When I say I’m Serbian, I’m often met a nod and “Ohh you have those cool tigers!”. I realize they mean Siberia.
“It’s so cold there, but your tigers are cool!”, is sadly a reply I hear too often.
I still haven’t figured out why or how everyone has heard of this animal but not many European countries. Or why this is the only tiger I know? I recall being surprised when learning about Indian tigers. So why was the Siberian tiger so popular, and how can we use this to gain insight on improving our education system?
The most successful description of my native land’s location has been “Across the shoe (Italy) and above Greece”. Mentioning Macedonia has proved utterly futile.I don’t blame North Americans for their lack of knowledge. To be fair, we do have 52 countries whose borders often change making it harder to memorize! However, my disappointment was in discovering that their education system didn’t teach about North American countries, USA states, or Canadian provinces either. If this were the European educational system (or at least the Balkan system), students would have to know every state/province’s: main industry, famed artists, ex-leaders, largest rivers and lakes, and most famous import/export/landmark, etc.
On the opposite spectrum, the European education system (at least the Balkan system) nearly borderlines as child abuse. The students are bombarded with copious amounts of (often useless) information mandatory for memorization, which will get discarded and never truly applied in the day-to-day life.
When switching to high-school in Canada, I disappointedly notified my mother she mistakenly placed me in a special needs program. I was used to the tempo of taking chemistry, physics and architecture classes since 3rd grade. And now I had a spare, an English class consisting of reading Archie comic books, one class of playing computer video games, and a French instructor whose idea of teaching language was just playing a CD out loud.
We weren’t learning anything, and most of the topics were already covered in elementary grades in my home country. My biggest shock was separation of math into subjects like trigonometry and algebra instead of studying them all. My Namibian classmate and I we were viewed by our peers as mini Nikola Tesla’s, since we already knew most of the lessons in advance.
She once asked other students what they imagined when hearing Africa or Namibia. They proudly replied with:“Lions, people in tents, with their lions running outside of the tents!!”. Frustrated, she angrily asked what they thought about Europe and everyone’s unison reply was a simple, two worded “Eiffel Toweeeer!!”. After further probing, that was still the only image their minds could conjure up about ALL of Europe.
Still to this day, when I say I lived in Europe, I get asked “So you’ve been to Paris?” as if it is a country and the epi-center of Europe. (No offence Paris, Je t’aime!). Paris, Rome and London are about the only widely known cities to high schoolers in North America— or should I say they’re on par with Siberian tigers on the fame scale.
We are getting something right though, since everyone and their grandmothers, know about the Siberian Tigers. So how can we utilize this Siberian Tiger example? There must be a way to improve the current quality of North American education — to ensure we know about all the NINE types of tiger. And a few more places then just…Paris, Rome, or London.
Note: No Siberian tigers were harmed or pet (sadly) during the process of this article. Article may cause reader to become slightly infatuated with tigers for a brief period of time.
