Educational systems

"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" ~President George W. Bush

"We are the first nation to be founded for the sake of an idea -– the idea that each of us deserves the chance to shape our own destiny. That’s ... why our students don’t just memorize equations, but answer questions like “What do you think of that idea? What would you change about the world? What do you want to be when you grow up?” ~President Barack Obama

I'm not a hugely political person, but recently I've gotten a little worked up when I hear President Obama praising the test scores of South Korean high school students. To be sure, South Korea is full of very bright, talented people who work hard to learn and who care about education. But what I have seen of educational systems in Asia, and now here in Turkey as well, has left me less than impressed.

In both the countries where I've taught, as in South Korea, university admissions are determined by a single factor: the university entrance exam. Here in Turkey, a college application includes nothing more than your name and test score. Each department of each university has a minimum score that they will accept, but with 1.6 million students nationwide competing for 450,000 spaces in the universities (according to Wikipedia), there's no room for flexibility in these admission standards. Taiwan's system is similar; recently universities have begun to incorporate biographies and interviews into the admissions process, but by and large your test score is the one piece of data that will shape the course of your entire life.

I'm not sure about Turkey, but I know that in Taiwan the university entrance test is administered twice a year: once in January to every high school senior in the country, and again in July as a re-test for those who didn't score high enough the first time. Two chances.

In both countries, the entire educational system, K-12, has been built around the ultimate goal of attaining a high score on this exam. Education is seen by many parents, students, and teachers as a means of capturing this ultimate prize. As a result, tests are the focal point of all primary and secondary schooling. Students are strapped with the equivalent of American final exams once a month. Pressure grows exponentially throughout the course of junior and senior high, until senior high when 80% of time in school is spent taking practice exams. Your entire education is a giant test prep course.

When I taught junior high in Taiwan, I was told that at least 75% of my course semester grades had to come from the three exams I gave. The other 25% was for all other classwork, homework, projects, and participation. This, of course, was incredibly foreign to my experience of high school classes where I spent days on end working on projects and papers that comprised the bulk of my grade. Bombing one test, while certainly undesirable, didn't automatically drop me down to a failing grade. But such is life in Taiwan. The test is everything, and when the test is everything, the students put all their energy into that.

With this sort of system, it's no wonder they get such high scores! However, I don't believe this automatically translates into more knowledge or "better" education.The way I see it, there are two main negative effects of this sort of system. *I'm about to make some sweeping generalizations here, so please forgive me. I could give you multiple examples of individuals who are not like this at all, and I recognize that everyone is different, but these are trends I have observed.*

1. When the test score is the goal, and education only the means, students lose motivation to learn. My students in Taiwan did not value any information that wouldn't be on the test. Practical knowledge of English usually took a backseat to the ability to fill in blanks or choose a correct answer. They wanted to simply memorize information that they could regurgitate for the test, and didn't care whether or not they actually understood it. They could memorize 500 vocabulary words and get a perfect score without being able to pronounce a single word, use it in a sentence, or recognize it when they hear or see it in a non-exam context. Now, in Turkey, my students tell me the exact same thing. They also admit that they forget everything after the exam, which is why they are so unhappy to learn that grammar doesn't go away after you learn it; it exists in real life and will pop up again when you least expect it.

They also never learn what to do with this information. My educational psychology professors hammered us with Bloom's Taxonomy, a hierarchy of the different levels of processing and understanding information. Basically there are the lower levels (knowledge/remembering, comprehension, being able to apply the knowledge to a new situation) and higher levels (analysis, synthesis, and being able to evaluate ideas). My experience in Taiwan, particularly in situations where I asked students to create or analyze things, taught me that higher level thinking is not emphasized at all. Nothing throws a Taiwanese student off like the question, "Why?" They also struggled to integrate pieces of knowledge. Sometimes I'd ask students questions about math or history, and they would usually insist, "Teacher, that's not English! That's math!" even if they had learned it. Oh well, I guess with all the publications about test scores, they probably assume we don't even teach math in American schools and the subject never comes up at all in the English language.

2. With this much pressure to score well, students spend all their time studying, at the expense of anything else in life. In both Turkey and Taiwan, students feel they can never study enough, which has led to a vast system of cram schools ("buxiban" in Taiwan, "dershane" in Turkey) to provide additional classes in every possible subject. This isn't remedial "catching up" class; even the brightest students attend cram school to get ahead. My current school is one of these, full of high school and university students hoping I can help them achieve a higher score on their exam. Some parents start their kids earlier, which is why I have a class of 12-13-year-olds who show up on Saturday and Sunday afternoons for three hours at a time to learn English. Several of them go straight to other cram schools for other lessons after my class.

My first year in Taiwan I also taught at an English cram school specifically for elementary students who came to us every day after school. This tore me apart psychologically, and after a year I switched to junior high because I couldn't handle the parents coming to me every day asking me to give their 8-year-olds more homework so they could maintain their competitive edge. Even teaching in a regular junior high was difficult because my students would come to school 7:30-5:00 and then disperse to cram schools all around town. Many of them get home from cram school after 9 pm and then study for five hours. These kids have absolutely no free time, and when they do finally get a few moments to relax, they're so exhausted they don't want to do anything. They don't even know what to do with themselves when summer vacation rolls around, since they have never had time to cultivate a hobby or develop any interests outside of school.

In short, high school is a pretty miserable time for students in these countries. At times I have been simply amazed at how well students seem to cope with the amount of pressure put on them; I don't think I would've survived high school in Taiwan.

Our educational system in the United States is deeply flawed in many ways, but as we try to reform and rebuild, I can say for sure that we don't need to go the direction of Asia if we want to keep up our emphasis on creativity, critical thinking, and innovation. I'd rather see us raise well-rounded children.

Behind the Veil

A friend sent me this poem by a girl discussing the veil that many Muslim women choose to wear.
It's an interesting perspective for us Westerners who assume the hijab is inherently tied to oppression.

What do you see when you look at me?
Do you see someone limited , or someone free?
All some people can do is just look and stare,
Simply because they can't see my hair.
Others think that I am controlled and uneducated.


They think that I am limited and not liberated,
They are so thankful that they are not me,
Because they would like to remain "free".
Well free isn't exactly the word I would've used,
Describing women who are cheated on and abused.


They think that I do not have opinions or a voice ,
They think that being hooded isn't my choice,
They think that the hood makes me look caged,
That my husband or dad are totally outraged,
All they can do is look at me in fear,
In my eye there is a tear.


Not because I have been stared at or made fun of,
But because people are ignoring the One up above.
On the day of judgement , they will be the fools,
Because they were too ashamed to play by their own rules.


Maybe the guys won't think I am a cutie,
But at least I am filled with more inner beauty.
See I have declined from being a guy's toy,
Because I won't let myself be controlled by a boy,
Real men are able to appreciate my mind,
They aren't busy looking at my behind..


Hooded girls are the ones really helping the Muslim cause,
The role that we play definitely deserves applause.
I will be recognized because I am smart and bright,
Some people are inspired by my sight.


The smart ones are attracted by my tranquilty,
In the back of their minds they wish they were me,
We have the strength to do what we think is right,
Even if it means putting up a life long fight,


You see we are not controlled by a mini skirt and tight shirt,
We are given only respect , and never treated like dirt,
So you see, we are the ones that are free and liberated,
We are not the ones that are sexually terrorized and violated.


We are the ones that are free and pure,
We're free of STD's that have no cure,
So when people ask you how you feel about the hood,
Just sum it up by saying "BABY IT'S ALL GOOD!"

Submitted by a Muslim sister who is proud to be wearing NIQAB

Engagements here and there

Last weekend I received a giddy and ecstatic phone call from the younger of my two sisters, informing me that her boyfriend had just proposed. This is great news; her now-fiance is a wonderful guy and I'm very excited for them. So of course I have been sharing the news with friends here.

The responses have been interesting. In this part of Turkey, as in many areas of the world, the average marriage age is increasing. As women become more educated, it's common to wait until you've graduated and have a career before trying to find a husband. My students seem surprised that my sister and her fiance would get engaged while still in university. One of my coworkers opined that they should wait until they both have jobs because marriage is too difficult without money. This made me laugh, because my sister's fiance is planning to be a pastor, so it's not like they'll ever be millionaires.

Another friend asked if I was disappointed that I had to miss the engagement ceremony, and seemed surprised that the down-on-one-knee proposals you see in Hollywood films do, in fact, realistically depict the extent of American engagement protocol.

In Turkey, it seems, the process is more formal. When a guy and a girl decide to get married, the guy informs his family of his intentions, and then his family arranges a date to meet the girl's family. And by "family," I mean everyone. Mom and Dad come, siblings, grandparents, sometimes aunts and uncles. Typically none of these people, even the parents, have met the significant other, so the occasion is treated as a sort of investigation to make sure this person is worthy of joining the family. I would love to see one of these gatherings, with two families meeting each other for the first time, trying to size each other up while the guy and girl cross their fingers and hope everyone likes each other.

At some point during this visit, it's the man's parents' duty to broach the subject of marriage, announcing their son's intentions to the woman's parents. If the woman's father accepts, then that's that and everyone goes home to start making wedding plans. The man's family presents the woman with gifts of gold jewelry, and the couple exchanges rings at the engagement, often with the fiance's name and the date of engagement inscribed on the inside.

Tradition holds that the woman serves coffee for everyone, and that during this coffee time, she puts salt into her boyfriend's coffee. My friends explained to me that the guy is expected to drink it with a smile. This signifies that he is willing to accept his wife as is, without complaint. He's telling her, "Even if you give me poison, I will take it, because you are my wife." It's sweet, in a strange sort of way.

All the same, I'm kind of glad we don't have a formal ceremony, because I would indeed have been pretty upset to miss such an occasion. But the wedding isn't going to be for a while, so I don't have to start booking plane tickets yet.

Oh good grief...

Before I say anything else, let me just state for the record that I really like my name. It's strong, it's German, it's unique but not weird, and overall it's just a good one.

I don't even mind the association with the Swiss Alps and yodeling. I practically wore out my VHS tape of the old Shirley Temple version of Heidi, although I never did read the original book by Johanna Spyri.

However, the name does give me a lot of grief wherever I go. In elementary school it was the "Hi, D!" jokes that everyone thought were oh so clever. In junior high it was "Heidi Ho," or "Howdy, Heidi," or whatever witless variant people could come up with.

In Turkey, my name seems to cause endless amusement to others. For one thing, haydi in Turkish means, "Come on!" or "Hurry up!" So for example, to say "Come on, let's go!" you'd say, "Haydi, gidelim!"

Also, long ago there was a cartoon that seems to have bypassed the United States but was a huge hit everywhere else in the world. Behold:



Oh yes. A TV show about Heidi, her grandfather on the mountain, and Goat Peter. I first learned of this cartoon's existence in India, where a number of people felt compelled to serenade me with the theme song. Everyone in Turkey also knows it, and people also tend to sing the theme song when they first meet me. Or they simply giggle and ask, "So where is Peter?" Even our school accountant can't resist humming a few bars when I walk in. One of my coworkers told me the other day that his daughter was ecstatic to learn that her dad works with a woman named Heidi. She's been asking when she can meet me. Hate to disappoint the kid, but I don't think I look much like the girl in that cartoon.

All things considered, things could be much worse. At least Heidi is cute.