11-Year Old Teaches Fellow Students in Turkey
A while ago I wrote a lengthy article slamming Turkey’s horrific education system. I used ‘English’ as a way to point out just how bad quality education in Turkey really is. Although some criticized my article, I – luckily – also received a lot of support.
One of the major problems, I wrote, is how teachers are assigned to different regions. Those who have to go to the less rich parts of Turkey are simply not passionate about their job.
It has now come under my attention that an 11-year old Turkish student has decided to teach her fellow students, albeit one year younger. She has become their Turkish, mathematics and social sciences teacher.
Rozerin Aydın is not overly ambitious; she’s not teaching because she wants to become Prime Minister 30 years from now. She teaches because no one else is willing to teach in her school.
The government did not send a teacher to the village of Haznedar, located in the Kızıltepe region of the Mardin province. This caused the Kızıltepe Education Bureau to send two temporary teachers there. Sadly, however, these ‘temporary teachers’ failed to show up. As a result, kids weren’t educated.
Aydın, may God bless her soul, then decided to take responsibility and teach younger students.
“I started teaching what I learned last year to younger students when the teachers didn’t come. I will continue to do so until they come,” she said.
Meanwhile, the village head, or muhtar, Hasan Aydın said: “Our children are not being educated.” Well, some of them are, but not by a qualified teacher. Kızıltepe Education Bureau Manager Siraç Atan promised to send 400 teachers to the region ASAP. The only problem: there aren’t enough teachers.
And if there were, the problem would probably continue to exist; one can get angry with the two temporary teachers for now showing up, but they are not the cause of the problem. Their actions are a result of Turkey’s terrible education system. The real problems are structural. Instead of getting angry with teachers who fail to do their job, Turks would be wise to put pressure on the government to come up with education reforms that work.
I completely agree with you! I am embarrassed of the education system and how much money is allocated for it! only %3…
instead of building more mosques, Erdogan government would do so much more justice for the people by building more schools. At least %10 should be spend on education, especially in the rural parts of the country desperately in need of help. On a happy note on my behalf, my husband and I are supporting a young girl’s education expenses whom I met this summer. She is extremely smart but her family cannot simply pay for her education, so we took the burden… I hope to see her through college! I asked of her one thing only…! NO wearing of headscarfs… !
I continue to say the same, the dynamics in east part is quite different than the rest of Turkey and the goverment together with creating an education reform should also do something about the effects of terrorism in east.Of course that is not an excuse for the west part of Turkey although education system there is better than the east.
Nevin, glad on your side, that is something I also discussed in another forum a while ago. Although goverment is very far from reaching its normal levels of contribution to education system, private funding or scholarships are also quite weak in Turkey. As far as I am concerned, in US, there are some very well – known scholarships that students are after to cover their college expenditures. In Turkey, we were after some small contributions from reputable holdings for some poor university students and we were declined by the majority we applied to. Fund raising for education is quite difficult in Turkey.
Although that would never undermine the importance of goverment in all this.