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Comment by gnat | Hacker News Reader

Do the students bring any motivation to the classroom? Like, is there a culture of "study hard and pay attention in maths and sciences, because that's how we escape poverty" or something like that? Here in New Zealand, middle class parents put a high premium on being happy and fulfilled, and most (that I've seen across several schools) don't really prime their kids for academic success by saying "this is important, we value it, and you should too". It may be different for lower-class or upper-class kids here (I haven't spent a lot of time in those schools). Keen to know what it was like in Romania.

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In Romania, from what i recall, it was usually the beatings. Didnt like math? The teacher would simply use the pointing stick to smash your hands. I was fortunate enough to have liked math but some weren’t. And so there were the beatings.

Those attending “olympiads” were brainwashed into thinking that somehow they were superior and at some point we had to look down upon those whom, god forbid, chose something else but maths. Some indeed went on to have high paying office jobs in western countries, many of whom are now turning back. Apparently being trained to win olympiads doesn't yield an entrepreneurial spirit nor does it lead to riches, and after a life wasted they now just want to live a bit.

You are exaggerating, I've never seen a beating in school (from a teacher to a pupil). Was in school in Bucharest from the 90's to 00's, had loads of maths and other stem classes. If you didn't keep up you'd get a bad grade, if you didn't pass the year you'd have a chance to correct it during summer school, and worst you'd repeat the year. Nothing uncommon here. And I don't share your hate against the ones competing in the olympics, I knew lots of them, later on they went into research, got jobs at Google, did PHDs at Harvard and Princeton and the likes and are now professors at top universities. And some of them are good entrepreneurs now, you'd be surprised.

He's not exaggerating at all.

I was in school in roughly the same period as you and although beatings from teachers to pupils were very rare, they did exist and happend if the pupil was very unruly and caused trouble in class (I had one classmate who nearly assaulted a teacher during class because he didn't like the bad grade he got), but usually the teacher had the "blessing" from the pupil's parents to perform such "corrections".

Beatings were much more common in the poorer parts of the cities/country with poor performing schools and broken families (alcoholism, domestic abuse, poverty). At top schools in big cities like the one you probably went to with alumni that go to Harvard and Google, beatings were not common at all because usually the children came from mid/upper-class families. But that's very small percentage of the pupils in Romania that are in such a performant environment.

When my dad was in school in the 60's, from what he told me, receiving beatings in school from teachers was very common all around even for stupid reasons as some teachers would go on aggressive power trips if you stepped on their nerves.

Depends on the teacher I guess, but we never got corporal punishment unless there were grave discipline issues like beating girls with snowballs or weaved scarves. Math? No. You just got a bad grade.

Most of our olympics are currenty researchers abroad or tech leads in the country. Entrepreneurs not so much, maybe the networking types.

The hardest math problems we encountered were from the USSR olympics. There was a magazine with math problems which collected such gems.

And there is your answer "from 90's to 00's". Beating was done in communist era, not after the fall of Iron Curtain.

I personally received beatings from my math teacher during middle school (5th to 8th grade), which was before '89. He would make me have the fingers up and together (think of like Italians argue) and then would hit my 5 thumbs altogether at once with a wooden stick.

I graduated around 2005, and yes, beatings were common. As were bribes and sexual abuse. The sexual abuse was so much in the open that some thought it was cool to see a student girl dating a professor.

It is more pronounced in universities - ask medical or economics students and you’ll uncover quite a few stories.

I wish i was exaggerating.

In primary school the older brother of a classmate has broken into a newsstand and has stolen a few porn magazines. My teacher beat him every day for a week as to serve as an example to everyone (yes he beat the little brother). He hit him around his temples so as to not leave marks and would lift him from the floor pulling by the hair. To this day i wont forget this.

Also as recently as few years ago there has been an uproar in romania as to how many parents beat their children for various reasons including poor school performance. You know, “bataia e rupta din cer”.

This happens in poor areas of romania such south or east provinces as much as in the north west.

“got jobs at X” - exactly. Excellence in romania’s education system means obedience. At the top it produces great workers. Not that working at google is not cool or getting a phd is not useful but romania needs more than that.

And while a small sample praises romania’s education system, and great maths, Romania suffers from roughly 50% functionally illiterate pupils. Just because a small sample gets good results in olympiads, frankly contests that mainly poor countries compete in, it doesnt mean the system is great. Quite the opposite.

Depends very much on the parents. Some families put a lot of importance on studies, and others don't. Usually those from countryside or without higher education would not care.

The most important thing is to shape your kids in such a way that they can make choices themselves. Worst thing is when parents are pushing their children to go for the highest (their eyes) education. A child who likes what he/she is doing, even when it is 'just' wood making becomes a much happier child. Northern Europe is good in this. The US so so. But China and India are the worst examples. So many talented people doing things not in line with their real desires.

I grew up in Romania too (finished school in 1992), and at least during the communist regime I can't really remember a culture of studying hard to escape poverty, because that simply wasn't how you escaped poverty - it was more a mix of "choosing the right parents", the people you knew, a bit of luck, a bit of corruption and maybe some shrewdness, but Romania definitely wasn't a meritocracy at that time (that may however have changed since, at least to some degree). However, kids that studied hard and were very good in school weren't looked down upon and disrespected as they sometimes are in the West.

At University (after the regime changed), studying hard did become more common, but it was directed at scoring a job in Canada/USA/wherever, not at escaping poverty in Romania itself...

I finished highschool in 1999, grew up in a mono-industrial city which had just seen its only, well, industrial place in town close down and sold for scraps, in my case (and in the case of many of my colleagues) learning maths and getting into university with free admission was really one of the few escapes available from said town and, hence, from poverty.

I think those 7 years (1992 vs 1999) made a hell of a difference because of the economic "reforms" that were implemented in that time-interval and which actually saw many towns like the ones I grew up in become destitute in a matter of just a few years. Unfortunately that decade (the '90s) is not that well-studied yet in our history classes (maybe because it is too recent?), fact is I've only started to realise its true importance and its true, horrible economic and life-changing effects on our parents' generation (people who are now in the 60s and 70s) only recently. I think the same happened over almost all of the former Soviet Bloc, and imo it greatly explains some of the political tendencies we see today. But that is turning into OT, sorry for that.

> imo it greatly explains some of the political tendencies we see today

That's very interesting, could you please expound on that?

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