Turkey’s Real Problem
PoliGazette takes a look at Turkey’s real problem. It is not what you may think it is.
IZMIR, TURKEY -
For a couple of years, the major issue of debate in Turkey has been the separation of church and state; the country’s politicians focused almost exclusively on this subject after it became clear that the Justice and Development Party (or AK Parti) wants to increase the role religion plays in the public sphere (or allow more religious freedom, choose the interpretation you agree with). For months, all Turkish politicians talked about was whether or not female students should be allowed to wear the headscarf in universities.
Although laicism is indeed important, politicians have made too much of the headscarf issue; while debating about whether or not a woman can wear a scarf on her head, nothing was done about the real problem in Turkey. Better, the real Turkish problem was ignored.
Turkey’s real problem is not the economy, although it is a major issue. Nor is it laicism / the influence of religious conservative individuals on the government. It is not Erkenegon, and it is not the Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
It is education.
Compared to the rest of Europe Turkey’s education system is horrible. It is sorely lacking in a variety of ways, but especially with regards to teaching students foreign languages.
During my visits to Turkey I have seen how teachers try to teach this highly important foreign language to their students. Sadly there are some problems. For instance, the average teacher is hardly able to communicate with a foreigner in English. His vocabulary is not big enough, his accent is too strong and he is nervous because he seldom speaks English to foreigners; he is used to speaking English to Turks, who often do not notice the horrible accent of their fellow Turk and his pathetic lack of a somewhat normal-sized vocabulary.
As if the above is not enough, I have been told by several Turks that the grading system in Turkey is somewhat, how shall I put this… Utopian.
The highest grade is one star, the lowest grade one. Well, one would think that when a 15 year old high school student is only able to say ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ and ‘fine, thank you’ in English, he does not deserve more than one, or at most, two stars, right?
Not so in Turkey. I have met many high school students who are literally incapable of completing two or three sentences in English. Yet, their teachers give them four or five stars.
One of the reasons for this Utopian grading system is, I have been told, that teachers have the tendency to reward students who are silent, obedient and anxious to learn. When that student writes an essay or makes a test, the teacher seemingly tends to think “I should reward him for his good behavior.”
Another major cause for the lack of knowledge of English among Turks in general and (high school) students specifically is, according to Turkish friends and (future) teachers I talked to, that students are taught the exact same things over and over again. As one of the individuals I talked to remarked, “in the first year I studied English the teacher said ‘today we will study single present tense.’ In the second year he said ‘today we will study single present tense.’ In the third year the teacher said ‘today we will study single present tense…’ And you wonder why 95% of Turks do not speak English well?”
The above signifies a real problem in Turkey’s education system. English is of immense importance. It is alright for a third world country not to teach its citizens English, but for a rapidly developing country like Turkey, with big aspirations, teaching English to its citizens when they are still young is a necessity.
If one wants to compete in the world, if one wants to become richer in a constantly globalizing world, and if one wants to catch up economically with Western countries, one has to know English. Turkish is the language of Turkey, but English is the language of the world. One’s English does not have to be perfect – mine is not for instance – but it should be sufficient for one to express oneself accurately and to debate important issues. “How are you?” does not suffice.
In order to improve the situation, Turkey’s government will have to invest big-time in education. University students aspiring to become English teachers should be sent abroad; either during their studies, or immediately afterwards. They should be forced to speak English 24/7 for a period of several months. Everything they do, everything they want, they should made clear in English.
Furthermore, the Turkish government should keep a close eye on how teachers grade their students. Four stars for a student who knows jack is unacceptable. A checks and balances method should be cooked up, one that actually works. When one teacher grades his students, another teacher from a different school should double check. Competition among teachers and schools should be encouraged. Teachers that deliver better results have to be rewarded, teachers that perform badly punished. The same, of course, goes for schools.
Another important reason Turkish students suffer from a chronic lack of English speaking, writing and understanding skills is, conversations have led me to believe, the Turkish government’s habit to send new teachers to poor regions (in the East) where they have to serve for a specific, short amount of time, after which they can go back to the richer regions. These new teachers have to educate poor students, but often lack the passion to do in a satisfying manner. The reason for this lack of passion is that they do not want to teach in the East. They are forced to go their by their government. Many of them seem to tremendously dislike the East; they consider the people backwards and uneducated (quite an accurate, albeit negative, description of course). All they long for when they are in the East is to go back to the ‘ developed, modern world. Once they can, they go.
Teachers need conviction and passion. If not, they do not teach their students what they should teach them. When a student fails to make any progress, the teacher could not care less. ‘Lets give him four stars,’ the teacher thinks, ‘nobody cares anyway.’
In order to do something about this, the Turkish government could consider encouraging rather than forcing new teachers to go to the East. When a teacher agrees to go to the East, pay him considerably extra. Money makes the world go ’round and it makes teachers do what they should do; educate your children. Furthermore, when a teacher does so for a prolonged period – five, six years instead of, say, six months – he should receive even more benefits; both financial and in other ways (make it more easy for a teacher to travel to foreign countries, for instance, so he can improve their language skills). Make sure that the teacher becomes part of the village or city he moves to in the East; set up a ‘welcoming’ system, which immediately results in the new teacher having many friends with whom they can socialize. Make it more easy for a teacher who goes to the East to take his spouse and children along. Help the partner of the teacher find a new job in their new village / city / region. If the job pays less than what they are used to, subsidize them (temporarily) and help them out in other ways (take care of housing, for instance).
Sending students en masse abroad and the other reforms proposed in this short column may cost a lot of money while Turkey is far from rich – yes, I know – but the fact of the matter is that improving Turks’ English skills is not a choice; it is an absolute necessity. The Turkish government spends millions of Liras (the new one of course) on far less important things. In order to do all the above Turkey does not to need to make more money rapidly. Instead, it has to get its priorities straightened out.
Finally it has to be remarked that the reforms mentioned in this op-ed are, to a degree, applicable on education in its entirety. Of course education is not about English alone. Other courses are just as important as English, and the government should invest in these courses (mathematics for instance, but also reading skills in Turkish – my Turkish is rapidly improving, but my interaction with Turks has given me the impression that quite some Turks do not speak Turkish well – are important).
If Turkey does not improve its education system soon, and especially with regards to English, it will have a terrible hard time catching up with the West. Not because Turks do not want to catch up, or because they are too lazy, but because they lack the basic skills one needs to survive in this modern world.
Nobody can say that Turkey’s education system is good. Meaning goverment schools, not the private ones….
I think that, not only learning of foreign languages but also getting the other lessons are in bad mood. We are starting to get english classes on the age of 10 and on the age of 18 that means graduation from high school we are still same. Not able to establish communicaton with real foreign people. Even saying” hello, how is it getting along”. That’s because our most of the english teachers are not sufficent. That’s because our system can not grow up a real english teachers. We are making trade with other countries, we have a huge economy market but how many people can talk easily withouth looking dictionary or stopping with an english man after the graduation from high school or university.??? That’s bad. . . . so much one . . .
And, as a parents, if you (and also me) look to geography book or science ( it doesnt matter which class), you will probably say: how can my child have a good knowladge with this type of papers?.
The percantage of readers in Turkey are about %2-%3 and that means WE ARE NOT READING… How can we catch the Europe or the other better systems even they are reading in toilets( yeah i saw). We are not buying books and not paying attention to these.
Yeah that’s a cycle, we can’t afford thats becasue we dont have money. We don’t have money coze we spend it to uncesessary things( to celular phones for our children as a gift).
We have to open our eyes that are closed by AKP. It is not the time of making child more, time to give them a good education…
I’m sold on the basic idea, but not sold on the hatred of the stars. There are plenty of schools that give grades liberally or even have no grades at all. People in general, and children especially, want to learn. They are hard wired to learn. If you put them in an environment where they can learn, they will, especially a language. Children soak up languages like it’s nothing (well, up to about 7 or 9 complete languages, then it becomes harder). The number of stars might be a symptom, but I don’t think it’s doing any direct harm.
Everybody can say whatever they want, but as a Turk myself I must say that I actually agree with everything van der Galien has written in this article. He’s honestly hit the nail on the head. Turkey’s education system sucks.
I’d also like to add that I totally disagree with the Turkish government’s recent implementation of a compulsory media studies course for all children in a certain age group in Turkey. It’s so pointless and it’s such a waste of money. These lessons are supposed to be aimed at teaching children about the media and how to access and use certain types of media such as newspapers or the internet. Shouldn’t these skills be implemented into the curricula of other courses, instead? For example, a Turkish child could easily be taught how to analyse a media text during a Turkish lesson, and, perhaps more obviously, shouldn’t children be taught how to use the internet in IT classes? I mean, COME ON, people! I understand that in a rapidly developing country like Turkey it is gradually becoming more important for people to have basic media skills, but like I said, these kinds of skills need to be implemented into the curricula of other subjects, and unfortunately the Turkish Education Ministry doesn’t seem to get this. Like I said, TOTAL waste of money that could be spent on much more useful things.
My name may sound strange, but I am a Turkish citizen. The flaws of Turkish education is not limited to foreign language education. Its education system is memorization based rote (maybe in reminiscence of the hafiz who memoried the Quran word by word, without understanding the classical Arabic). It is not designed to create individuals who can independently or creatively think. The system is a cookie-cutter to create identical citizens of Turkish republic in religion, language and core values. Mastering a foreign language, especially a dangerous one where one can absorb many ideas from, inherently contradicts the system at worst, and is of little value to it at best. Try learning Greek, or Latin, or any of the classical languages (maybe with the exception of Arabic) and it becomes obvious that this is not an option. English, common as it is, is limited to finance circles and they souvenir shops in touristic areas. Most Turks (guys) learn written English from the internet, chatting up obese European and American chicks trying to get it off online. The schools have no idea of common everyday language and are frozen in a time when grammar mattered when people were expected to speak like the Queen of England. This goes back to the rote based education: if people can memorize the rules of language, they can (creatively) use it right? Turkish physical ed is a clear example of how amok things have run. Students can pass basketball classes with a 5’s (highest score) as long as they can memorize the basic rules of the game and write it up during the test, barely touching a ball. Same logic applies to foreign languages.
Well I believe the case for better education could be made in a LOT of other countries as well. This doesn’t mean that Turkey should not improve its education immensely, but progress is being made…
Debunk the idea that Turkish education system is based on rote-learning. I happen to believe that rote-learning is better than no learning which may indeed happen in American public schools as well. There are good public schools as well as private schools in Turkey. There are very well educated people in Turkey but bringing a standardized education to the masses has been the challenge.
One’s capacity to speak English is not a measure of how well you are educated. If you don’t believe me, try talking to an average Japanese person in English. I will take the average Turk talking English any day to the average Japanese trying to utter a word or two. So unless you want to make the case that Japanese are less educated than Americans or Turks, I don’t buy the argument that speaking English is an essential part of education. If it were, then Japan would have been a very backwards country indeed.
"my interaction with Turks has given me the impression that quite some Turks do not speak Turkish well – are important"
Personally I water down my English or Turkish immensely whenever I’m speaking to somebody who is very obviously struggling in either language. A lot of foreigners who speak Turkish are extremely difficult to understand because their pronunciation is really bad, no, make that really bad… If I met you in real life, I’m positive that you would never hear me speak with my actual Turkish to you. You would probably leave the conversation feeling that your Turkish is better than mine because I’m struggling to understand whatever it is that you’re trying to say…
Also there are local accents that are extremely difficult for a non-native Turkish speaker to differentiate. The fact that somebody speaks Turkish with a local accent (maybe a Kurdish one) does not mean that their Turkish is necessarily bad. It may even be the case that their first language is not Turkish.
It may also be that in rating the Turkish person’s ability to speak, of all languages, Turkish, you are just repeating what you heard from some arrogant Turkish folk who feel the need to put down other fellow Turks in order to make themselves feel better. We got a lot of those as well…
Maybe you should start rating somebody’s ability to speak Turkish until you can produce your average English blog post IN Turkish and with a descent sounding and "clean" Turkish grammar and take the same amount of time while doing it. We’ll see how long such fluency takes. Remember that Turkish is not a European language like English or Dutch or German, and those languages are a lot closer to each other than a non-European language.
Turks are very aware of the lack of equal education and equal opportunities for everybody. But English is NOT the uppermost concern. You don’t need an entire people to be able to speak English. Otherwise, former British colonies would be successful but we know that the non-white and non-Christian former colonies are some of the poorest and least successful countries. Yet they speak English, don’t they?
Michael, yes the system is not so bright unfortunately and I can say that I agree with you in most parts of your article but more money does not always mean more security for people. Yes increasing the benefits in kind and in cash for teachers being sent to East is an idea and a must maybe but won’t solve the problem in its entirety.
East part of Turkey needs stability. It should be free of terrorism. As a Turk who led all her life in Turkey, I can honestly say that even soldiers, for performing their obligatory military services, do not want to go to East part of Turkey even though they know that they are going to be paid double or even triple the amounts they would normally be paid when performing their services in other areas of Turkey, let alone people taking their family there.
West is better off and more secure than east anyway and people going to east from west for more money but to a less secure environment is not very likely if you do not increase the benefits very very considerably.
I had had English education since primary school, majority of the courses I had taken were in English. It was not because my family was very rich but I was able to get some scholarships from some private elemantory and secondary schools and then the college, although a state one gave me the opportunity to continue my English education. However this is not the case for majority in Turkey unfortunately.
To me the scholarship system should also be improved if not formed from scratch. State funded or private funded scholarships are very rare in Turkey and always come with some package.
Also one more thing, it does not matter how many teachers you will be able to send to East part of Turkey as long as you can not change the approach of the parents over there to education. Fathers banning their girls from going to school and making them get married at the age of 13 for money is not something rare in the East part of Turkey and it is something that you can not solve very easily.
Selin, some shareholders in my company are Japanese and they talk English just fine. Pronounciation may be bad but we get along fine. If it wasn’t for English, we would not be able to communicate since at the age of 30, I do not have any intent to learn Japanese or vice versa. Or look at it from another perspective, they would not make investment in Turkey otherwise (whether you value that investment or not is another issue of course).
English is a global language and resisting this truth to me is a waste of time. I do not like it but that is the reality. English is a lot easier to learn grammatically and otherwise compared to other languages, maybe that is the reason.
I occasionally check out the walls of some facebook groups about the so called Armenian genocide and I happen to see that majority of the Turkish writers can not make themselves clear to Armenians or to people coming from other countries just because of lack of proper English. They have a lot to say in the debate for their arguments but can not put them together.
Foreign language will never be the utmost important issue of Turkish education system but it sure plays an important role. We need to be able to present Turkey and ourselves to foreigners clearly and wisely (and I am sure you know why) and since in the process they won’t learn Turkish, we need to learn English. This may sound to you a little too liberal and not very nationalistic but believe me this is not the intent.
Today’s world is very dynamic and not to fall behind we have to follow the trend. This does not necessarily mean we lose something from of our own or we give in, we just find a way to live in harmony. It does not also mean that learning English will solve all our problems, it is just a beginning.
There are many brilliant education systems in the world and not all of them are English. I prefer to a strong education in Turkish to an incomplete education in English. And I hear from quite a few scientists and mathematicians who graduated from one of the finest English teaching schools in Turkey that they would have preferred to get their science or math education in their native language (Turkish) as opposed to English.
Sometimes no English is better than half English. If public schools in Turkey cannot teach English, they should not waste time trying to teach subjects like math and science IN English. This has nothing to do with being close-minded or being "closed to the world".
The reason why Armenian Genocide discussion groups require English speaking people is because there is an enormous lack of institutional support as well as grass roots lobbying on the part of Turks as well as those who live in the U.S. Somebody who makes a living otherwise shouldn’t have to be fighting to defend the Turkish narrative on those forums but they do because institutionalized efforts do not exist. BUT it has nothing to do with lack of English. I know a lot of Turks who speak excellent English but who will NOT get into arguments regarding AG discussions. Foreign ministry does not necessarily employ those who speak excellent English but instead pay their AKP-connections for their trips abroad so that they can learn English while on the Government’s payroll, such as is the case for Abdullah Gül. Not to mention that it’s a torture trying to listen to him speaking English. Again, no English is preferable to his English.
There are excellent translators who are very well trained and who do an excellent job of translating Erdoğan. Russian presidents speak Russian, French presidents speak French. Japanese prime ministers speak Japanese. They get translated.
PS: I was talking about more casual Japanese people - average - as opposed to the investing elite or the business people. If that’s the criteria, then we have many brilliant English speaking Turks who work both science related fields as well as investment and financial firms overseas as well.
Selin, I agree with you about lack of institutional support on AG debate side and I think Turkey is very very weak on that part but this does not make the point less valid. We need to be able to present ourselves clearly and Turks with perfect English not willing to join in the debate is another issue.
Public schools in Turkey do not have English education for courses other than English, the ones having that are ‘anadolu lisesi’ or private schools. Although ‘anadolu lisesi’ is cheaper than private schools, it still requires certain somes to be paid that can not be financed by everyone. Private schools on the other hand are quite expensive but require less points on examinations entered for acception by the schools.
I agree with you about doing something fully and otherwise not doing it at all but that is the whole issue, equal chance of education with well organized and funded institutions. To do that, first this inequality between east and west should be removed as Michael put it although the ways he proposed are arguable, the point is still there. Foreign language will play an important role in this, like it or not. I am a graduate of business administration and I am very glad taking all courses in English from calculus to sociology. This does not make my Turkish less important or I am not illerate when it comes to Turkish. Whether you provide all courses in English where you can and where necessary or you teach proper English and other courses in Turkish is irrelevant as long as what you do is proper and complete as you put it.
van der Gelin’s ideas attributing the problems of Turkey on bad English teaching in this country are as absurd as they can be! 1. I do not know Gelin’s nationality but I wonder if he ever thought about Americans who have not spoken English for years! (Bernard Show’s one time observation). Yet they have been quite successful in science, technology and arts as well as in anihilating a good proportion of the world’s population! 2. Mr. Erdogan himself has no foreign language literacy and statesmen of other countries think Mr. Babacan (minister of foreign affairs) is his interpreter when the two are together! I have heard some European statesmen saying Mr. Babacan’s English is impeccable! His and his colleagues’s knowledge of English must certainly be so when it comes to selling out the national interests of Turkey to foreign countries. This does not require sophistication in English, does it? 3. I don’t know how many people understand the English sounding hybrid language (as to both its structure and vocabulary) spoken and written by European Union officials. Some call it Franglais! So you see good English is not much of importance here either. 4. So I say while teaching a foreign language properly (presently preferably English) to Turks is desirable it would not be a cure for all. It may be necessary but certainly not sufficient.
Who said would it be sufficient Atol Furan? Are we reading the same article here? Are we commenting on the same article here?
Have you even read the part about east’s miserable situation as far as education is concerned? Have you read the ideas or suggestions about being able to send teachers down there for teaching English or not, but for TEACHING?
English is just important. That is all. Noone is saying here that it will save Turkey. Are you even concentrating on the real issue here that east part of Turkey needs to develop and what Turkey needs is EDUCATION.
As far as Babacan’s and Erdogan’s foreign language knowledge are concerned, who said they were successful in leading this country in the first place, irrelevant of the fact that they know English or not? So I suggest you do not go down that road.
Turkey needs to improve its education system. That is a fact. So why don’t you read the article more constructively than trying to undermine the importance of foreign language knowledge. We are deviating from the real problem of Turkey here just because some people are not tolerant at all to others thoughts and opinions or just because they want to show some chivalry.
Facts are facts, whether we like them or not. We need to look ahead free of emotions and try to improve on hand rather than criticising people who are at least trying to find some ways to do that.
So please do not hang onto the English part and read the article in its entirety. Then maybe we can exchange ideas as to how we can improve Turkey’s education system.
I agree that we Turks have a problem with learning foreign languages, and the way we teach languages is partly to blame. But it is ridiculous to say that not being able to speak English is the biggest problem in Turkey. I dont agree with the observation that Turkish students simply memorize their lessons and can not think creatively either. Having been a student in Turkey, Europe and USA, and having taught in these places in both high schools and universities, my observation was that Turkish students had the most flexible minds. In fact, I always felt like western students were very narrow minded compared to Turks and needed to be spoon fed every bit of information in the class. I felt like, the main problem with Turks was their lack of focus and sometimes their laziness, but never a lack of flexibility and creativity. I am currently a researcher at an Ivy League school in the US, and I would take a Turkish student as my assistant every time rather than an American, given that the Turk has focus and will to work hard.
To me, the main reasons for our lack of language skills are:1) We live in a closed society: Turks have been isolated from the rest of the world for nearly 40 years (since the last minorities left). We are nearly 99% Turkish+Kurdish, and we are not exposed to foreign languages2) English is being taught as if it was Turkish. Turkish language is very structured and logical compared to English, there are very few exceptions to grammatical rules. English, on the other hand, is almost always based on exceptions. We start teaching English by teaching the rules of the grammar (tenses etc). This DOES work for Turkish, but wont work for English. I think teaching English grammar at any level below college is a waste of time. 3) Books and vocabulary of teachers are outdated.4) We cant speak Turkish well to start with. With 2000 turkish words in your vocabulary, you can not speak any foreign language. Any attempt to include words from the "old Turkish" is seen ridiculous due ideological reasons, yet it is the ONLY WAY we can improve our language skills. Osmanlica was a way advanced language compared to contemporary Turkish, and we need to get some of those old words back into our vocabulary.5) TV’s should not translate foreign movies etc. into Turkish. They do a great job, but it minimizes the foreign language exposure. I have seen kids learning English from movies in a third country when I was teaching there….
Elif I am reading the paragraph that goes as follows: "Compared to the rest of Europe Turkey’s education system is horrible. It is sorely lacking in a variety of ways, but especially with regards to teaching students foreign languages. " Stating that lack of good education in Turkey is truism. Everyone knows that. But before that comes lack of food and well nutrition. What are you going teach hungary and angry people? Also, was not even the inadequate measures the government tried to take for educating people in the East hampered by terrorism in that region? Have you forgotten the many teachers who were assasinated by the PKK. They did not want curdish people to be poisoned by Turkish culture. If the money (some 200 billion dollars) that was spent to wage the undeclared war in the East the problem of hunger and education would have been solved by now. The war went on (and is still going on) thanks to our Western allies (of one of which I am sure Mr. van der Gelin is a citizen) which openly or secretly supported this ugly war! Several years ago even in Izmir in the West a curdish high school student rejected to learn Turkish literature and insulted the teacher raising hovac in the classroom. I know the teacher. Maybe this student should have been taught a foreign language instead! Ridiculous isn’t it? So you see things are not as simple as they look from the distance. If someone does not know the facts he can not offer viable solutions no matter how good the intention is!
Atol Furan, have you read my previous comments? What was I suggesting first for east part of Turkey? Stability, an environment free of terror.
Who can forget the innocent lives lost and indeed still being lost to PKK? That is the primary problem of the east. Form a stable environment, improve the region and then improve education system.
See, when you focused on the real problem of Turkey you can come up with some facts and ideas. That was what I was talking about.
I am not a lawyer to Michael or I am not trying to defend him cos I am pretty sure he can well do that for himself but I bet he does not like the idea of terrorism in any country whether originated by west or not so going to that route won’t help you much because of its irrelevance.
Your example of a Kurdish child is an event in isolation although sad though. There will always be people like him / her that will try to insult the country they are winning their bread from, so I do not see that example as any relevant to our point on hand also.
Michael may be looking at the issues from a distance, although you must already be aware that he comes and goes to Turkey frequently, I am not. I am looking at the issues right from its heart and I can not honestly say that Turkey needs productive ideas than destructive criticisms and it definitely does not need 3 children per family.
I am really obsessed with term "rote learning" being used as a deragotary term. A lot of newspapers do that as well. That’s about my only problem here :)))
See, human beings are already very creative beings. The idea of education, especially at a young age, is to give the person the discipline to polish their mental capacities and a lot of this education requires the discipline of an athlete and likewise consistency in pratice. Especially maths and sciences, all the way to the very advanced levels, require understanding of many rules and regulations that are best taught by "rote learning". I understand that a creative literature class or an English course might not be the best way to champion the virtues of rote learning, but math, sciences, and especially Turkish language are best taught and learned via rote learning.
I definitely would want my kids to undertake an old school, no-nonsense type of learning experience and don’t see why the sort of new-age arguments such as Asian-education-is-based-on-rote-learning", or Turkish-education-is-based-on-rote-learning stuff even find a lot of audience. It’s just maths and sciences are better taught that way. Which may not be the right education for a journalist but if you want to be able to champion the "hard" sciences as well as engineering in your culture rote learning is the way to go, otherwise you need to import a lot of your scientists as well as engineering personnel.