Writing Feedback / 'In Mongolian it sounds like rice' - I have a destination to reach! [2]

Mongolian Rice

The cool wind was blowing, the sun was shining warmly and the earth was very calm on the morning of the seventh of December, 1994. On this day, a very small cute girl was born who was loved by other people. This girl is I. When I was growing up and becoming a cheerful child, I asked my parents thousands of "why". Asking my parents those questions probably made me curious and open-minded, and they brought much essential knowledge all about the world to me.

Since that time seventeen years has passed. As representing a young generation of Mongolia, I have my own purpose, dream and many things that I like to do. I just like looking at the blue sky without thinking anything, playing the piano, helping others and going for a walk with the people I love the most. I also like the autumn leaves, summer rain, winter snow and spring blossoms.

One sunny day about two years ago, I had a chance to meet a very good English teacher. My parents brought me to her English training center because of my poor marks at my English course. At that time, I did not like to learn English very much because I did not understand it. At first I didn't appreciate it, but my teacher eventually helped me change my mind. She talked about her travels in America and she told me, "If I had not learned this language, I would have never gone abroad. You should learn English because it will be useful for you." After this talk, I understood that only learning English can allow me to fulfill my dream to go to the USA. But it was very hard for me at first. I could not learn new words immediately and I felt ashamed among the students whose English was very good. So I promised to myself to work hard and become as good as them.

Last year, I applied for the Mongolian Young Scholars Program and managed to participate in this program. This action was a result of my continuous efforts to learn English. This opportunity gave me the point that "If you really want to do something, you can do it". But I still knew that my knowledge was not enough and I had to study more. Therefore I started to study English grammar, take tests, and learn new words every single day. After a lot of work and a lot of time spent, I had another chance to be proud of myself. I participated in a presentation competition about air pollution in English and won a silver medal this year. This couraged my desire to continue learning English more and more.

I wish everybody had an opportunity like mine, so they all could reveal their good sides. I have goal now and will have it in the future too. I will never give up and I will fight for it. If I will be available to go to America, my dream will be alive. I'm looking forward to seeing that country and learning many things there.

My name is Budgerel but just call me Budaa. In Mongolian it sounds like rice.

Writing Feedback / If you were in contention to be the new Minister of Education, what would you say. [2]

Minister of Education and Student Teaching

I'm very glad Mongolian high school education standards started to catch up with the Cambridge University's. By having a same standard, the students who aim to study abroad will be available to be granted with many opportunities. This is so good. But the truth is everything in the world has its white and black sides. This means that we have large number of problems in our education field. Let me mention some of them.

The first or the simplest problem is the lack of school buildings in Mongolia. Indeed, having over 35 students in one classroom is prohibited in our education law. But insufficiency of class rooms cannot permit us to keep the standard. The worst side of having extra loaded numbers of students in one class is the limited sufficiency of a teacher's activity. Forty minutes of a lesson is not enough for a teacher to teach everything to every single student. If a class has less than 35 students, the teacher will be able to help them understand more. So, it's necessary to build new school buildings this year in every province and city.

The next problem which should be solved immediately is the quality of teachers. At this time when reputation of the teachers fell down much, the students who have a very good score on the Mongolian entrance examination do not choose this profession. Although there are some good students who are interested in being a teacher, usually most of the students choosing their future professions as a teacher are not very well educated. Therefore, today's teacher's quality has become not good enough and this problem leads us to unqualified education process. I think that we need to make more policies to improve the teachers' values (reputation, salaries etc) and set some higher hallmarks for the students who are applying to the Teacher's Colleges and Universities.

The next difficulty that makes our education quality poorer is a lack of laboratories and needed scientific equipments. The students are not able to perform most of the required science experiments and they cannot work with real equipments, because the school doesn't have them and the children can only see their pictures on the textbooks. But, if there had been more chances to perform real experiments, the students would have been more interested in their courses and want to learn more things on physics, biology and chemistry.

Since an early education is viewed more important than a higher education today, a work of establishing a day-care center at or near schools is quite required. Because of their parents' busy work schedule and carelessness, most students are unable to be educated and brought up well. The children who didn't get good care in their early ages tend to waste their time for needless things such as playing computer games and fighting. If a school has its own day-care center, students will do their homework there and they can read books with a teacher's help. With this, students will be more available to get good marks at school and become creative and independent.

If I were in contention to be the new Minister of Education, I would talk about these issues in my campaign platform.