[EXPAT VOICE] Where are the students?

In my free time this week, I've been able to think over my last semester of teaching in Turkey and these problems in specific: the lack of faith in education; the loss of importance in a course; the deformed priorities. No one turned on the lights in the hallways in this first week of classes. On Wednesday night, I was testing some technology in a classroom and it was enough for the janitor to become suspicious. Action in the classroom on the first week of the semester was radical enough to be a potential threat.

Where does one place the blame for this situation? Or should I forget blame and just ride the tide, accepting my extra week off? I can't deny that it was relaxing, but I'm a teacher, and no one deserving the title can accept that what they do is so unimportant to allow a student body to skip a week of class.

These nights I think about the over 1 million students who didn't make the grade on their Student Selection Examination (ÖSS). How would they feel with the knowledge that these lucky few at four-year universities skip weeks of class en masse? This points to one of the many flaws in the ÖSS: it does nothing to test the drive, commitment or intellectual curiosity of a student -- the types of things that ensure they come to class and put their privilege to good use. But for the students to consistently skip the week before and after every scheduled break (as they do without repercussion) leads me to believe that the problem is not just the students.

How can an institution remain complicit in this practice? Surely there is a way to make students come to class. At a pragmatic level, it's as simple as making attendance count as part of the grade and removing the reliance on tri-semester high-stakes testing as the only form of assessment.

There's a better answer though. For one, the educational system can make itself relevant again, motivating both teachers and students to put value into the classroom. John Dewey, a progressive educator, came to Turkey in 1924, at Atatürk's insistence. In his report he stated: "The great weakness of almost all schools, a weakness not confined in any sense to Turkey, is the separation of school studies from the actual life of children and the conditions and opportunities of the environment. The school comes to be isolated and what is done there does not seem to the pupils to have anything to do with the real life around them, but to form a separate and artificial world."

The problems I face at Atatürk University don't just exist here, but they are magnified at this institution. The educational system has taught students that 180 minutes of multiple choice questions determine their future. This artificial world has replaced education. My students, who can be creative, curious and critical when given the right environment, hold nothing back when critiquing this broken system. They detest the time and money they spend on Dersane, and when I ask them if they learned anything besides how to pass the test, they answer clearly and without reservation, "no."

In my first semester, I spent a long time trying to unteach my students. After years of preparation for a 180-minute exam in a cram school, they have been taught an important lesson: their other classrooms don't matter. Instead of an opportunity for students to expand their understanding of the world or enrich the quality of their lives, university classes are reduced to obstacles for students to hurdle and forget.

Any extra effort they might put into their university classes or into personal development is transferred into preparation for their next set of tests. My fourth-year English students, future English teachers, spend their time cramming math skills for the State Personnel Examination (KPSS) instead of focusing on how to improve their English or be good teachers.