Letter Home from a Czech University

I thought I knew what to expect. I mean, the Czech Republic may be a former communist country in the process of a Western style economic industrialization, and one of the newest members of the EU. But travelers talk about how "hip" Prague is and how it's taken the place of the now-expensive cities in Western Europe, like Amsterdam. So, I figured the university experience in the Czech Republic would be pretty similar to the Canadian experience, right?

Well not quite. I spent five weeks in Brno, the second largest Czech city, as part of a course on Culture, Society and Politics of Central Europe. The five weeks were far from easy. But, I learned a lot, including how they manage to run a better post-secondary system with far fewer resources.

That wasn't clear at the beginning. From the outside, Masaryk University looks like a standard academic institution. The dorms are small and poorly kept, but cheap for students, and equipped with essentials like internet connections. The university facilities are also adequate with good computer labs, libraries, and classrooms. But looks can be deceiving.

Exchange to the cold world

At first, all I could focus on was the cold, unwelcome vibe, and I wasn't alone. The 30 other University of Toronto students confessed to each other that we felt completely isolated. The porters in the residence buildings made no effort to communicate. Of course, almost none of us spoke a word of Czech, but we had the sense that people resented us because we were outsiders. The people affiliated with the International Student Office took us on several bus tours of the region, including a complimentary tour of a famous Czech brewery. But still, no Czech people smiled at us, or asked us where we were from. I felt like an invader, an over-privileged princess.

It was difficult not to focus on the other negative aspects of the experience, including the Czech approach to teaching. Everything was regimented. We had almost no free-time, and often had six solid hours of classes each day - with severe penalties for not attending. The profs bombarded us with heavy and often incomprehensible readings. And we didn't understand most of what they said, and not just because of the material -- our class was supposed to be taught in English, but only about half of the ten teachers were fluent.

I found myself reverting to stuck-up western princess mode. Why was the material repetitive, and why were some of our profs mere Ph.D. candidates? Where was the detailed course outlines with the assigned readings and essay questions?

The 'Czech way'

We were growing frustrated by what we called the Czech way. We missed our course outlines, fancy textbooks and PowerPoint presentations. But although I still found parts of it frustrating, I also realized that in Canada, while we have access to great research facilities, brilliant professors, computers, and a plethora of opportunities, we're missing more important things that they've got down.

To start with, the Czech professors were more unconventional, spontaneous, and personal. One of our Czech professors spent the majority of our class time showing us films then facilitating discussions, because he thought it would help us get a sense of what it was like to live under Soviet rule. There was no state of the art film projector, and the films were subtitled, but that wasn't important. Our prof didn't care if he covered all of the course material. He was concerned with trying to get us to understand Czech culture, and its latent fear of outsiders.

Here at U of T, my profs mostly present impersonal formulaic lectures, supplemented by course readings. They rarely take the time to stop and discuss, because the classes are too large, and they are always concerned about getting through all the course material. And although we have tutorials to supplement the lectures, they tend to simply focus on interpreting the readings. There never seems to be time to discuss the importance of the issues, or critically analyze their root cause.

Canadian universities encourage us to focus on results, and so we end up cramming to remember every last little fact about something like the Canadian constitution, and then we forget it the next day, and never analyze what it really means.

'Trick' or talk

The Czech profs wanted us to understand the material not regurgitate it. And they made sure of it. In Canada, our evaluations are standardized two or three hour long exams that are then graded en masse by teaching assistants. We receive marks in the mail, and that's the end of it. Czech courses, on the other hand, are largely evaluated by one-on-one oral exams conducted by the professor. Because our course was affiliated with the University of Toronto, we were forced to have a written exam. But the profs still emphasized that the exam wasn't going to have 'trick" or obscure questions -- they wanted us to demonstrate a genuine understanding of the concepts, and were open to our interpretations.

It is hard to imagine any Canadian professors from the major universities having the time for "inefficient" one-on-one exams with their undergraduate students. Our professors barely have enough time to talk for fifteen minutes during their office hours. The profs at Masaryk university were very open to setting up meetings with us, simply to discuss the course material. They didn't seem to prioritize their own research or "university business" over teaching. They were there to teach us, and even though they were specialists in their field they were genuinely interested in our points of view.

Grading the experience

Then there's the grading. I have a hard time understanding why the University of Toronto needs to apply grade quotas. Does the grade distribution really matter? It is particularly noticeable on essays. In one of my English classes last year, my prof told us that she was required to give a certain percentage of the class Cs, and she also told us that in order to get an A we would have to write something unique, an interpretation she had never seen before. Sure enough, on my final assignment I was given a 79 (one percentage point short of an A), and the funny thing was that the teaching assistant didn't make one critical comment about the paper - no obvious comments about what I'd done "wrong," (or right) nor anything to help me improve my understanding or performance.

In Brno, there were also lots of concepts I didn't completely understand. But for the first time in my five-year post-secondary education, I got a perfect score on an essay, something unheard of in Canada. I was taken aback by the grade, but I also realized that the professor was rewarding me for the content in the essay, rather than penalizing me for what was missing. We can't get perfect grades on everything, and sure there need to be rigorous guidelines, but I feel that the University of Toronto takes it too far, and ends up discouraging their students.

In an ideal world, undergraduate degrees are supposed to teach us how to think and understand conflict. Sure there are realities like the fact that there are only so many spaces for Law School, Medical School and other programs afterwards - but the sole benefit of an undergraduate degree should not be to learn how to cram for finals. It seems to me that as long as we are obsessed with efficiency and competition, and with grading students based on what they don't know, we will continue to miss the point.

Yasmeen Qureshi is a Vancouver writer completing her Bachelor of Arts at the University of Toronto and her Broadcast Journalism degree at Ryerson.

On Friday, West Vancouver's Sarah Mortazavi shared her reasons for accepting the opportunity to attend Harvard. Read her article here.