CAPE TEACHER SAYS JOURNEY SHOWED PEOPLE EVERYWHERE SHARE CONCERNS

CAPE GIRARDEAU -- A Cape Girardeau teacher who recently returned from a trip to the Soviet Union and Hungary says students and teachers worldwide share the same concerns and problems.

"Students are the same there as they are here, and the teachers there are facing the same problems we are facing here," said Dixie Cook. "The idea was that by sharing those problems, we may be able to come up with some answers."

Cook, who is the gifted program coordinator at Cape Central Junior High School, was part of a 32-member group of educators from across the United States who toured the two countries last month.

She visited eight schools and took part in several conferences, all designed to help the Soviets further their educational programs for gifted students.

It's a program that, in the Soviet Union, is just getting off the ground, she said.

"In the last two to three years, since they have gained more freedom to teach certain things, the doors have really opened up to a new trend in education over there," Cook said. "They are very receptive to new ideas."

The biggest concern for educators, she said, was that they weren't teaching creative thinking. It's a concern shared by educators in the United States, she said.

"They're going to concentrate on creative thinking and problem-solving instead of just learning facts to pass tests," said Cook. "We're learning the same thing here in the United States.

"No one has the time to learn all the facts. We need people who can solve the problems of the economy and find solutions to medical problems."

Cook explained that when Soviet students graduate from what is the equivalent of our eighth grade, they are given the opportunity to attend a specialized school for five years before attending college. At these schools, the emphasis is on foreign language, especially English, which has become increasingly popular with students.

The first two years of the program are when the students learn the language, and the last three years are spent learning other subjects, but those other subjects are taught in English instead of the students' native language, Cook said.

The biggest difference in the Soviet gifted programs and those here are the amount of materials available for teachers.

In fact, because anything written in English is scarce in the Soviet Union, some of Cook's students here have begun a letter-writing campaign to Soviet students.

"Because they don't have textbooks written in English, they don't have any other way to practice reading English," said Cook. "Four of my students have already written letters."

Though the Soviet and Hungarian educators learned much from the U.S. educators, Cook said she also benefited from the experience and is putting what she learned to work in her classroom.

Said Cook: "I brought back some ideas for our own school system, and I learned from them as much as they learned from us."

Cook has been the gifted program coordinator at Central Junior High for 10 years. She said that because many Soviet students know at least a little English, she was able to communicate with them.

But not being able to read or speak Russian while in the Soviet Union during the end of the Persian Gulf War made Cook and her fellow teachers uneasy.

"We couldn't read the newspapers or understand the television news," she said. "We had no idea what was going on with the war until we got to Hungary."