The Dysfunctional Paradigms of Romanian Education

3.1. The Quality Paradigm

The current Law for Quality in Education was passed by Romanian Parliament in 2006

(Parlamentul României, 2006). The Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education

(ARACIS) has been established within one month after the law being passed. The methodology for

external evaluation, including standards, standards of reference and performance indicators was also

published in 2006, in both Romanian and English (ARACIS, 2006). A similar track was followed by the

Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance in Pre-university Education (ARACIP). ARACIS started

conducting quality assessment sessions beginning with the 2006-2007 academic year. There was at the

time and there still is no evidence of any scientific study to prove that meeting the standards and

performance indicators was conductive to a better quality.

The Quality paradigm has been gradually forced upon the system under the assumption that

quality is essentially about standardisation and uniformity, rather than about creativity and diversity.

Quality of educations means meeting the standards and performance indicators formulated by the external

evaluation agencies. The education institution is the sole responsible for providing quality (ARACIS,

2006). The funding of education or the legislative framework provided by the government are not taken

into account. Written documentation is the main type of evidence of quality that is expected from

education institutions. Apart from preparing documents for external quality assurance agencies,

institutions may develop parallel documentation systems (Universitatea Spiru Haret, 2015).

We have already shown a long list of issues associated the Quality paradigm (Lisievici, 2009;

Lisievici, 2011; Lisievici, 2013; Lisievici, 2014). The quality assurance system was designed using faulty

constructs for both education and quality of education. It favours control versus support, uniformity

versus diversity, centralization versus academic freedom. It diverts large financial, human and time

resources from teaching, scientific activity and research. Instead of promoting an ”evaluation culture”, it

generated a culture of preparing documentations and reports and rigging procedures for better scoring. It

does not provide support that would be instrumental in meeting the demands it formulates. It diminishes

capability of education institutions to respond to identified training and research needs.

The content of teaching activity changed, an ever larger proportion of time being allocated to

writing documentations and reports for quality assessment agencies. There are indications that such

components may occupy up to 60% of job related time (Lisievici&Ticuşan&Todor, 2013). This situation

has also been pointed out by international experts that visited Romania, like the Counsellor for Education

of the Finnish President (Kangaslahti, 2016). He noted that Romanian teachers, instead of facilitating

student learning, have to write reports and accomplish other various bureaucratic tasks. Activity content

changes led to a diminished attractiveness of teaching profession (Lisievici&Ticuşan&Todor, 2013).

We have also pointed out that the current quality paradigm contributed to the degradation of

academic climate, by allowing conflicting interests of competing institutions or individuals to influence

assessment judgements, by restricting capability of managers to function as models for younger members

of faculty, by encouraging dishonest strategies to boost scientific productivity or by discouraging

cooperation and communication between competing universities, departments or faculty members.

Finally, the quality paradigm completely disregards the needs of education providers (”the

forgotten side of quality”, Lisievici, 2014).

The quality paradigm ended up in justifying the continuity of existence for bureaucratic structures

and also, in providing a solid source of power and income for a group of education ”elites”.

3.2. The Abstract Thinking Superiority Paradigm

In April 2016 we ran an internet search, in Romanian, for ”fabrica de genii (genius factory)”. We got

13,600 hits. A typical hit was about an ”excellence” centre, club, system or foundation for gifted students ,

that has been recently established or has been successfully working for some time. Another typical hit was

about an individual teacher, usually called ”trainer” or ”manufacturer” of geniuses.

In both cases, the institutional or individual focus was on mathematics or informatics . The search

results were consistent with public discourse promoted by mainstream media.

It is interesting to note that a similar search carried out in English returned a much smaller number of

hits, a typical hit being about recruiting Nobel Prize winners or other remarkable individuals as donors for

a sperm bank.

Putting together the information provided by the internet search we conclude that in Romania, the

public discourse on education claims that genius can be manufactured or trained, that the genius

production technology consists of studying Mathematics and/or Informatics up to an excellence level, that

the main quality of a genius is a very high level of development of abstract thinking.

We have therefore compiled the Abstract thinking superiority paradigm : Out of all the possible types

of thinking or intelligence (see for example the nine types of intelligence identified by Garner - Gardner,

1993), the abstract thinking or the logical-mathematical intelligence is superior to any other. Mathematics

and Informatics are the main curriculum components instrumental in developing abstract thinking. The

highest priority of Romanian education is to develop abstract thinking beginning with preschool and

primary cycles.

The consequences of this paradigm being used are multiple and easily observable: The special status

of Mathematics and Informatics subject matters among the rest; the special status of teachers for these two

subject matters; the curriculum time allocation for the two subject matters; the “enormous” volume of

homework that students have to prepare, that was noted even by the current Minister of Education,

Professor Mircea Dumitru (Minister of Education, 2016); the ever-growing volume of private tuition

needed for students to cope with learning tasks and homework volume; the ”theory oriented education”,

that generates not only continuous complains from employers, but also criticism from foreign experts

(Hinkley, 2016).

Last but not least, the parents became fascinated by the paradigm and instead of associating to

protect the mental health of their children, are asking for more mathematics and informatics.

3.3. The External Locus of Control Paradigm

We have found a very relevant quote from a highly reputed Romanian education expert: “Since

universities depended on ARACIS for their legal survival, they formally complied with external

requirements for quality assurance without necessarily developing systems of their own” (Vlăsceanu et al.

2011, p. 25, translation in Geven et al., 2015, p. 45). Thus, the legal survival of a university does not

depend on the satisfaction of the students, the reputation of the faculty members, ability to identify and

diversify funding sources, academic climate etc.

The External locus of control paradigm states that neither universities nor any other education

institution or education staff member should entertain the idea that they are autonomous. Instead, external

entities should have the final say on what programs of study they are allowed to offer, what people should

they hire, what academic titles they should distribute and to whom, how many students they should enrol,

what is the value of the diplomas and how many they are allowed to issue, how much money they are

supposed to spend and on what. In order to stress the position of the locus of control, the external entities

will frequently request reports, statistics and various other documentations. These will be used as means

to generate culpability and submission, as the complicate and ambiguous requests will create

opportunities to express criticism or to reject reports and ask for new versions.

The external locus of control paradigm will also act as a subtle incentive for corruption: Sooner or

later, the idea to appease the external controllers will appear and generate expected and interesting

consequences.

3.4. The Acceleration Paradigm

Back in 2001, a friend of mine published a book (Negreț-Dobridor, 2001) that rationalized a paradigm

already incognito roaming the Romanian education system. The Acceleration paradigm suggests that the

cognitive development of humans can be accelerated to such an extent that first graders can be exposed to

learning situations involving abstract thinking, and also, that learning results involving abstract thinking

can be expected from all students, years before the traditional limits of the ”formal thinking stage” as

defined by Piaget.

There are a couple of arguments currently used to rationalize the Acceleration paradigm : a) the

”children of our friends” argument (”I have friends whose children can cope with learning tasks involving

abstract thinking”); b) the ”my students” argument (”I have second grade students who can cope with

learning tasks involving abstract thinking”); the ”performance argument” (”The future of the country

needs an education designed for gifted students or elites, abstract thinking and high performance

oriented”).

The consequences of the paradigm acceptance and propagation include a) Cognitive overload (volume

and complexity of learning tasks and assignments is frequently above the level of cognitive development

of students); Negative emotions overload (frequent exposure of students to anxiety, culpability and

frustration as a result of cognitive overload); Protective inhibition (students disengage from trying to meet

the school requirements and drastically reduce the value they attach to school and learning); Students

rejecting he values promoted by the adult world . The final result seems to have been stated by the

Director of one elite college from Bucharest: ”(…) students do not want to learn” (Ziare com, 2014).

On the other hand, the paradigm supports the expansion of the education market share for the creators,

producers and distributers of abstract thinking development materials, like collections of problems,

textbooks, etc. It also raises the probability for students to request afterschool paid private tuition from

their teachers.

3.5. The Stupid Teacher Paradigm

The Stupid teacher paradigm suggests that teachers are not able to make the best decisions for the

problems of their students and consequently, they need to be provided written documentation with

procedures to follow in specific situations. In order to demonstrate compliance with the procedures they

are supposed to observe, teachers have to produce written documentation like ”didactic” plans or

scenarios, detailing how they should go about applying recommended actions and/or procedures.

The gradual expansion of paradigm circulation is supported by the centralized examination system that

grants access to a teaching positions and then tenure. The written examinations are ”national” and focused

on theoretical knowledge, rather than learning facilitation skills. The rate of success may be under 50%

(Ziare.com, 2014a). Results of the ”national examination” are being shown and commented by media and

then used to generate culpability, low self-esteem and ultimately compliance to the diagnostics and

solutions from system management.