GLOBAL CONNECTIONS AND EXCHANGE – UZBEKISTAN
Global Connections and Exchange-Uzbekistan (formerly known as School Connectivity for Uzbekistan) is a program funded by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, US Department of State, and administered by the International and Research Exchanges Board (IREX).
никогда не слышал об этой программе, но вот что пишут о нас в handbook для участников с американской стороны
Uzbekistan’s teachers teach
knowledge, not skills. Students are evaluated on their ability to repeat
information back to their teachers. Analytical skills are not encouraged,
nor is research. While the Global Connections program aims to address
these deficiencies, the effort is only in its infancy. When designing a
project that includes research and knowledge processing elements, very specific
steps must be outlined. It is likely that Uzbekistani teachers will not be
able to conduct a discussion on a topic that goes much deeper than “What do you
know about…?” (In fact, this is the most popular essay or quiz
topic.) Teachers are not accustomed to asking “why?” or encouraging
students to connect cause and effect.
или вот так, очень любопытно
полный текст читайте тута, есть еще пара интересных моментовIREX recommends that the
following topics be avoided:
• Uzbekistan’s ‘democracy’. We have tried to
discuss this topic several times before. Uzbekistani students will claim
that their country is a democracy and the discussion will end with that.
This is what they are taught in school, and it would be dangerous for us to
openly encourage them to think more critically about it. Rather, we can
introduce themes of democracy as they pertain to the United States and hope
that, in a round-about way, this will encourage them to think more about their
own nation’s situation.
• National identity. Students love to talk
about their culture in terms of food, holidays, and costumes. Given
Uzbekistan’s tenuous ethnic composition, however, they are never permitted to
analyze the country’s legitimacy. Uzbekistan is a Soviet creation which to
this day has questionable cohesiveness, and therefore discussion of this idea,
and thinking about what “Uzbekistan” is, is not permissible. This includes
raising the idea of conflict between ethnicities. Uzbekistan is one nation
and there is no conflict between anyone, except terrorists. Students
cannot consider if one group or another is discriminated against, and teachers
are not trained to deal with these kinds of discussions.
• Leaders.
This naturally goes with the above topics, and includes the media. The
purpose of the media in Uzbekistan – television, newspaper – is to instruct
people what to think about what the government is doing. There is no
concept of debate, point-of-view, or balanced reporting. There is only one
perspective, and it is the government’s. Analyzing media bias or how
events are covered is not possible, as that would call into question the
flawlessness of state decisions.
• War on terrorism. Uzbekistan
considers itself on the frontline of the war on terrorism, and students are
taught to believe that their government is defending them from the chaos
terrorists want to impose. Any attempt to look deeper than a simple
condemnation of all “terrorists” will be confusing and awkward for
teachers.
