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Smart Holidays: “Marabou” Summer Camp

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Smart Holidays: “Marabou” Summer Camp

24.08.2016

Ôîòî russiangap.com

Sergei Kuznetsov – Russian writer, journalist and entrepreneur, who moved to Paris a couple of years ago together with his family. For two years now, he together with his wife Ekaterina Kadiyeva, a psychologist, has been organizing mathematic camps for Russian-speaking children, who live outside of Russia. Every year, children all over the world come to the Czech Republic to Sudety foothills.

– Why “Marabou”, where did you get a name like that?


S.K..: Marabou is a bird from stork family. The word has Arabian origin: “Marabout” is a “wise man” from Arabian. So Arabians deem a stork as a wise bird, and according to our mythology storks bring children. So, we chose a stork as the camp’s patron. Actually, we wanted to have something funny and vivid, and the mythology came afterwards.


What inspired you for the project?


– We faced different problems, when we came to France. One of them was that mathematics is not taught at the same high level, as we are used to it in Russia. We started discussing this problem with other Russian-speaking parents and realized that such a problem with mathematics is not only present in France, but in many other countries, it is a common European problem (the situation in America is completely different, though). This is how an idea to organize a children summer camp emerged, and in summer 2015 we organized it for the first time in the Czech Republic.


– So, was “Marabou” originally a mathematics camp?


E.K.: It is a mathematics camp even now. The mathematicians’ team is headed by Jan Rauch, my old friend, an outstanding person and a talented mathematician. He presents mathematics as an arts form – arts of working with ideas – and aspires to give this idea to his students. For many of them the idea that mathematics can bring joy is completely unexpected.


Does everyone, who comes from “Marabou”, become a fan of mathematics?


S.K.: What do you mean by “fan”? Many of those, coming to “Marabou”, already love mathematics, many of them unexpectedly realize that mathematics is very interesting. Very rarely, but there are children, who do not come on board: they are either small children, who cannot concentrate, or protest adolescents, who have a mindset like “my parents brought me here, I don’t need all of this”. However, the majority of children forgets about that mindset quickly here.


I guess few children want to study in summer, how do you cope with that?


E.Ê.: It is not so. The biggest part of the children, coming to us, does love studying; they are usually from the families with a high value for education. We also do not have cramming, as we do not have a purpose to squeeze a distinct amount of knowledge into a child’s head. Our purpose is to help see the subject, value it, understand and to love it. It concerns every subject - mathematics, literature and history. For example, this spring we had a humanitarian camp in France on the Reformation, French War of Religions and French history of XVI–XVII centuries. Contextualization was so deep, that the children were very excited. I remember a boy from an American school, included in the country’s top-ten, said: “Our school teachers are very good teachers, I am an A student there. But I keep watching the clock and waiting for the lesson to end there all the time, and here I forget about the time, and I am not bored at all…”


Can you tell about your humanitarian block more?


S.K.: Although the camp is a mathematics camp, we decided to make a humanitarian block right away. “Humanitarian” is not a very right word for it – it is all, which is not mathematics. The purpose of humanitarian lessons is to initiate the students into the methods, which differ from the school ones, to learn them think. For example, linguistics and literary studies teach to think through text analysis – it is a Russian tradition, ascending to formalists and Moscow-Tartu Semiotic school.


Yikes, isn’t it too complicated?


– Even a ten-year-old child can understand Vladimir Propp or Claude Levi-Strauss with a right presentation. We show, how a text is made from the inside, we teach to find connections. And a text can de different – comic books, cinema, music, a common principle works everywhere. Thus, we invite different teachers, who tell children different things, from classical music to modern pop-culture. One way or another, we show children different ways to think, we help them see that this way is not the only one. Language is also a kind of mathematics, a system.


It’s good we started speaking about language. What language do children in “Marabou” speak?


E.K.: It is a very important and interesting moment. They speak Russian. There are camps, oriented at children with Russian origin in different countries. At the same time, children from Russian families use every opportunity to switch to English in American camps, to French in French camps. Many children, who come to us, have been living in another country for a long time; some of them were born in emigration. But children from more than twenty countries from Bali to the USA come to our camp, and Russian language is the only common language for them.


One of our purposes is to make children involved into the Russian culture. They often speak “granny’s Russian” – the language spoken in a family everyday life. But when a discussion comes to a more difficult and deep subjects, they lack vocabulary and this is a motivation for them, as many interesting people speak about many interesting subjects in “Marabou” – and they do it, using the Russian language. So, in order to be a part of it, to keep in line, they have to know Russian better. We create a situation, when children have to develop their language and not to stay in the margins of their family vocabulary or no one will know how smart they are and it hurts, doesn’t it? Literally: “I have to learn Russian to communicate in this fascinating camp”.


Who is a culture bearer, the one, who is worth aspiring to? How do you make a teacher’s team?


– Before even moving to Paris, we were much engaged in educational projects with Sergei. We have many talented people in our social circle, generally humanities-minded persons, who have a lot to say. That’s where our team comes from. A writer, poet and fashion theorist Leanor Goralik, philologist and biblicist Andrey Desnitskiy, philologist and semioticist Asya Shtein have been working with them for the second summer this year. We decided to widen the humanitarian block this year: now Elena Gelfand from the Centre of Genomic Studies Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard tells children about genetics, sociologist Ella Paneyah tells about social institutions, music critic Denis Boyarinov speaks about pop-culture and Lyalya Kandaurova – about German romantic composers.


How does Marabou 2016 differ from the previous one?


S.K.: At first, we have three shifts, not two, and as a result, we had almost two times more children (approximately a quarter – from Russia, the rest of them – from all over the world). One more feature of this summer: we made an experiment – we offered children choose afternoon activities themselves (activities before noon are always mathematics, the lessons are obligatory).


How do you know that the “Marabou” concept is working?


E.K.: We know it from what children say and what parents write – we receive many letters of gratitude after every camp. Even more solid evidence is a high percentage of returning. The fact that over a half of children, who visited “Marabou” once, came back this year again or advised us to their friends, is very important for us.


Who has the will and money to come to “Marabou”?


S.K.: Our program is designed for children of 10–14 years, but it is not the formal index what matters, but the starting will to study. Marabou has three shifts, every shift lasts for two weeks, the package costs 2500 Euros, including studying, food and accommodation. Travel costs are not included – everyone gets to us from different places and in different ways. One shift can take 45 to 50 children at a maximum. This year, we have already reached this point. Registration to “Marabou 2017” will be opened from September in our website and a reward will be awaiting those, who hurry.


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