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Costas Michailides is from Cyprus and is currentlyspending his fourth year in the United States. Heis enrolled in the Graduate School of InternationalStudies.Concerning the educational systems, I thinkbasically that the overall American system givesa lot more freedom - more choices to the individual -than the more rigid and structured European system.I remember a number of aspects of Americaneducation that I considered liberal asan undergraduate, while American students weresaying that I was completely out of it, and that Ididn't know what I was talking about. This wasat a time when they wanted more freedom than theyalready had. Generally, I think every universityin the United States has freedoms whichEuropean schools might lack, especially at the highschool and undergraduate level.While I've been in this country, I have comeacross mostly the upper middle class fractionof students. For this reason, whatever impressionI might have is biased in that direction. Withthis in mind, I've found the students very achievement-oriented;they really need to have somethingto be proud of, whether it be academics,athletics, dating, or anything else. There is aconflict between this achievement orientation andtheir constant need to be accepted and belong in agroup, to conform in a group. The perfect exampleof this is the idea of protesting for more academicfreedom and all that. You don't find one studentdoing it alone - the long hair is usually reinforcedby peers.. .. they have toescape ...It is such a strong pressure - this achievementmotivation put on American students, that it mighthave something to do with their tendency to try toescape. It's the way they are brought up withtheir family and their society. In school theyfind they have to go somewhere; they have toachieve a lot. It's not that they are not intelligent,because most of them are brilliant; butwhen they lack the motivation or the knowledgeof what they want, they have to escape. They cannotstay in a system where they cannot perform.So you find them running around with long hairand basically hostile feelings against the establishmentand against the schools.Of course, one should not underestimate theidealism of American youth, but these gentle andpure feelings are usually limited to a few individuals.279