Czech students more humble than American students? / Jsou Cesti studenti skromnejsi nez Americti studenti?

Remember I wrote a story about my experience with the Czech versus the American educational system? Well, here is yet another guy that can expand your horizons on a similar topic. His name is Bill Cohn, the New York born lawyer who is also a professor of Ethics and Media at the University of New York in Prague (if you can make sense out of that name). Bill did an interview with the Radio Prague where he spoke on the topic of Czech students and how they differ from the American students. He is kind of wishy-washy with his answers (probably didn’t want to upset either side) but after some time of decoding his “politically correct” sentences, this is the bottom line:

• Czech students are more humble; lot of them actually have a lot of experience in their field but they tend to downplay it quite a lot. American students think that they are experts in everything.

• Czech students have a tendency to “rote learn”, meaning that their instructors pile up bunch of information on them and students just swallow it and spit it back out couple of days later. The challenge therefore is to break through the bad habit of just accepting and not questioning the information that they are given and learn how to think critically for a change.

And finally, what does this professor from New York thinks of Czechs in general? “Czechs hold their cards close to their vest – they don’t make eye contact with you, they don’t smile at you, but if you can break through that and get to know them, they are really just bunch of big soft teddy bears underneath it.”

CZ: Pamatujete si, kdyz jsem psala o me zkusenosti s Americkym pedagogickym systemem, a jak je rozlysuje od nasich ceskych skol? Podarilo se mi najit dalsi podobny “pridavek do rodiny” co se tyce tohoto tematu. Radio Praha udelalo rozhovor s jednim americkym ucitelem, ktery je v soucasne dobe profesor Medii a etiky na New Yorkske universite v Praze; radio Praha se ho ptalo na jeho nazor o tom, jak se cesti studenti lysi od studentu americkych. Prijde mi, ze se z neho prime otazky tahaly jako z chlupate deky (asi se bal, ze nekoho rozcili), ale po nejakem tom desifrovani jsem z celeho rozhovoru ty podstatne myslenky vytahla. Tak tedy:

• cesti studenti jsou skromnejsi; hodne z nich ma hodne zkusenosti v jejich oboru expertyzy, ale nedaji to na sobe znat. Americti studenti si na druhe strane mysli, ze jsou experti na vsechno.

• Cesti studenti maji ve zvyku praktikovat tzv. “rutinove uceni”, coz znamena, ze ucitel je zamori tisice informacemi, oni to vsechno spolknou, a pak to 0 par dni pozdeji zase vsechno vyplivnou. Maji za ukol se tedy ODucit tyto informace slepe, bez jakychkoliv otazek prijmout, ale take NAucit se, jak kriticky premyslet.

A konecne, co si New Yorksky ucitel mysli o Cesich jako celek? “Cesi jsou zprvu dosti neduverivi – nepodivaji se ti do oci, neusmejou se na tebe – ale jestlize se se ti podari prorazit tuto fasadu a opravdu je poznat, jsou to v podstate mekoucti, tulici se medove :)”

Source:

http://www.radio.cz/en/article/105663