[akhtene]

Many thanks and my great admiration to people who raised this really all-important problem. It was a shock (in the most positive meaning) to find that people still care for education. Being a school teacher I heard so many opinions that we (I mean teachers) want too much from poor students who really do their best but they can't... or needn't... or even mustn't 'overload' their heads. Much of that is said by parents, some is added by educational authorities. I'm not sure what the majority of young people think, as they don't find it appropriate to share with teachers but recently it's become quite fashionable 'not to care' for anything. Oh, of course they do care for many things which concern then at the moment. As for the future... Half of my 14-year-old students couldn't even say what they were going to do after leaving school. Well, most of them said - go to university, but to study what? No answer. There is such indifferece in everything I hear. School is looked upon as something obligatory and, as a result, really silly and boring. Perhaps what I'm going to say now is a cliche, but my classmates (and I'm working in the same school which I finished) were much more hard- working and interested.

And now here comes another topic raised here - the value of historical knowledge. I feel that my country has been stripped of its history, perhaps even not for the first time. If I haven't mentioned yet, I'm from Russia. I'm not going to argue now which way of development is better or what we have lost or gained 15 years ago. But it seems to me sometimes that I used to live in an absolutely differnt country. When I was young we were tought to be proud of our Motherland. There were heroes about whom we all read and whom we wanted to be like. Now all that is not forgotten, but most facts are interprited in so many different ways, that to my mind history has become even more the matter of ideology and belief than (they say ) it used to be. And I feel that kids aren't interested in history and aren't much inspired to be. Some don't even know who won the WWII, and what it was anyway. Oral history, you say... When in a bus two (or more) old people start moaning and one says that his whole life was ruined by communists, and another argues that that was the time when people could really live... I can't recollect all the "horrors' which (they insist) I must have suffered. Of course you may say that if there is a will you can always find the necessary information and the "grain of truth' in it. That is so, no doubt. I'm just afraid that our kids have such a mixture of ideas and values in their heads.Even in our 'ancient' history some discoveries have been voiced worth yellow press.
Why have I started to put it all here? I just hope that The Lord of the Rings (sorry, jsut hate using that abbreviation) will make, or has already made some of the young people to revise their values, to get new interests (among them interest to history and to pure reading) Whatever may be said about the film, I believe it has introduced many new people to the book and to the wonderful world of Middle Earth

(created at 3.15a.m. local time. Please excuse poor language and pessimistic mood) [img]smilies/redface.gif[/img]