find the old article in the history section --Xanthar 02:54, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

The article became even worse - it is full of mistakes. First, there was no such thing as Education between 1945 and 1990. There were three completely separate stages, based on the three reforms - the Stalinist system (starting with the 1948 reforms and ending around 1957-1959), the "opening" period (1959/1961-1972), and the "neo-stalinist" system (1972 until 1989). Much of the policies during the period were fully opposite (on of the main objectives in the '50s was the "proletary internationalsm", whereas in the '80s it was nationalism up to the level of xenophobia. Even more - what was said about minority teaching is not true. Actually, it was abolished gradually in the 1960s and 1970s, AND there was full schooling in Hungarian in the 1950s, especially in the "Hungarian Autonomous Region". Oh, and pay scales in Communist Romania were really not all that great. Your average grad 1 (usually more than 10 years experience) teacher would have had around 1500-2000 lei in the 1970s and 2300 - 2500 lei in the 1980s - comparable with most office workers. Other than that, no significant advantages (such as better rations, lower waiting time for houses or cars etc.). Of course, this is without counting the numerous bribes and home tutoring or meditaţii that became a phenomenon during the period.--Xanthar 02:54, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, "to be teacher is the worst paid job for postsecondary graduates, under the average salary per economy" - should we count university professors, which have an average of about 7-10 times the average national salary? Even university assistants, with all the benefits, in many universities, get a quite nice paycheck. And even if high-school and especially ground-schools salaries ARE bad, they are definitely not below the average wage. Maybe for temps and for first or second year teachers, but that's it. But yet again, given the performance of the teachers in Romania, such as the PISA assessment or the current erroneous subjects for exams after ONE YEAR of analysis, one can easily say that many should receive a pay cut rather than a raise. "all government who succeeded after 1990 didn’t allocate more than 4 percents". 4% out of what? If you mean the famous 4% of the GDP (PIB în româneşte), well, let's see, in 2007 there's 5.2, in 2006 it was 4.8, in 2005 it was 4.6... So, I'm terribly sorry, but your statement is, well, false. However, when the money goes to the useless inspectorates, when the money goes to paying teachers to torment students with 16 subjects in high schools for 35 hours a week, instead of a more adequate 20-25 hours and 6-8 subjects (of which 4-5 electives) - yes, the rest should be FIRED, there's enough jobs in Romania - many better payed, as you say - when the money goes on organizing stupid 1970s style competitions, I'm sorry to say, but it's wasted money. 2% or 20%. Down the drain. Continuing : Democracy is not a theoretical state of mind but a practice that required practices of years if not decades. Although in 1990 polls showed insufficient attitudes towards democracy, after only 6 years the attitudes had changed. After another 6 years Romania have deliberate goals toward the EU, and many projects and exchanges with them. - well, it seems you haven't seen a school lately. Attitudes are fairly similar as they were in the early '90s. Plus, the part with democracy is pompous blah-blah - Romanian schools are NOT democratic institutions. Plus, democracy is very much a concept. often students and teachers become target of violence even inside schools - well, it's an improvement since the '80s, when the teachers used to hit kids. Legally. many students became drugs addicted and required special treatments - well, if you call a few hundreds, or at MOST, a few thousands many, well, you might be right - but i would say 1000 or 5000 or even 10000 nationwide (they are far less than 10.000) is no big problem. Spain, Italy, the UK and other countries have a far bigger problem with drugs. reissue of religious education - well, this has been a controversy in the last 10 years. Wikipedia is strictly NPOV. Your point is not the opinion of a large part of the Romanian society. A VERY large part, given the percentage of parents not wishing their kids to be indoctrinated, and signing the official form with the "no religion" civic education - 3 years, 4th + 7th + 8th grade (Cultură şi educaţie civică) + "dirigenţie". Should suffice. brain migration. Many valuable people, both students and professors are emigrating from Romania. Usually they are receiving offers from the US and the EU. Almost all of the best students are trying to obtain a better position, better paid outside. One of the best opportunities it represent the Olympiad performances.. Brain drain in Romania happens both ways, and olympiad performances value exactly 0 given that 99% of the world (not Belarus or India) never even heard of them (the only exception is the math contest, which has some very, very limited popularity in DE and US). Overall, the level of education has dropped - not according to most assessments - it's level on the bottom of a pit. It's not worse, nor better than it was in 1991, and it's clearly better than in 1989. A special IT profile was created to attract the best students from primary (from 5th grade) and high schools. Having a good salary after graduation and possibility to work outside, a lot of people tried to succeed in this new domain. The Olympiads in Informatics bring to Romanians top world positions. In only five years Romanians imposed a tradition, obtaining after many times first place in the world in Informatics Olympiads. Even if IT curriculum requires a lot of money and investments that are far to be enough, the government and people are trying very hard to face up this challenge - if this is what they believe in the ministry, we are all doomed. The IT and CS programme in ro is so obsolete it's useless. The only reason we do well in the olympiads, is because they are obsolete too - except for Mathematical Algorithms and Theoretical CS (where we lye in a reasonably onorable position, far from even OK), well, everything else is a mess in Romanian IT. It's not the lack of infrastructure, God Forbid (Unibuc and UPB and ASE and Uniiasi (especially Uniiasi) and UVT have more infrastructure than they can handle) it's the idiotic programs, filled with useless math and generic engineering/economics subjects, and 10 year old, laughable IT subjects, taught by teachers that don't seem to have used a computer since the dawn of Earth, with rectors that barely know their own subject. Barely... Because of great number of engineers produced before 1990, few students pursued polytechnic studies after. - the competition is quite strong nowadays in at least four of the faculties of the Polytechnic in Bucharest, and it's getting stronger every year, and engineering is again very popular. Buildings are being built, highways and railways are essential for development... 4th place in the world at ACM world contest - and nowhere to be seen in the Shanghai ratings - I would guess the latter counts. Actually, paradoxically, based on EU assessments, and on the Shanghai and the CEEC ratings, the best fields for Romanian universities are not IT, but rather social sciences and some medical sciences (same for Hungary actually, but they are about twice better than we are in academia). --Xanthar 02:54, 5 July 2007 (UTC)