Community Dynamics and the Ethics of Learning: Russian and American Models

Abstract

Introduction:  How does a sense of community influence the way in which post-secondary students learn? If you are a product of an American school system, you have likely embedded certain communal assumptions about learning. Strive and you will excel. Excel and your excellence will be reflected on report cards and standardized tests. Such scores, coupled with a record of achievement and skills and formatted into an impressive resume, will attract the notice of job recruiters. Or, if your goal is academia, documented undergraduate excellence opens the door to a graduate program, where the process ultimately repeats until at last the achieving student finds herself on the other side of the desk, cultivating the next generation. Each class, in effect, is a meritocracy, a pushing forward of strangers who have managed to perform in the system more successfully than others.