Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Joanne Benjamin

Joanne Benjamin finds mood among Russian youth upbeat

By Jeff Kearns

Boris Yeltsin. The ruble. Mir.

Even Russia's icons seem to be falling apart. As the country struggles to keep itself from capsizing in the choppy waters of the global economy, the headlines from Moscow tell tales of a manic-depressive stock market, sky-high interest rates and a serious hemorrhage of foreign capital.

But Joanne Benjamin, back from a weeklong trip to St. Petersburg and Moscow, says the mood there was much different than the one she expected to find.

"A lot of younger people are really excited about what's happening, the future and what it might mean for the country," she says. "They're really interested in change."

Benjamin, who teaches economics and government at Los Gatos High School (and is a fourth-term Town Council member) was one of nine Americans who visited the country in late May. The trip was organized by the National Council on Economic Education and funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Now that she's back, Benjamin will make presentations to service clubs and put on workshops for teachers on economic education.

Benjamin was one of three high school teachers on the trip, along with five college professors and a coordinator from the center. With a translator, she taught several classes on the basics of trade to fifth-graders in St. Petersburg, and more complex economic lessons in English to 10th-grade Muscovites.

The fifth-graders were unimpressed by a toy magnet until they saw that it stuck to things. They traded toys for trinkets and soon found out that one cool toy could be traded for two trinkets.

The council's exchange program is part of a U.S.-Russian partnership between economics teachers and various economic-education centers in both countries. Its goal is to help teachers develop materials and curricula, and to promote economic education.

The group toured banks, schools and businesses when its members weren't putting on workshops or meeting with Russian teachers.

At one bank housed in a converted warehouse, after passing through metal detectors and a credential check, the group met the young bankers who ran the operation. "They were really into computers and the market economy," Benjamin says, "but they knew that if they wanted that kind of economy, first you have to educate the kids."

Many of the young people she met were sold on the idea of creating a new Russia with a working, market-based economy, but their impetus was their parent's generation.

During the hyperinflation that followed the Soviet breakup, many older Russians lost all of their savings, and people on fixed incomes didn't have enough to live. Many weren't used to having choices. And economics had never been taught in Soviet schools, just political economics, which parroted the Communist party's dictates on what people should know about the economy.

Benjamin made a point to ask the people she met--both young and old--about their attitudes toward Americans during the Cold War. "Did you hate us or fear us?" she asked. Everyone said they feared the U.S.

Alongside the ballet, the opera, the orchestra and the colorful, ornate summer and winter palaces built in St. Petersburg by the Romanovs, one of the highlights of the trip was a visit to the Russian Stock Exchange. The exchange, which deals mostly in commodities and futures, is located in the old Moscow post office. It's open for business 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and in a not-so-simple twist of fate, a leftover bust of Lenin surveys the scene from high above the floor.

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