Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0244/02448.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 15KB | 242 lines

$Unique_ID{COW02448}
$Pretitle{276}
$Title{Mongolia
Chapter 7B.   Students}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Trevor N. Dupuy, Wendell Blanchard}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{school
education
mongolian
schools
students
teachers
children
teacher
books
training}
$Date{1973}
$Log{}
Country:     Mongolia
Book:        Mongolia, A Country Study
Author:      Trevor N. Dupuy, Wendell Blanchard
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1973

Chapter 7B.   Students

     The Mongolian government was confronted with formidable obstacles when it
declared education compulsory in 1955. It faced both the indifference of
uneducated parents, and the physical problems of a sparsely settled, mobile
population living in an inhospitable climate and terrain.

     Parental apathy has been partly overcome by government propaganda
stressing education's importance. The scenario of one play produced in recent
years had a widowed mother send her children to school, leaving her with no
one home in the yurt to help her. After remarriage, the stepfather, kept one
son at home. The other son, who was sent to school, turned out to be a
success, but the stepfather, and the son he kept at home, were failures. The
Mongolian audience wept. In case such messages are not effective, the Council
of Ministers in 1955 authorized the executive committees of the khurals
throughout the country to take administrative measures against parents who
evade compulsory education for their school-age children. These include a
warning, or fines from 50 to 200 tugriks.

     Transportation problems have been met in part by the establishment of
boarding schools in population centers. The goal of the 1963 reorganization
plan was to have 40,000 children (40 percent) in boarding schools by 1965,
while the Fourth 5-Year Plan calls for boarding facilities for 45 to 50
percent of all students in rural areas. During the winter months the rural
school is nearly always a boarding school, but during the fall and spring
months when transportation is easier, some of the children may ride horseback
to school. If the family is too far away from the school, the children may
be sent to relatives who live closer. Mongol families are ready to accept a
variety of arrangements for their school children during the school year (see
ch. 5, Family).

     Detailed regulations concerning the administration of boarding schools
and the requirements of parents were announced in 1960. Parents are no longer
asked to bring meat and cash for their children. They must, however, bring
outer clothing, two changes of underwear, exercise books, and all other
classroom necessities before the beginning of the school year on September 1.
The state provides school uniforms, room furnishings, bedding, towels and
toiletries, laundry service, food and drink, and sanitary facilities. The
Ministry of Education is given a list of the daily minimal food requirements
for the children and instructed to increase the amount of milk and vegetables
served. The budget provides that 2.30 tugriks be spent daily on children in
the 4- and 8-year schools, and that 3.3 tugriks be spent for children in the
8- and 11-year schools in the larger population centers. In order to provide
the needed food, the Ministry of Education raises its own meat and vegetables
with the assistance of student labor.

     University students who meet the requirements are given free tuition and
books, as well as stipends of up to 240 tugriks per month. This is a larger
sum than the average wage of a Mongolian worker. About one-third of the
university students are women.

     During vacations, the students used to go home to their families and
help with the livestock. Now the government decides where they will go and
what work they will do. This policy is a hardship for many families. In 1959
government officials decided that students in secondary schools and in higher
education must work at industrial, agricultural, and construction jobs for 30
days during their summer vacations. Secondary school children are paid at
prevailing wages at the place of employment. Older students continue to get
their regular stipends. During one summer vacation period, students and
teachers from the university and specialized institutes dug more than 400
wells in dry sections of the country in order to open up new pasturelands.
Income derived by the government from student labor, whether it be from the
sale of products made during training or the sale of crops from experimental
fields, is to be used for the purchase of tools and equipment needed for
training, for seeds, to reward outstanding students, finance student
excursions, improve school grounds or to set up cultural facilities.

     A problem particularly concerning school officials is the question of
dropouts. Most of the students who drop out leave during the fifth, sixth, or
seventh grades. In some of the provinces nearly one-quarter of the children do
not complete the fourth grade. The main cause is failure to move on to a
higher grade, which in turn is caused by poor studying habits, according to a
1967 report of the Minister of Education. Students become discouraged and
leave school entirely if they fail to move up to a higher grade. Various
remedies are proposed, including better motivation of pupils and improvements
of pedagogical methods.

Teachers

     A shortage of teachers was one of the most serious problems facing the
Mongolian system of education in the 1920s, and it has continued to be a
source of concern until very recently. The first school of higher education
established in 1940, was the Evening Institute for Teacher Certification. The
University of Ulan Bator, founded in 1942, had a department of pedagogy which
became a separate Pedagogical Institute in 1961.

     During the early years teachers were poorly trained, and ambitious
students were unable to obtain a higher education. In 1928, of 170 teachers,
less than half had had any teacher training. They also lacked the ideological
background needed to indoctrinate their students in Communist philosophy.
Anyone who could read and write became a teacher during the early years. Even
feudal officials, if considered loyal to the new regime, were employed. In
1922, the first group of 36 teachers was trained in a 3-month course. A
special school, established in 1924, became in 1925 a teacher-training college
for elementary and secondary school teachers. In 1934, the Party Congress
adopted a specific program for teacher training and instruction. Within the
next 30 years the number of teachers increased more than five times. During
the second 5-year plan (1953-57), pedagogical schools in Choibalsan,
Tsetserleg, and Ulan Bator trained more than 1,000 teachers and accepted 2,000
for training. Evening and correspondence courses retrained 2,000 teachers
having over 10 years of service.

     In 1960, there were 3,743 teachers, of whom 1,081 were in grades 5-7, and
375 in grades 8-10. The school teacher with a secondary education earns the
equivalent of 400 to 480 tugriks per month. Outstanding teachers are rewarded
with the title "Propagator of Culture" and receive cash prizes. Baldani
Tsevegjab, teacher, school director, and author, celebrated her 30th
anniversary as a teacher in 1957. She was awarded two orders of Sukhe-Bator,
two orders of the Red Banner of Labor, and other medals. She had worked to
combat illiteracy and had helped establish the evening University of Marxism
and Leninism. Her pupils have become writers, teachers, doctors, and
engineers, and she has the title,"Honored Teacher of Mongolia." In 1967, the
Minister of Education stressed the need for responsible and disciplined
teachers who have been adequately trained in their fields and who are
"ideologically stable." He cited the need to standardize teacher training,
recruitment, promotion, and on-the-job training, as well as for teachers to
profit from one another's experience. Proper assignments, promotions, and
assessments are also needed.

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