Example of Compare and Contrast Essay 1: Notes from An American School

            Last February the Seattle Times called me “a walking advertisement for detente.” At that time I was visiting the United States on a month-long educational exchange, along with fourteen of my classmates and teachers.

            In Seattle we stayed with local families and went to the Lakeside School, which has maintained friendly relations with my school for ten years now. Over the past few years we in Moscow have hosted several groups of American students. Now it was our turn to visit them.

            Classes were hard at first, although the atmosphere was relaxed and friendly. On our first day at Lakeside we were shocked to see a boy in ragged jeans eating a sandwich and drinking juice right in the middle of a lesson, while listening to the teacher and taking notes in his notebook. The classroom, too, was very different from what we were used to. All the tables were arranged in a circle. It was sometimes hard to say who was a teacher and who was a student.

            After hearing all sorts of rumors about morals in the United States, we were pleasantly surprised to see how polite all of the students, including the youngest, were. In a school on Shaw Island, near Seattle, we watched three juniors playing a computer game. I volunteered to play with them. One of the boys politely told me that he would be willing to let me take his place.

            Lakeside School is distinguished not only for its special teacher-student relationship but also for its high technical standards. There is nothing in our school that comes anywhere close to what we saw in some of the American classrooms. For instance, students were given a video camera and instructed to shoot a movie before the class met again.

            The range of courses that American students have to choose from is stupendous. Aside from the mandatory courses, students at Lakeside can pick out a number of elective classes that interest them and challenge themselves in these fields. I think this makes it possible for students to learn what their talents and inclinations are and to make the right choice for the future. But even with all these extra options, American students have more free time than we do.

            A lot of what we’ve seen in the American school could be used by the Soviet school system in its efforts to democratize the teaching process, create a freer atmosphere, establish better student-teacher relationships, and most important of all, improve the quality of education. True, in the United States some parents pay more than 400 dollars a month for the education of their son or daughter in a private school, while tuition is free for all students in the Soviet Union. But many people in the USSR now say that free tuition and free health care aren’t adequate to cover society’s present needs. I would say that our Soviet schools teach many subjects in greater depth than the American schools do. But American schools teach some subjects – ethics, for instance – that aren’t taught at all in our school.

(511 words)

Reference:

Aslanyan, A. (1997). Notes from An American School. In M. K. Ruetten, Developing Composition Skills (pp. 117-118). Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.