If you were a student in a Russian school you would have to be prepared to work hard! You would go to school six days a week and have lots of homework - at least one to two hours a night. You would sit at a wooden desk in a crowded classroom in a building that is old and needs repairs. Many Russian schools have no heat, running water or indoor bathrooms.

You would study reading, writing, math and a foreign language in the morning. Then comes lunch. It is your turn to clean and set the lunchroom table, then give each of your classmates a small bowl of fish soup, a potato pancake, and a chunk of bread. After lunch would be gym and then back to the class room to study social studies and science. School gets out at 2:00 but you would probably stay for a soccer game.

Then it is home for supper, hours of homework and an early bedtime. Russian children begin school at age seven and they must attend for at least nine years. They go to primary school for grades one through four and middle school for grades five through nine. If they continue on- and little over half of Russia's students do- grades ten and eleven are spent in high school.