Professors and their students

One of the cultural differences that has most caught my attention is the way in which professors interact with students, in terms of personal relationships and what is taught. I have female professors for all four of my courses, and each course has two professors, one who is responsible for teaching on a daily basis and one who serves as an assistant (I have yet to figure out what this person does besides sit in on every class and help pass out papers). They are all extremely knowledgeable in their subject area and all but one speak British English perfectly… note that this does not mean they don’t ask me lots of questions about English vocabulary and grammatical structures that I hardly know how to explain (so I have to be paying attention 100% of the time as I’ve found out the hard way).

But what’s most interesting to me is their extreme bluntness – if a student is asking a question or explaining an idea and accidentally inserts one wrong word in English or if the professor simply doesn’t agree with what he is saying, they’ll say “no you’re completely wrong, why did you use THAT word?” Or “your idea makes no sense, you obviously haven’t been studying.” Etc. There is always a definite right and wrong. Many times it sounds so harsh to me that I think students in the US would start crying if a professor treated them like this, but here no one gets offended or embarrassed in front of their classmates even when being yelled at. These situations have made me realize that perhaps in the US we’re taught that we could always be right if we look at a concept in the right way or that even if you give a horrible presentation you’ll never be humiliated for in front of others. As students we’re much more used to presenting what we wish (whether on a test, in papers, or in presentations) and getting a grade. Here, feedback is blunt and constant – there is ALWAYS a second opportunity to do better, even on tests, so the student who leaves a course with a low grade has really had to work hard for it. On the one hand, this bluntness and opportunity for improvement gives students a real chance to learn the material, but at the same time students here are much more scared of their professors than in the US. But perhaps we leave college much less able to handle tough criticism…

Additional thoughts about school taken from my first report to the Rotary Foundation

"The most interesting aspect of studying the teaching of English here in San Juan is being able to compare the US and Argentine higher education systems. The most notable differences have to do with the use of technology, the knowledge with which students arrive at the university, and the notion of being a student. Here technology is absent from the classroom. All teaching is done with the chalkboard and all assignments are handwritten. Students have been taught only the very basics of word processing and become stressed on the rare occasion that a professor requests something typed. I also feel that many university students here enter school with a slightly lower skill level than those in the US. Secondary schooling here seems to be focused on the accumulation of information instead of on specific skills. Students graduate high school without knowing how to structure a five-paragraph essay or how to critically analyze text. This is of course not the students’ fault; it is a function of the Argentine secondary education system that is based more on memorization than in the US. This means that many of the skills that I developed in high school are developed here during the college years. Lastly, the idea of being a student is different from in the US. Because higher education at public universities is completely free in Argentina, there is little pressure to pass all courses on time, and therefore students normally graduate in 5-7 years. There is more emphasis on taking time to really learn the material instead of in the US where many students are consumed with passing to accumulate credit instead of knowledge. Also because public schooling is free, a more diverse group of people have the opportunity to study at the university. My classmates in the first year track range in age from 18 to 31, some working and many raising families in addition to being students. Equal opportunity is most definitely an advantage of the system here."