Between what is publicly stated in Romania by community representatives, in political PR operations that have some success only when the statements are strikingly banal or tautological nitpicking, and what is experienced live, the differences are often from heaven to earth. Romanian society contrasts so strikingly in all aspects – luxury and poverty, naivety and gluttony, politeness and swearing – neighbors on the same street – that it is surprising what it is in a few words risks surprising with nonsense, fruitless accumulation of contradictions. Since the truth cannot be told without upsetting everyone—the winners don’t want to hear that their acts of perfection can bring misery to others, and many upset people find it difficult to accept the materially motivated gratification of others—let cool hypocrisy, the technique of enveloping and embracing reality, be taught. Without access to an up-to-date database, Romania is certainly one of the countries with the highest levels of inequality in Europe. It’s amazing that we understand each other in the same language, even though outside of language we don’t seem to understand each other on a collective level. When we turn to the section on education, the broad opposition front has been digging deep trenches for two generations.

In the summer of 2022, Minister Sorin Campeanu insisted that the draft of the new national education law recognize the right of national colleges to organize entrance exams under their own regime for 90% of the prospective students of these prestigious and elite institutions. Nothing more meritocratic, one might say. The value is filtered out without the participation of a “computer program” that does the sorting. Unfortunately, the situation on the ground is not only more complicated, but also differs from the moral prescriptions of theoretical merit and competence. The truth is that, apart from entrance exams for a few public faculties, for certain specialties, and only recently (medicine, law, architecture, engineering), the vast majority of Romanian educational institutions practice “admission” more often than ever before file base”. Who wants to enter, who wants to leave. Reputation and outdated “power” are no longer in question. Therefore, the only difficult exam with obvious consequences that most Romanian students take today is the national assessment. The Bachelor has remained a matriculation exam, which is no longer promoted in 99% of cases, as it was until 2011, when a whole web of embezzlement was woven, which was almost completely destroyed by some video cameras. Baccalaureate is an exam that even 75% of students who entered school 12 years ago do not pass because they often leave the country, before and after high school, or simply drop out before completing the high school cycle. . The European Union still has record school dropout rates that national authorities cannot control and do not recognize the full size of the iceberg. That is why the national evaluation at the end of the 8th grade is an opportunity to study how the majority of Romanian students were prepared and selected to reach secondary school – this joint effort includes both parents, teachers and the organization of tests in which the number of candidate students is the highest in Romania for one type of exam.

So let’s realistically reassess the new education law’s proposal to allow national colleges to self-select students. First of all, the national colleges are a small and prominent group in Romania, concentrated especially in the district residences or in Bucharest, educational institutions that really ensure the quality of our education system. In the entire system, including the university system, let’s figure it out. International medals in various competitions come from these elite schools. When ministers and secretaries of state are photographed with Romanian Olympians, they are students at one of five nationally ranked national colleges. The cream of these high school graduates leave with scholarships to the world’s 50 best universities. We are talking about several national colleges in Romania, where more than half of the graduates study in universities abroad, usually in the Netherlands, the United States and England. Romanian university students only rarely meet the intellectual pinnacles of Romanian secondary education, because the global phenomenon of migration for relatively specialized studies has been increasing in Romania year after year since 2007. It brain drain with constant flow. It seems that the number of these “elite elites” at the national level is about a hundred. If we collect all the graduates of Romania’s national colleges in one year, which does not mean that there is equality between them in terms of intellectual training, although there are similarities, I suspect that we do not exceed 15,000 students in total. This estimate may still be too loose. How can a high school student get into such national colleges? Thus, we move to the second point of analysis.

A high GPA is always required to become a senior at a national college. If in the old days, a few decades ago, an average score close to an 8th or slightly above or slightly below was required, now, given the increasingly simplified standards for high school admissions (from which the third test has been somewhat removed). some time ago, and from this year the weight of 25% of the final average result, which corresponds to the academic progress confirmed in four years of secondary education), 9.50 does not always guarantee you access to the best national college, profile Mathematical Informatics. In Romania, there are national colleges where in some years the average score below which the line separating accepted from not accepted exceeded 9.70. How did we get here? Where does this generation of “geniuses” of eminence come from normalize? The answer lies in a combination of parents’ living arrangements, informal home education and, just as importantly, the hard work and intelligence of the students, but with the caveat that these sustained efforts paid off by meditation teachers, not by those in the pre-pandemic classroom (but and in the future, why not?), teach 35 students per hour (this saves the state budget, otherwise it will be attacked from all sides by local piranhas). In order to get into a national college, with the exception of exceptions, the candidate’s questionnaire is the same, mechanically reproduced: the student must live in a city, preferably in a county residence, parents must already have a higher education, have an income per family member of at least the average salary in the economy and meditate , starting from the 5th or, at the latest, the 7th grade, in mathematics and the Romanian language (literature has recently been thoroughly replaced by communication). These students attend courses and private language lessons (English is the main language) from elementary school. The goal of getting used to a high level of English is a possible departure from Romania or employment in an IT multinational company. If the student has a special talent for drawing or music, so much the better. This is generally a student who has achieved an overall GPA of at least 9.00 on a national assessment exam. His results are not directly related to what he personally learned in the classroom. He would never have received such high marks for his work as a professor in the department. Merit is individual and auxiliary to the education system as its protective shadow. They belong to the participation and significant financial contribution of parents and a private, home teacher, meditator, this teacher who is not to complete those studied in the classroom as one would think in an optimistic scenario but gas station that is not done or cannot be done quality in public school. Having said that, we take one more step, the third, the final one, before we complete the cycle.

Why such high averages, almost beyond the reach of the average student, in national colleges? With some care, we will understand the answer from the actual wording of the question. The nation’s colleges are not only bastions of competitive intelligence, but also bastions isolated from the rural environment. The more separated from the crowd, the stronger the financial and educational segregation (in short, sociable) of some Romanians in relation to the poor, semi-illiterate majority, poor people who black jobs from the west and from the miorite plains. We export two types of Romanians: those belowthe bulk of humanity, poorly paid by local standards (from Spain, Italy, perhaps from England), which also increases the crime rate on the streets of major European cities when they become unemployed (if they ever worked), and those from medium blanket, our elite scattered to the four winds, under the Dutch, German, British, American, etc. skies. The first category barely finished the eighth grade, scored just below or above a five on a national assessment, and did not graduate from high school or pass a baccalaureate exam. They come from villages and communes, as if forever affected by unemployment and poverty. I do not know the concept of paid meditation, but I know firsthand about the dire financial need. Their parents did not have a decent education even in the old days, and they do not understand their national culture, country, themselves and the society from which they feel expelled or from which they come out, as if from the slavery of Pharaoh. Among them are students of school groups and vocational schools. The second category is graduates of national colleges who dream with open eyes acculturation rush of the West. The two worlds run away from each other and, so to speak, do not know each other at all unmixed from eternity Both swear and curse Romania when they are nervous, in trouble, or upset, but they shed a tear of melancholy when they hear the sloppy, slogan-like expressions of George Simion, for example. Read the whole article and comment on Contributors.ro