Western Models and Russian Realities in Postcommunist Education

The attempts to reform the Russian education system since the fall of communism have had very uneven results. (… The authors research has lead him) to conclude that both Russian reformers and their international allies miscalculated the degree to which professional activism or a nascent “civil society” would compensate for the loss of state or public administration and financing after 1991. Assuming that the end of “totalitarian” education would result in a flourishing of grass-roots “innovation”, reformers failed to anticipate the deepening financial and administrative crises in post communist education. These severe crises, mitigated only in part by Western assistance, have resulted in the sharp degradation of the public education systems and human resource capacities in Russia and the other newly independent states, and directly threaten the future of democratic and market reform. It seems that both many Russian reformers and their Western allies were guided more by idealized Western models than by an accurate sense of Russian needs and capacities. (… The authors) conclusions are that international assistance should be focused more directly on helping to foster new professional networks that can better defend and retrain educators and teachers; and also that we must better combine general educational research with area studies knowledge to inform our cooperative efforts. (DIPF/ Orig.