August 2004 Newsletter
Working Long Into the Night: Improving Education and Searching for Social Mobility in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan
by Ron Briley
It is approaching ten in the evening, and after a twelve-hour teaching day, Sevda Nasirova is tutoring a young man at the dining room table in the home she shares with her parents, son, and nephew. The English lesson is being conducted by candlelight, as the city of Lankaran, Azerbaijan (population approximately 75,000) is experiencing one of its frequent electricity outages. Nasirova is tired, but she needs the extra cash that tutoring brings in, for public school teachers in Azerbaijan earn the equivalent of thirty American dollars a month. Like all dedicated teachers, Nasirova also perceives education as a mission. She believes her tutoring will result in higher test scores for her students and provide an avenue for escaping poverty in a country where the unemployment rate is near 30 percent.
As a participant in a U. S. State Department program promoting cultural exchange with the Eurasian republics of the former USSR, I went to Azerbaijan in the fall of 2003 to observe public school education. I lived with an Azeri family and accompanied Nasirova to Lankaran School Number 4 each morning at eight o'clock, six days week. Like most Middle Eastern nations, Azerbaijan has a large population of young people, so its schools are overcrowded. Lankaran School Number 4 is no exception. It accommodates several thousand students, dividing them between morning and afternoon sessions. To support her family, Nasirova works both sessions, completing her school day in the early evening hours.
Nasirova and her colleagues work under conditions many American teachers would find intolerable. The enormous three-story school building houses all grade levels, and even with split sessions the dimly lit corridors and narrow staircases are overflowing with students. Electricity is problematic throughout the school day, but neither students nor teachers allow the poorly illuminated environment to interfere with the learning process. A small computer lab with approximately half a dozen computers donated by international educational foundations serves teachers and students alike, although electricity problems and slow connections limit the use of technology. Perhaps even more surprising, Lankaran School Number 4 has no copier machine. Many teachers in the United States would miss the opportunity to reproduce supplementary materials more than they would computer access. There are no televisions or VCRs in the classrooms, and it proved impossible for me to play an audiocassette of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" because a tape player could not be located. But the greatest infrastructure challenge for the Azeri schools lies with the peeling paint, rotting floorboards, broken windows, and toilets forever in need of cleaning.
The general pedagogical techniques employed by the hard-working faculty of Lankaran School Number 4 are still to a great extent those of the Soviet bureaucratic educational establishment. The emphasis is on rote memorization; discussion and problem solving are not highly valued. With few teaching materials available, teachers rigidly follow the texts, most of which date from the Soviet era. The English textbook for upper-level students concentrates on grammar. The literary selections include John Reed, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, and Jack London--selections that emphasize the strong progressive and anti-imperialist traditions in American letters and literature.
Like the dated textbooks and Soviet-era teaching methods, the contemporary political culture of Azerbaijan also impedes educational innovation. A portrait of former president Heydar Aliyev adorns every classroom and serves to remind students of the constraints placed on freedom in their country, where democracy has a brief and turbulent history. Following a declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the Popular Front mounted a determined effort to topple the government of former Communist leader Ayaz Mutalibov and installed nationalist academic Abulfaz Elchibey as president. However, military setbacks against the Armenian forces in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh produced considerable discontent with the once-popular president, paving the way for Heydar Aliyev to be elected head of state in October 1993. Aliyev was formerly head of the KGB in Azerbaijan and a member of the Politburo in Moscow until his ouster by Gorbachev.
An astute politician, Aliyev renounced his Communist party membership, bolstered his power base in the Naxcivan region, and pursued a more aggressive policy against the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, where a cease-fire was declared in 1994. Fostering a cult of personality in which his portrait adorned every public building and classroom in the nation, Aliyev won a second term as president in 1999, although opposition parties questioned the election's legitimacy. Diagnosed with a heart condition, the president traveled to Cleveland for surgery and was not seen in public for almost a year. Nevertheless, he remained a candidate for reelection in 2003 until his withdrawal in favor of his son Ilham.
Initially appointed by his father to head the state oil company, Ilham was elevated to the post of prime minister in 2003 by the rubber-stamp Parliament when the elder Aliyev's health apparently worsened. (He died in December 2003.) The Aliyev regime's media machine set to work to erase Ilham's playboy reputation. A ubiquitous poster produced by the ruling New Azerbaijan party shows the grand old man of Azeri politics instructing his young son, who poses with a hand under his chin while solemnly contemplating the wisdom being handed down to him by the nation's leader. It is a reassuring image for those who fear the disorder that accompanied independence and the Soviet withdrawal, but to the opposition parties of Azerbaijan it is symbolic of dynastic rule.
Ilham coasted to victory in the presidential election of October 2003. The official results released by the government election bureau showed him receiving approximately 80 percent of the vote, while Isa Gambar, the leading opposition candidate, was able to garner only 12 percent. On October 16, opposition parties, maintaining that Gambar had actually polled somewhere near 70 percent of the vote, called for massive protests against the government, and crowds gathered at the parliament building in Baku. The protests were violently crushed by police. At least two people, one a young child, were killed. Government television termed the protests and ensuing violence the work of hooligans.
Labeling the protests unconstitutional, the government began to arrest opposition party leaders and journalists. Meanwhile, the state television constantly featured images of Ilham Aliyev receiving messages of congratulations in a coronation-like atmosphere. All mention of the violent suppression of dissent disappeared from public discourse. Election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe prepared a preliminary report asserting that the "overall election process still fell short of international standards in several respects." The American Embassy in Azerbaijan issued a statement of concern about "post-election violence and what appears to be a wave of politically motivated arrests."
During a heated discussion with the local superintendent of schools, I remarked that, like the 2000 presidential election in the United States, the disputed election was a teaching moment and could be used to encourage students to formulate their ideas on the democratic process in Azerbaijan. The superintendent retorted that seventeen-year-olds did not have opinions. Such sentiments do not bode well for the future of education or democracy in Azerbaijan.
The emphasis placed on test scores is also an indication that intellectual curiosity is not a value cherished by the educational system in Azerbaijan, where university admission is determined solely by standardized test scores. Grade point average, teacher recommendations, and student activities (athletics, the arts, and clubs are not part of the school day) do not factor into the admission process. In the classroom, subjects not included in testing are simply deemed not worth exploring. Most educators would be dismayed by the Azeri system, because they recognize that high test scores and achievement are not always synonymous. However, it should be acknowledged that in the United States legislation like the No Child Left Behind Act is moving education in this direction by increasing reliance on testing and imposing more standardized curricula.
Although they recognize that testing is the name of the game in Azeri education, teachers who have studied abroad, like Nasirova, are introducing innovative techniques in the classroom, involving the students in what American educators might term cooperative learning. Nasirova has a reputation as the teacher who sits upon her desk instead of standing and reciting in front of the class. The director of Lankaran School Number 4 has also launched a program for greater parental involvement in school governance. Yet the greatest hope for Azeri education remains the enthusiasm of young people for learning.
While the system may encourage rote learning, the students I encountered demonstrated considerable curiosity regarding life in the United States. Always courteous, they inquired of my family, school, and state. They questioned the American occupation of Iraq, expressing amazement that as an American citizen I was free to criticize the foreign policy of my nation. And all of these conversations were conducted in English. While many American children struggle with the study of language, these children know at least three languages-their native Azeri tongue, Russian, and English, which is now mandated in the schools. It was most impressive to see a sign over the blackboard in one classroom reading "An intelligent person must know at least one foreign language." It should also be pointed out that in this largely Shi'ite Muslim nation, the education of boys and girls is valued equally. However, it does appear that there is some cultural bias toward a greater tolerance for masculine misbehavior in the classroom.
Despite the overemphasis upon testing and what many in the United States would consider primitive conditions, these children want to learn, and teachers like Sevda Nasirova are facilitating their education with innovative methods. But to fully serve the needs of Azeri children, the schools need better support from the state. Oil reserves in the Caspian Sea along the eastern boundary of Azerbaijan are estimated to have a potential worth of trillions of dollars. To foster the development of these resources, the Aliyev government has signed lucrative contracts with British and American oil companies.
The government has clearly decided that for now, its interests are best served by an alliance with the United States. It has joined President Bush's "coalition of the willing" and requires English in the schools. One can only hope that this decision signals a desire for rapid progress and will one day lead to an adequately funded public education sector with decent pay for teachers. However, in Lankaran the newest public building is not a school but rather an impressive two-story headquarters for Ilham Aliyev's New Azerbaijan party. The schools crumble while political cronyism reigns. This situation, which is repeated all too often in the United States, will not serve the needs of Azeri youth, and the United States may someday face the consequences of failing to sponsor meaningful political change in Azerbaijan. Sevda Nasirova and her students deserve better.
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