Romanian or American School System?

Being a student in the Romanian educational system, I have become interested in the
American education, as there are so many differences that can be seen not only in the
mentality field, but also in the fact that their younger generations are growing in an
atmosphere that makes them develop with better expectations from their future and life.
Besides, their system is well structured and imposes strictly rules regarding classes, which
makes children know, from an early age, to make the difference between truth and fraud, as
much as to understand that all they have to do is to base on their own knowledge and effort
made to understand the lessons, learning for tests and exams, which will prepare them for
adulthood not to steal the ideas, rights or rewards from anybody else, but to work hard on
their own in order to achieve their dreams and goal.

Trying to compare the two educational systems you will find out that they are mostly as
different as chalk and cheese. From the concept people have about school, to the college
campus, material dotation, way of teaching and examinating and, most important, the
students opinions about it, everything is as night and day in the two countries. So, thinking
about our country changing the system after the American model, is quite far away from our
possibilities and mostly idyllical, but not impossible, as the world is constantly changing and
developing and can be positively influenced to improve the quality of the schooling, as long
as the society truly wants and believes in this change.

First of all, one of the most touching disadvantages in the Romanian schools consists in the
physically fatigue that students experience, comparing to the few conditions that schools
provide them to spend most of their time there. In Romania, students carry heavy backpacks
daily, depending on their level and amount of books and scholar supplies they need, as
against the American students who benefit from personal cabinets in which they can hold
their books along with their personal stuff. Also, in America, school provides them with
supplies, like papers, printers, a huge collection of books from which they have to read or
learn, in order to put no effort into buying or searching for them. Besides, most schools
dispose of canteens or cafeterias, from which students can have their lunch or grab a snack,
so they won't be hungry or thirsty during the day.

Another black spot in the Romanian schools refers to the teaching system. You can easily
see the instability between the amount of lessons, homework, projects and many other
activities that students are required to do,as much as the level of stress and psychical and
psychological effort they make, and the time they dispose of. Most of them are in the
situation of giving up to some of their duties, and so from here comes the decline. Some of
them choose to skip homeworks, others tend to neglect their home duties, while the rest of
them choose to stay up late in order to complete all their tasks, skip sleep hours or meals, or
simply don't care about them and "dispose" of full time. This aspect is sad, as their evolution
is affected in at least one area, and also brings them negative consequences, most of them
in their health, like a decrease in their immune system, fatigue, lower attention and
concentration in classes, or higher predisposition to mental and physical illnesses and
disorders. Also, in our society, cheating is a very practiced method of achieving results
without learning or making efforts, and people don't consider it as a huge problem, because
most of them has done this at least once, which is a terrible thing, as children learn that they
can skip the hard path in order to gain what they want, thing that reflects on our society,
where the theft, fraud and corruption is pronounced and common in most of the fields, from
politics and economy to cultural and even religious institutions. This things must be changed
immediately, as to rise the rate of satisfied and healthy students, in order to be able to
accumulate knowledge and, most important, to have the strength to succeed in school tasks
for the moment and, in addition, to reduce the mentality of the society who thinks that, in
some ways, you can obtain something in an easier way or without working or making efforts
for it.

However, the aspect that bothers me the most in the Romanian school system is the
mentality imposed to parents and children that they have to fight and work for achieving the
best grades, instead of knowledge and how to use it in the real life. Parents are manipulated
from the external world that their child is good only if it learns continuously and has the
highest grades. This obstruction that society, along with school, gives to children stops them
from choosing the best information they want or need in order to succeed and learn to
actually do something. Instead, they learn everything by heart and don't take the information
logically or try to correlate the information with real situations, which will affect them in the
future when, for example, instead of a paper with questions and answers, they will face
situations in which their actions and decisions will be life changing.

All things considered, my opinion is that every system has it's advantages and
disadvantages, and people should take example of the good parts from each in order to aim
for the best way of dealing with the problem of the field and so, in this case, the American
education is a very good example for Romania, as it provides better qualities for learning
and making the school years anything but regrettable, but not entirely, as our system still
brings out very good students with a higher base of knowledge, and if changes are to be
implemented, those should be done gradually in order for the people to get used to them
and, probably in ten years, we could say that it could actually work effectively in our country.