Hacker News Reader

Comment by sashavegas | Hacker News Reader

Consider old Russian system

After 8 years of school there were exams (written and spoken) where person would be selected to go to 2 more years of school (equivalent of hi school) or if he performs poorly on exam, he can go to professional school for associated degree.

The person who goes to 2 more years of hi school, take exam again, and receive diploma.

Then the person can apply to any university, but to get there it was require to take another 4-5 exams, (entry exams) based on selected study subject. For example, if person decided to go to math/physics, it was required to pass 4 exams (2 for math, written and spoken) and 2 for physics. Based on result, (average score from all entry exams) the person either accepted or not.

If he not accepted, he can repeat it next year or go for associated degree or some lower school.

It was very nice system, where everybody have a shot based on brain and knowledge, no matter from what school person was.

View on HN

https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556

Nice paper.

Another example of the corruption of the Russian system which I have heard (quite likely apocryphal) follows: a female student is taking an oral exam in front of her <whatever subject> teacher. (These exams are or can be one on one.) The teacher indicates that the student should unzip her dress or she will receive a low score. She is extremely uncomfortable but attempts to comply. The zipper gets stuck. She says “I’m sorry, but it doesn’t go any lower.” The teacher replies with “Then I can’t go higher than a 3!” (Exams in Russia are out of 5.)

You can complain about the SAT all you want (and I won’t defend it) but it doesn’t have that particular disadvantage.

But how do you get to bribe school officials so your kid, who obviously is entitled to go to MIT, gets in? You're telling me they have to actually work!?

What's sad actually about that is it was far more meritocratic than the current system in the US. Now it's just an extension of high school that honestly has become just as easy as most high school classes depending on where you go.

Oh yes, absolutely no corruption was ever found in the old Soviet system.

Don’t forget that the pure Soviet meritocracy also resulted in a utopian society with unparalleled economic prosperity.

China also has an education system that’s supposed to be based on exam results, yet funny how the scions of high-level officials and billionaires usually end up at the most elite schools. Of course, it’s possible that they all got there on pure merit...

Pure merit means stratification based on unequal access to resources, genes, or upbringing. It isn't surprising that the elite makes it to the top.

Meritocracy isn't exactly egalitarianism.

It’s usually just nepotism. I know a retired principal of an elite high school, and he’s full of stories of the shenanigans surrounding admissions. He would get calls from governors and mayors offering favors and applying pressure. He told me that half the buildings on the school campus were built as a result of accepting the children of high officials and rich businesspeople. In fact he once showed me a picture of the ornate gate of the school and said, “I call it the chicken gate, because it was the admission ticket of a kid whose family owned a chain of famous chicken restaurants.”

"Unequal access to genes" is going to be a problem in any system.

It's a little bit of a desperate attempt at meritocracy however. Affluent parents will still be able to generate systems where their kids get better scores. And 'better scores on exams' might be a very crude predictor of future skills, it's not remotely all encompassing. So 'selecting' for your elite on the basis of a few exams at age 18 is probably a bad idea.

Macron just announced the closure of the 'Grand Ecole' of Administration for this reason.

Basically, France (and Europe inc. UK) traded their Nobility for a more meritocratic system, i.e. Elite Schools, but the notion that 'all the power goes to kids from those schools' is a little ridiculous as well. (Edit: all the power does go to kids from those schools, that is ridiculous, I'm not saying the 'idea that this exists' is ridiculous).

And FYI even if the Soviet System was a little more flat ... in the current Western systems (with deep problems) there are scholarships aplenty for top students. It's just hard for young kids to internalize the importance of a good education. In high school, I really had no idea how important it would be.

Elite schools are worthwhile however, I wish early education were not so competitive, and, we didn't focus quite so much on the name brand of a school.

Elite schools are worthwhile if it isn't in it for the money like most (all?) elite schools in the US. In that regard the Soviet system were far superior.

No, the Soviet System was a complete failure from top to bottom, producing some great scientists is nice but a side show.

Using standardized tests from 14-21 to select leadership feels very meritocratic, but it's also very crude. Also there is the ugly notion that maybe the best way to lead a nation is not purely meritocratic.

American Ivy League, despite their follies, produce a ton of very high calibre people. So does the 2cnd tier and below that, it's possible to get a very decent education but less guarantees of exceptional outcomes.

Some industries are full of Ivy League grads but many are not.

Well, I agree that Soviet Union was failure from top to bottom (non-market economy and dictatorship can get you just so far). But with this said, it was possible to get excellent education in Soviet Union, and (with a lot of hard work) it was available to anyone.

Producing great scientists is a failure? Maybe we should aim to fail more.

Yes, if all you do is produce some good scientists, win a few gold medals, and your people starve in oppression and poverty, that is a pretty big failure.

Also, throughout that time and even now the US produces amazing scientists and also has the means for them to 'do stuff'.

FYI I'm not American, I understand these things are far from perfect. I'm mostly harking back to the notion of 'standardized test and ABC school as elite' is probably not so good. America is open enough that even though some industries are chock-a-block Ivy League, many are not.

I'm not saying that the soviet union was a paradise, far from it, just that its weird for someone to describe creating good scientists as a "failure" when talking about educational systems. That's not to say that it might not have other flaws, i just struggle to see how creating scientists itself is a flaw.

> the notion that 'all the power goes to kids from those schools' is a little ridiculous as well.

It's really not.

"As of November 2020, of the 55 prime ministers to date, 28 were educated at the University of Oxford (including 13 at Christ Church), and 14 at the University of Cambridge (including six at Trinity College)."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_t...

My implication was that 'all the power goes to this group, which is ridiculous' - not 'the idea that people have that all the power is concentrated there is a bad idea'.

Probably my bad.

what macron announced was just PR speak.

ENA will be closed, a new school with a different name (ESP) serving the same function and doing exactly the same as before will be opened in 2022.

> For example, if person decided to go to math/physics, it was required to pass 4 exams (2 for math, written and spoken) and 2 for physics.

I don't mean to derail, but what is a "spoken" math exam like? It sounds like my nightmare and I graduated with a STEM degree in a competitive program.

A spoken math exam was the following:

There were printed tickets that contains different question (typically 3) from all math coursed tough in school.

A person randomly picks the ticket (that were present, and questions unknow before you pick it) and was given time to answer the questions. After that he sit face to face with person who take the exam (typically if was the professor form university) and explain him your answer, while examiner can ask you additional questions related to your answer, etc. Based on your answer he grades you. In this system you cannot cheat the exam, since examiner will quickly realize if your answer were from cheat or you knew the subject.

Not familiar with old Russian system but there are oral exams for math in France when you apply to "École d'ingénieurs" (engineering school), and it still exists today:

It's basically like a coding whiteboard interview, but instead of being asked to invert a binary tree, you're asked a math question (proof of something, etc)

Like coding interviews in whiteboards for programmers... questions about math/physics/etc... and you have to answer them, and then write in the blackboard your solution. You get graded by solution + the way you explained things.

Written, are just like that, written tests, usually not multiple choice, (that is an american invention), but you have to show the work you did to get the result of the problem.

They can be easy or brutal, it very depends on how hard is the teach doing the 'interrogation' on you....

I took oral math exams in Germany 15 years back when studying there for a year. In many ways I actually preferred it to written. A nice thing about oral exams is that it allows the professor to quite effectively determine your skills very quickly. If you're stuck at small parts, they can give you a hint. If you then just start rolling, you clearly knew the subject matter. Or if you don't understand an area very well, the professor can switch to another area. Maybe you happen to know other parts of the course very well, but the first thing the professor asks is in one of your weak areas. The professor can also drill down into specific subjects you understand well and give you more and more difficult and detailed questions that you've maybe never even thought about at all and help you through them.

I think the system is great. The main downside is that one-on-one tests just don't scale. But other than that, I wish they would be more common in undergraduate studies in the US.

Going by the experience of the Russian chemist that mentored me as a kid...

You stand in front of a few adults as a middle schooler. You have a chalkboard and chalk. They ask you to prove that n^2+1 is never divisible by 3. You do so with aplomb.

Decades later you ask an American middle schooler to do the same. He covers a ream of paper with attempts to find the right answer, and stares at you in confusion. You wonder if escaping the Soviet Union was worth dealing with lazy fools who can't already do calculus at 13.

I don’t mean to sound like an ass (but probably will), but the style of your writing here couple with the subject cracked me up.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com