I'm a student. Moreover - I'm a student of an Eastern Europe University. It's not a name - It's a location. Considering the fact that I study philosophy, I can't help analyzing educational process I'm involved in.

First of all, I must say my desire to study philosophy was and still is sincere. Imagine my surprise when after a month of studying I found out that nearly 3/4 of my classmates despise philosophy and everything related with it. Most of them wanted to become economists, politologists, psychologists, sociologists, even didn't want to study at all - they just "had" to go to this faculty.

The explanation is simple - because of the lack of students, wishing to study philosophy, Uni decided to make passing marks rather lower. Result - our group is fulled with people, who studied worst, nevertheless, good enough to become philosophers!

My second surprise was to know the disciplines I was to study. Here are some of them: higher maths, economy, philosophy of phisics, medicine antrapology, law, natural science... You may think it's interesting to know different things, to have a broad outlook, but before compare: we have tree hours of "philosophy" a week - just as phisical training. So, I must say, we study everything but philosophy.

Who are teachers? If they are from the 3/4 above - you can imagine.

How is educational process organized? We listen and we write down. The irony is to find the one you've written in the book word by word. Well, I can understand this way of teaching in middle ages. Few people could read, less had what to read except the Bible. In times before Gutenberg books were kept in monasteries or in the houses of rich feudal lords, and an ordinary person could hardly even touch them. At the age of almost world literacy, libraries and internet this method of teaching appears rather ineffective.

What about discussion, invention, critics? Here is my story: I decided to publish one of my articles in a university magazine. I was explained, that it contained professors' and post-graduate students' articles only. But if I pay and write an article under control of one of them, it may be subjected for consideration.

THANK YOU! What kind of innovation could appear after that?

The only thing I would like to know now - whether it is an exception or a rule. If such kind of "education" is spread all over the world - then no wonder we have such problems now. Look at my sphere: have you heard of a lot of modern philosophers? With increasing number of universities was this number increasing too? "Quality before quantity" - an anachronism?