Empirically, it seems that both parents and teachers have forgotten about the real purpose of teaching while the students do not have a clear idea of what learning means. Every time it is more difficult to make them understand why they come to school in the first place. The reality is that all of them were led to change their perception and now the concepts of teaching and learning are subjects of interpretation.
In Turkey, the Ministry of National Education (MEB) is the one that runs the educational administration of the country and is responsible for drawing up curricula, coordinating the work of official, private and voluntary organizations, designing and building schools, developing educational materials and so on. The Supreme Council of National Education discusses and decides on curricula and regulations prepared by the Ministry. In the provinces, the Directorates of National Education appointed by the Minister organize educational affairs, but working under the direction of the provincial governor.
When it comes to schools, millions of important decisions have already been made and all they do is to follow the existing programs. The Directorates of National Education pressure the schools to make the students get high scores and in a desperate action of following the government standards, retaining customers, keeping parents happy and attracting more clients, the schools end up cheating the system, especially in the private schools were the money plays an important role.
Since the student-centered approach came to our k12 classrooms, the learners are overestimated and parents have more power than ever before, they even think that they can teach teachers how to teach. Teachers lack of almost total autonomy and coordinators and principals are just relationists who maintain the existence of the program without any verbal complaints.
Have you heard about real (fake) exams and common (state) exams?
In most of the Turkish private schools, the only assessing system for secondary and high school is by testing the students’ knowledge. Paper based exams are the only method employed and everything the teachers were taught in the university about the evaluation process in education is left behind. Basically, the students are formally assessed only on their memory skills in one of these two exams and the rest of the activities that they do at school are only part of their learning experience.
On the one hand, the real exams are designed by the teachers based on what they have taught in the classroom and the level of difficulty is usually challenging. The purpose of this exam is to make the learners study a bit and give teachers an idea about the potentialities and points for improvement of the students.
On the other hand, the common exams are designed to accomplish the government standards and most of the time these are multiple choice exams as if life were only about choices. These exams do not challenge the real capabilities of the students and they are practically designed to make everyone pass. However, some students do fail these tests.
The problem here is not just that the learners only study to pass an exam, but also that the results are not processed properly and in the end the exams are only done to full fill an administrative task while preparing students for life is taken too lightly. In the real exams, if the students get scores bellow 60/100 the teachers are asked to change the answers and adjust the scores accordingly to make it look better. As a general rule, the students must have more than 80 points in their exams, otherwise the failure of the students’ performance will fall under the teacher’s fault and they will face a stormy conversation with parents, coordinators and principals.
Similarly, for the common or state exams, the teachers are asked to change the scores and assign a better mark over 80/100 to accomplish the government standards
In both cases, the students have to present an excellent report card even though everyone is aware of their real capabilities.
Are we motivating or harming our students?
The answer is clear. We are promoting a fake estimation of their strengths. Students grow up believing that they are perfect, that they are knowledgeable and that they are capable of doing anything they want even though everyone knows the reality. Luckily, some students realize this fallacy by the time they are in high school and they focus their time and energy in developing their knowledge and skills, they become real students while others continue living a fantasy, however, this is not the common denominator.
In most of the cases, the students who decide to go to the university face the reality once they are there. What are the results for the students? Low grades, demotivation and anger. What are the challenges for the teachers? A big gap of knowledge and a multilevel classroom with a long breach between levels. Here is when the students self-steam gets hurt and they end up having lots of problems to catch up with all the knowledge they didn’t get in school.
But the problem does not finish here. Not all the students get accepted into the best universities of the country or are able to complete their studies there because of the high level of academic standards. In the best of the scenarios when they don’t drop out education, they decide to go into the private universities owned by the same people who own the schools where they studied. Of course, as long as they pay the tuition fees, they are accepted without going through any selection process. They finish their programs with outstanding marks and then they face the reality when they start applying for jobs.
Once, a colleague said “the students are a problem that we carry at schools till they become part of the society problems.” So, the question is: Is it ok to promote students based on fake scores? Don’t they need to master addition and subtraction before moving to multiplication and division?
What can be done?
The solution is not easy. Through Hofstede’s model, Turkish culture has long been described as high in uncertainty avoidance and high in collectivism with large power distance while most of the western cultures, especially in the UK and the USA, where most of the Educational management framework comes from, promote more individualism and equalities among people.
This is an issue that has been studied and discussed before many times but all the solutions were made for contexts where an individualistic culture is strong. When the schools try to apply this framework of reference, they don’t realize that they are culturally unexperienced to implement it. As a consequence, they advertise a “western-like” culture that in practice is something else and brings more problems than solutions to the schools.
Empowering teachers and enhancing their Autonomy is the most common way to attack the problem. Since they have the most contact with the students, they should be able to participate in important decision-making processes and have a voice when creating policies that affect their teaching. But how can we foster teacher autonomy in a collectivist culture like Turkey?
I think that a bottom-up approach is not a realistic solution here but this is something that I will leave to your refection while I myself continue looking for the answer to that question.
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