THOUSAND OAKS : Baltic Educators Visit Campuses for Pointers

They’ve visited more educational institutions in a week than most Southern Californians see in a lifetime.

Nine Baltic state educators are staying at Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks this month, attending a “Baltic Institute” to learn more about the American system of higher education.

Since July 4, they’ve visited Cal Lutheran, Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, Caltech in Pasadena, Pepperdine University in Malibu and Cal State Northridge. Today, they head for UC Santa Barbara.

The nine educators--three each from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia--came to maturity in a system where teachers taught and students memorized. This second annual tour is sponsored by the U.S. Information Agency in conjunction with Cal Lutheran and is designed to show the visiting professors the full panorama of higher learning in a capitalist, democratic system.

But the three women and six men say they plan to pick and choose what to take back home.

“I like very much the informal attitude between students and teachers here,” said Ilze Aizsilneice, who develops curriculum for the Latvian Academy of Medicine. “We do not have it at our schools. It’s very formal at our schools and the students don’t like it.”

One of the greatest surprises to the Baltic educators was the existence of private universities. Back home, any reputable institution is run by the state.

“For me, it was very interesting at Pepperdine to see how the alumni society helps the university,” said Kestutis Krisciunas of Lithuania’s leading technological university, Kaunas Technological University. “We have a newly organized alumni society at our university, and in my vision (after visiting Pepperdine), this society can be a bridge between the university and the community. It must help the university with raising funds.”

But many of the professors said they preferred their own secondary educational system to U.S. high schools where, they felt, students did not learn enough to get good jobs without obtaining further education.

Many also worried about striking the delicate balance between adopting American educational techniques and retaining the customs that make their own system unique.

“We have certain traditions of teaching,” said Aldona Reksniene, a teacher of English phonetics at Vilnius Pedagogical University in Lithuania. “We cannot pick a lot that we see here. We cannot all at once divert far from our traditions and customs.”

Before they return home July 24, the professors will visit UCLA and USC.