America/Poland Education Comparison

Upon first reading about the college experiences of young students in Communist Poland, I was really struck by how dissimilar they were.

I remember it was my junior year of high school when I truly started my preparation for college and the search for the right fit. I was taking a class for preparation for the SATs (a major factor in many schools decisions to admit or deny students) joining tons of clubs to spruce up my resume, reading books of the Top Schools to decide which campuses I was going to take a tour of and visit and all the while trying a little harder in school to boost up my GPA. After researching and visiting what seemed like 20+ schools, I had made a list and started the application process and after a few weeks and a few freak-outs over my admission essays, the fees were paid and the applications sent. With that came the long and grueling waiting period began. I decided to go to college because, in all honesty, it is basically the norm for what you do after college and I know that with the lifestyle I want to lead when I’m older I’m going to need a degree to get a good job and make a lot of money. Granted there are some who enter the work force or go into the military, the vast majority of young adults graduating from high school go on to some sort of college and further their education. I was in no way joining the military and I found myself similar to many young men in Poland, ‘university’ provided an aversion towards military services. This however, was the only similarity I noticed.

A major difference I noticed and was really shocked by was the enrollment procedures of the education systems of Communist Poland. Priority was given to the sons and daughters of workers, regardless of their actual knowledge or abilities, while at the very bottom of the ladder were the sons and daughters of “independent professionals” such as doctors and lawyers. The article said that “for their applications were as a rule considered last of all and turned down” [about the sons/daughters of lawyers and doctors.] It definitely is not like that in the US. I feel that in the US, the sons/daughters of doctors and lawyers basically can go to any school they want. If you’re parents are powerful, rich, or know someone with pull at a school, then that the student is basically a shoe-in to whichever university they please. If a student has ties to a University the likelihood of them being accepted is greatly higher than those without ties, especially in Ivy League schools for example, which is where a lot of Doctors/Lawyers go to school, so it makes sense for the children of successful people to be able to get into schools more easily which is the complete opposite in Poland. None of that would matter in a Communist Regime for the sole reason that a student’s parent was a professional. In Poland “priority was given to the sons and daughters of workers, regardless of their actual knowledge of abilities,” this is just so bizarre to me and wrong. Although it is true that if you have a parent working at a college you can basically go there, and for a lot cheap, you still have to have somewhat of the intelligence level of your peers.

A second group of ‘candidates’ for ‘university’ was made up of representatives from the working class. Something I found interesting about Communist education was that the students had no say in where they attend school or what they attend school for, regardless of their social status. I am the product of a ‘middle working class’ family, and I would be completely angry and upset if I did not get to choose where I went to school and what to major in. I’m a Finance major, the business world has always been something I’ve found interesting and I’ve really enjoyed a lot of the classes I’ve gotten the opportunity to choose to take, I couldn’t imagine going to school for something such as Nursing or Education.

Something that also struck me in this article was in the ‘remodeled studies.’ The communist universities set out to eliminate English, French, Italian and Spanish culture and literature from the curriculum in an attempt to ‘protect students from ideologically alien contents,’ and instead use the ‘linguistic enunciations of Stalin.’ I couldn’t imagine having to basically take ‘Stalin’ as my foreign language because others were banned by the government. Something I also found interesting in this section was about the ban on textbooks, and the destruction of libraries and how students had to rely primarily on the lectures alone, which didn’t include certain achievements of philosophers and sociologists because their ideals were rejected. I couldn’t imagine not having a library, ironically where I am not and where I do 95% of my work, or have text books and have to sit through lectures only.

We really are lucky to be able to have so much freedom in our country, to be able to choose our school, choose our major, choose (some) of the classes we get to take and basically create our own career path, which students of Communist Poland were never allowed to do. It really puts a new perspective on how much I take for granted, we get to attend college because we want to not because the government forces us to.