This is what I heard. Hungarian students are extremely stressed. The average college student takes anywhere between 18 to 32 credits per semester. They must complete 180 credits within 5 years (as compared to 116 credits in 4 years at my own institution, Providence College). Each course meets once a week for 100 minutes. Although the Hungarian government pays most of their tuition, they must pass competitive exams. It is this performance that decides whether they are allowed to attend university or not. Depending on the budget (and the Hungarian economy is in deep crisis as we speak), the government allocates more or less to higher education. This means that some of the most successful students may not have access to a college education. Most students also work which certainly adds to the pressure.
This is also what I heard. Hungarian students are passive. According to the old system, students would take a series of lecture courses followed by seminar courses. This would prepare them to study for their comprehensive oral exams. Students were not expected to participate actively in the lecture courses…the professor would deliver the material and assume that students would be able to demonstrate an understanding of the material later on when they took their comps.
So here I am…a teacher that uses the Socratic method extensively and believes in active engagement on the part of both students and faculty. So I have to confront both institutional and individual barriers to running the kind of classroom that I believe (and research has demonstrated) promotes learning. To be fair, I have heard some of my American colleagues complain about student passivity and lack of participation as well.
Here’s what I decided. I am going to go into class expecting that students will participate. While I will make allowances for the fact that their learning is in a second language, I will ask questions, follow-up with more questions and try to create a climate in the classroom where they feel comfortable responding to the questions and hopefully we will be able to build on that to elicit their opinions and reactions.
Now let me tell you about my first day of classes….IT EXCEEDED MY WILDEST EXPECTATIONS!!!!!! The students were really happy to have a native speaker. They have a great deal of interest in America and especially the West, which is the topic for this seminar. My goal for the class was to help students distinguish between the mythic West (the “wild west,” cowboys & Indians, gold miners, ranchers & homesteaders) vs. the reality of the lived experience in the modern-day west. I gave them a handout from Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis and broke them down into groups–each group had to dissect one of the paragraphs and lead the discussion when we returned to the whole class format. I am happy to report that they were thoughtful, inciteful, and articulate. They were also very gracious and laughed at my corny jokes! I know there will be times when they are tired or not prepared, but I believe we will move forward together on this adventure.
Tomorrow we have to go to the Immigration Office to register. B has bet me that we won’t be able to get it done in one visit….I am afraid that he is right. More to follow….
Thanks for tuning in and best regards,
Marcsi
BTW: Turner argued that the Am West was the formative experience for developing uniquely American traits and democratic institutions. So I asked the Hungarian students which characteristics they associated with Americans. Their responses were quite illuminating… The adjectives they used were: naive, optimistic, hard-working, patriotic, open, and superficial. Pretty interesting, don’t you think?
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