Three Educational Worlds - USA, China, Poland : report from Survey Research

Abstract

Despite the different mentality, system and ideology in which they grew up, the teachers from Poland, the USA and China have surprisingly very similar problems- all of them face lack of motivation in many students, an insufficient subsidy of education, over-loaded curricula, bureaucratisation of the teaching profession, overload and lack of respect for what they do with passion and great involvement. All of them also face low earnings and exorbitant requirements from education authorities. They love their job, but they do not recommend young pedagogy students to join their ranks (the unquestioned convergence of views). In China, the teacher additionally lives under huge social pressure. The reason for this is not only the concern about students’ future, but also the concern about the older generation’s future. In China, children take care of their parents until the end of their lives and as adults they have to be educated and financially stabilized in order to fulfil this obligation. In Europe and the USA the care of seniors has been, to a large extent, taken by social help institutions and non-government organizations. To sum up, the conducted modest survey research allows us to state that the education systems in the studied countries, despite the differences which are difficult to disregard, to a large extent undergo a phenomenon called the convergence culture.