Moldova: English Olympiad · Global Voices
Veronica Khokhlova

Adventures in Moldova posts essays that his Moldovan students wrote for the English Olympiad held at their school and explains why the kids shouldn't be blamed for their not-so-good English: “When taken as an aggregate, my school has some of the worst performance in English in the county and Moldova. This can't really be faulted on the students though, since the school went five years or more without a true specialist in English. The problem is that if you're a good English speaker, you probably don't want to waste your time working for peanuts in a village school. Until teachers are paid a decent wage, schools will get worse and worse.