Tryangulation

Thank you for not smoking!

Today was the first school day in Turkey since the new ban on smoking took effect on Monday. The ban covers all enclosed public areas, with allowances for designated smoking areas for certain institutions. It used to be that, although students were never permitted to smoke, school personnel could smoke in designated areas away from contact with students.

On Monday and Tuesday we observed a national holiday, so this was the first time for everyone to get through the whole day without lighting up. It's going to be dicey for a while, since most people that I know are smokers (even though the stats say only 51% of adults), and getting through the whole day without conflagrations of any kind will take some practice.

Of course, as someone who unwillingly smokes from the unfiltered end of the cigarette, I got used to the arrangement in about a minute.

There have been plenty of anti-smoking campaigns here through the years, but they just make people feel guilty and discouraged over how hard it is to quit. In fact, the percentage of smokers in Turkey has been on the increase: it grew by 50% in the 1990s! It's no easier when those who should take health most seriously (53% of all male doctors) smoke as much as you do.

Everyone knows it's bad, and they wish their own children wouldn't take up the habit, but wishing hasn't been enough to stop a growing number of young people (14% of boys aged 7-13 at last count) from falling into the same trap.

So, to my dear friends who are not as happy about the ban, please remember that this is not a conflict in which the smokers are losers and the non-smokers are winners. Yes, it will be difficult to implement, but it will make it easier for some people to quit and for others to avoid even starting the habit. Even those who don't quit will still get through the day with fewer cigarettes. We will all feel better, and I'll be very grateful.

Sigara içmediğiniz için teşekkürler!

Background links:
The World Bank Tobacco Atlas and its profile of Turkey.
Today's Zaman: Smoke-free life begins in Turkey
CNN: Turkey introduces smoking ban

China's heroic teachers

I recently wrote about the problem of poorly built schools around the world in reflection on the tragic earthquake in China. I have just now read, and feel I must share with you, some very moving stories I have just read about the teachers in some of those Chinese schools whose love for their students led to the ultimate sacrifice. 

These stories are part of a collection of several stories compiled by Chinese blogger Bob Chen and published on Global Voices Online. Taking a break from grading papers and exams to read these will certainly put our own work, and our relationships with our students, in perspective.

Here's the link:  Global Voices Online » China:国殇; survival stories in QUAKE

Schools around the world are earthquake death traps

A lot of the news about the earthquake this week in China emphasized the tragedy of students trapped and dying in poorly built schools. Unfortunately, outrageously, perversely, school buildings around the world are potential earthquake death traps. Remember Pakistan, where 7000-plus schools killed 17,000 students?

On Thursday the New York Times published an article by Andrew Revkin on this global threat. Revkin writes:

Experts on earthquake dangers have warned for years that tens of millions of students in thousands of schools, from Asia to the Americas, face similar risks, yet programs to reinforce existing schools or require that new ones be built to extra-sturdy standards are inconsistent, slow and inadequately financed.

Revkin cited an OECD report that states "schools 'routinely collapsed in earthquakes around the world because of avoidable design or construction errors, or because existing laws and building codes were not enforced." That last bit was a polite way of saying "corruption" -- the allowance of poor design and pathetic construction in exchange for personal favors. Here in Turkey, construction contractors have a nasty habit of fleeing the country when their buildings kill people, so the system apparently works --for them.

The reports by Revkin reminded me again of the latest such tragedy we witnessed here in Turkey. Five years ago this month, an earthquake in the Southeast killed nearly 170 people. Half of those killed were public boarding school students in a single dormitory building (click here for the CNN report). More than 90% of the schools in the area were affected by that quake.

Revkin has also published a background story (click here) and links the Coalition for Global School Safety (COGSS). It's horrible to think about, I know, but is your children's school earthquake/ tornado/ disaster safe? How do you know? As the COGSS Turkey case study says,

It is better to be ten years too early than one day too late.

The photo was taken by Chen Jianli, Xinhua/Reuters, and is titled A rescuer held the hand of  a trapped student at Wudu Primary School. (image link)

Goverment says too many exams harmful; gives more exams

Dear US educators: for a hard look at the logical extreme of teaching to the test, watch the news from here.

We've been too hard on the dears...

Stating that the current exam system in Turkey is turning students into workaholics, The Minister of Education Hüseyin Çelik said this week that (roughly translated)

of course we are preparing our children for higher education, but our goal is also an education that prepares them for life, provides opportunity for play, and ensures their happiness (literally, love and kindness).

He asserted that the Ministry's Counseling Research Center is researching exam trauma to find solutions to the problems that, admittedly, the education system itself has created. He added that the Ministry intends to improve the quality of education, which means introducing new educational methods, since "wrong methods don't bring right results."

... but they can't ALL go to university, you know

I suppose the reporters at that press conference forgot to ask the Minister about the news from two weeks ago, that reported an alarming increase in the enrollment at after-school exam prep courses. Traditionally, exam anxiety becomes a marketable commodity during 7th grade, as students get prepared for the post-8th grade OKS exam that determines their options for high school. This mania accelerates during high school as students prepare for the dreaded ÖSS university entrance exam (more precisely the university elimination exam), which I've written about here, here, and here.

The notorious 8th grade exam has been abolished, but in its place are new exams given over three years, whose average will be just as weighty as the old OKS. Enrollment at weekend exam prep courses has nearly doubled as students from 4th, 5th and 6th grades are now being registered by nervous parents. Word is spreading that many schools are still teaching to the old test, and that without outside help, unprepared 4th graders might miss their chance for the right university and specialization.

The increasingly detrimental exam system here is an administrative --not educational-- solution for the university openings available for only a fraction of the number of students who want to continue their studies. The purpose of the exams may be different from the US, but from here we can see the how 12 years of teaching to the test takes its toll on curiosity, creativity, and learning skills for self-directed learning. Take heed.

Türkçe haberlerini okumak için linkleri tıklayınız;

Radikal: Çocuklar 'sınavkolik' oldu 

Radikal: Milli Eğitim ne yapsa dershanelere yarıyor

Turkey's teacher training crisis: a perfect storm

The covergence of three critical problems may create a perfect storm in the nation's schools.

Next year high schools across Turkey will teach 12th grade for the first time as a result of the reform of the old 3-year high school curriculum. This means that  the enrollment in every high school in Turkey will suddenly jump by up to 33% (in the remarkable event of no drop-outs). Even if every square inch of office space, libraries and labs is appropriated, many schools will still not have room.

Add to the mix the slow uptake by the centralized education planning, which planned for some increases in teacher training schools, but by no means by the 33% predicted by my simple arithmetic. As a result, we expect new teacher recruiting to see brutal competition this year, but this will probably not completely avert the need for teachers to take on extra hours, especially when you consider that Turkey's population is still growing.

Now, consider those new teachers coming into their first teaching job this fall, bright and fresh, settling into overcrowded schools amid overworked teachers. But what will they have to offer? Radikal reported last week on a report by former Ministry of Education official Prof. Galip Karagözoğlu, detailing the deficiencies of teacher training programs across the country.

The number of students in teacher training programs is increasing dramatically, but they are now facing a severe shortage of education professors. In some universities, programs with more than a thousand students have only a couple professors on hand, and some rely solely on assistant professors. As a result, nearly 200 students sit in classes. In a survey of 64 teacher training programs, technical equipment is rare or nonexistant. The report cited 22 schools with no physics lab, 20 with no chemistry lab, and 34 with no foreign language lab. In Mersin, there is one computer available to 659 students.

These new students, the ones with no professors and no science labs, are also part of a shift in ideology: 20% of education students are opposed to coeducation (boys and girls studying together). In a test of general knowledge, 53% did better on religion questions than on science.

Link: Radikal-çevrimiçi / Türkiye / Öğretmen nasıl öğrenir!

Photo: Satellite image of Hurricane Katrina by NOAA, Aug 28, 2005.

Messy is beautiful

April, glorious and muddy, was made for children. Or have we forgotten?

Prof. Ziya Selçuk, formerly of the Ministry of Education here, at the closing ceremony of a seminar on multiple intelligences spoke openly about myths that have guided the design of education and proposed a better way. He debunked ideas about quiet, orderly, unison lessons, where everyone sits straight and is taught the same thing at the same time. Orderly isn't always good.

Turks are immaculate, keep spotless homes, and practice fastidious personal hygiene. While I appreciate and admire that, I also remember fondly those Aprils on the Michigan farm where I grew up, digging mud puddle canals and building mud dams, wrestling on the new grass with the dogs, collecting worms and tadpoles. Having a grand old time while my brain quietly created an understanding of life.

Schools --and Turkish moms-- are in a constant battle against chaos, crooked lines, and grass stains. Learning, however, loves a mess. That's why some of my favorite television commercials here are by a laundry detergent company that celebrates mess, mud, and childhood with the motto, "getting dirty is beautiful."  Probably the first time those words have co-occurred in Turkish.

So here's one of those Omo commercials. Let's pray that YouTube stays online long enough for you to enjoy it! I've also done a rough translation of the voice over.

You can't just watch life from a window.
If you don't start out on the road, you'll never arrive.
You can't always sit on the sidelines.
If you don't get out on the field, you'll never hit a goal.
You'll never swim if you don't get wet.
You'll never rise high if you never climb.
If you never live, you'll never learn.
The stains and smudges of the children's world
are the badges of what they have learned and achieved.
Omo - getting dirty is beautiful.

Radikal'in haberi buraya, Omo'nun reklamların hakkında güzel bir yorum için buraya tıklayın.

Free eye patch with each book

In the midst of rampant copy/pasting from web sites directly into book reports, and where the sidewalks are choked by vendors of cheap, badly copied bootleg movies, games and music CDs, I guess this had to be expected.

The newspaper Radikal reports that the book translator and publishing labor unions here have released a report citing that a number of the "100 basic works" of literature recommended to students by the Ministry of Education are pirated translations, while others have been inexplicably abridged or altered to be more ideologically appropriate.

The labor unions investigated 154 books and found that 58 were plagiarized, with translations falsely attributed or not attributed at all. These included 6 of 11 editions of Fathers and Sons by Turgenyev, 6 of 14 editions of London's White Fang, 11 of 25 editions of Les Miserables (including one abridged down to just 80 pages), and 9 out of 14 editions of Crime and Punishment.

Going beyond the ethics of individual purchases of pirated publications is the problem that the Ministry of Education, by creating a reading list that is more required than recommended,  consequently passes on a huge windfall to companies that violate international conventions protecting intellectual property.

Haberin Türkçesini okumak için link üzerine tıklayınız: Radikal-çevrimiçi / Türkiye / MEB tavsiyeli korsan kitap serisi

Photo by eekim.

Maybe they wanted a school with wi-fi

News like this crosp up fairly frequently here. This time, it's a village in far eastern Turkey that for more than a year has waited for a permanent teacher for its 65 children. On a few occasions interim teachers have come but then quickly left again.

I remember cases like this when we were in rural Guatemala, another place where small remote villages had trouble holding onto teachers. Nobody there needed to be convinced of the value of education; the problem is that to be a teacher in such places means miserable pay, difficult living conditions, and little life outside school. To be such a teacher requires a clear calling and exceptional character.

I started wondering more about how many more places in the world are waiting for a teacher, and a quick search turned up this report from UNESCO (and another older report) with the fact that worldwide more than 18 million new teachers must be recruited to keep current student-teacher ratios. Keep in mind that those ratios in the least developed countries are three times the ratios in developed countries, with some countries in Africa counting 50 or even 70 students for each teacher.  To exacerbate the situation, large numbers of these teachers --as many as 50% in Uganda--  have no professional training at all.  Still, there's something to be said for having a little but using it a lot, versus having a lot and using it too little.

When I was in university I volunteered to teach literacy to adults. I remember how nervous and inadequate I felt the first time, totally unaware of how rich I was from lifelong reading, rich far beyond the small cost of teaching another. Later in Guatemala I taught adults who were literate in Spanish how to write and read in their mother tongue (and yes, in that order because if they didn't write, there was nothing to read); I imagined we were like explorers as we sat around a table looking at words that had been written for the first time.

I have felt wonder and humility at the tremendous power that we pass on when we unlock the written word. I then go for long stretches without giving it a thought, until someplace like the village of İpekkuşak draws some notice and makes me once again examine my own calling.

Haberin Türkçesi için buraya tıklayın:
Radikal-çevrimiçi / Türkiye / Kalıcı bir öğretmen bekliyorlar

Higher education official proposes an alternative to the university entrance exam. 

(English summary follows)

Radikal'dan: ÖSYM Başkanı Prof. Dr. Yarımağan, üniversiteye giriş için tek sınav yerine 12 temel dersten birer sınav yapılmasını önerdi. Üniversitelerin hangi ders sınavından öğrenci alacağına kendilerinin karar vermesi gerektiğini söyledi... Ortaöğretimi bitiren öğrenci sayısında hızlı artış var ama yükseköğretim kontenjanlarında hiç yükselme yok. Türkiye, her yere sınavla girilen ve sadece çoktan seçmeli sınav yapan tek ülke kaldı.

Haberin devamı: Radikal-çevrimiçi / Türkiye / ÖSS yerine 12 dersten sınav

The President of the Center for Student Selection and Placement (ÖSYM), under the administration of the Turkish Board of Higher Education, has proposed an alternative to the notorious universal university entrance exam, the ÖSS.

The proposal is to do away with the ÖSS, and instead institute yearly comprehensive exams. Universities would have the choice of which subject exams to use in their accepance criteria. For example, a university's construction engineering program may use the scores from physics, Turkish, and mathematics for selecting students. Exams will include a variety of question types, even (gasp!) open ended questions.

I've written previously about this exam (most recently here), a 195-minute multiple choice exam that decides everything about a student's eligibility for state universities and majors. Teenagers' lives revolve around test preparation (even in their high school classes). Since the high school-age population continues to grow, but the number of university slots continues to stay the same, the exam is competitive in the extreme. Sad, since the exam is good for little more than measuring students' ability to take tests.

Doing away with the ÖSS is a step in the right direction, but replacing it with multiple annual exams for twelve years could be a step back, since we can safely assume that classroom education will still be focused on exam performance.  It looks like another step toward European harmonization is the testing to death of students before they get into university.

When the test is all that matters

Wes Fryer's post A contrary view of education and NCLB is a well articulated rebuttal to President Bush's remarks on education in his State of the Union address this week.  I left a comment on Wes' post that contrasts the education systems here and there, in particular the emphasis on testing. ,I decided to pull together a few old posts in case people in the US wanted a little more information about the university entrance exams (ÖSS) here. Call it a distant mirror.

TED establishes foundation for a new university (Feb 2007).  Far more university candidates than openings causes severe competition in the ÖSS, so that fractions of points can make or break a student's chance for the school or major of her choice.

Education news from Turkey (Dec 2006). Money spent on the entrance exam and in exam prep courses is nearly one-third of the amount spent on higher education itself, and that more and more high school students see secondary education as a vehicle to exam success rather than as education per se.

(Translated from Turkish) The value of a life gains 15 minutes (May 2006). Research by the Turkish Education Association shows that in the last nine years, the number of private ÖSS exam prep institutes increased by 154%, and the number of students enrolled in these institutes increased by 198%. Of these students, 43.7% considered the quality of instruction at these institutes to be acceptible, and 48.1% of students said that passing the ÖSS without attending one of these institutes would be very difficult.

Native English speakers are minority in England's schools

A news item from The Telegraph reports that "children with English as their first language are now in the minority in more than 1,300 schools, according to official figures."  Teachers' unions argue that inadequate preparation in English undermines education standards and increases costs, requiring more government assistance and a review of language policies.

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If not pencils, then ban the paper!

I made a joke a few days ago about a ban on pencils as a logical equivalent to Turkey's ban on  Wordpress. Now Israel is banning the importation of paper into Gaza. The  paper is destined to be used to print school textbooks, and since paper is not defined strictly as a component of humanitarian aid in the same way as food and medicines, it is not exempt from Israel's blockade.

It is so widely known that education is one of the greatest weapons against poverty, that I can not imagine the logic of this ban. An unidentified spokesman for the Israeli government said the ban was to keep Hamas from publishing textbooks with inflammatory propaganda, but depriving children of the opportunity to read --and learn-- for themselves seems bent on sealing the fate of those school children to remain impoverished and to become uneducated, undiscerning and without hope.

That sounds to me like excellent raw material for a whole generation of suicide bombers.

For more on the blockade and its impact on education in Palestine, click here.

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Historic first for Turkish public school

Thanks to my Bloglines account I'm able to keep up with current events in Turkey, and was pleased to see published the news that I had already heard through the grapevine before coming to the US: a social science magnet school in Istanbul has become the first public school in Turkey to be authorized for the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. Previously the IB Diploma was available through 19 private schools in the country.

The Prof. Dr. Mümtaz Tarhan Social Sciences High School has been interacting with other IB schools in Turkey for the last two years to learn from our experiences and to get encouragement in the difficult authorization process.  Among the obstacles they faced were the retooling of current teachers, recruiting other qualified teachers, and converting their social science and experimental science instruction from Turkish to English.

The International Baccalaureate Organization has made increased access a major goal for the coming years, and the authorization of this school is a major step in Turkey for mainstreaming the ideals of the IB and enriching the education opportunities available here. Although the news article emphasized the potential for public school graduates to gain international scholarships via the IB Diploma, our hope is that the other less tangible benefits of the program would also become more evident and appreciated.

Click on the following link for the original article in Turkish from Radikal:

İSTANBUL- Prof. Dr. Mümtaz Tarhan Sosyal Bilimler Lisesi, Türkiye'de uluslararası geçerliliği bulunan Bakolarya diplomasını veren ilk ve tek devlet okulu oldu.

He forgot to ask about the laptops

"Will they feed us?"

-- Asked by a street child of Nairobi, when invited by a social worker to attend a special private school with no fees or hidden costs (like requiring shoes). The answer was yes.

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The war on education is real

Safia Ama Jan risked her life by running an underground school for girls from her home in Afghanistan during the reign of the Taliban. Later, as the director of women’s affairs in Kandahar province, she worked tirelessly to champion efforts to get all Afghan girls back into school, and to provide professional and vocational training for women. She was shot and killed outside her home in Kandahar on 25 September, 2006.

A month ago I wrote about the global war on education, but I used that phrase as a figure of speech, not in reference to a literal war. Since then I read a new report from UNESCO about deliberate and strategic attacks on schools, teachers and students. That report is the source of the quote above.

The report, Education under attack, cites armed attacks on schools, assaults on teachers and students, and forced recruitment of child soldiers, as acts that specifically target institutions of learning; "general daily violence" such as that between students and teachers is excluded.

Specific data from 13 countries is presented, mostly from countries affected by armed conflict. It is reported that "up to 40 per cent of the 77 million or more children in the world who are not attending school can be found in countries affected by conflict".  A summary of the report, with a link to the PDF document, can be found at Eldis.

Crying is OK, singing is not

Here's a piece that I missed in the Turkish language media: a Turkish punk band performed a song that criticizes the excruciatingly competitive 3-hour exam all university hopefuls must take, and which decides their options for where and what to study. The song ended up on (where else?) YouTube, and now they have been taken to court for insulting Turkey.

So far I haven't gotten into trouble by disagreeing with the exam policy via this blog (such as here and here), but then the association which governs the network of schools where I work has been far more vocal than I with their Hayat = 195 Dakika mı? campaign (in English it means, roughly, Is life defined by just 195 minutes?). 

That campaign has picked up steam and many organizations have adopted the slogan. However, they are up against a billion dollar industry of prep courses and prep books (and not a few psychiatrists) that feeds on the fear of failure, so in spite of the anti-exam rhetoric of the politicians campaigning for the election here on Sunday I don't expect much change any time soon.

I'm just hoping the court case doesn't lead to another YouTube shut down. What would we do?

Flash! British experts say exams are stressful

Teaching union calls to 'scrap exams before the age of 16' | the Daily Mail

In England, the General Teaching Council has recommended that Standard Assessment Tests (SATs) be abolished for students aged 7, 11 and 14. The GTC argues that schoolchildren in England are among the most tested in the world, averaging 70 tests and exams before the age of 16.  This distracts both teachers and students from focusing on broader knowledge and skills that students need in order to be more prepared for the world of work.

The government however argues that they still need a system to keep schools accountable to the public and to identify weaknesses in the schooling system.

Looking at this from a country where one's university career depends on a single multiple choice qualifying exam, I sympathize with the teachers. The exam our students take doesn't really test anything taught after 10th grade, and students obsess over exam prep courses for years, sacrificing most of what Westerners think of as a normal teenage lifestyle.

To read the rest of the news from the Daily Mail, click here.

Two IB courses now online

The Virtual High School has opened registration for two International Baccalaureate courses which will be offered online. The courses are Economics and Information in a Global Society (ITGS), and will be offered at the Standard Level (SL) only.

The courses are open only to students who are enrolled at IB World Schools, and enrollment is limited to no more than five students from the same school. Click here for more information.

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TED establishes foundation for a new university

The Turkish Education Association (known for its Turkish acronym TED), which is an umbrella for 21 schools across Turkey with total current enrollment at about 16,000 students, has established a university foundation. According to the news article from the Turkish newspaper Milliyet,the foundation aims to create a university which will begin admitting students for the 2008-2009 academic year.

I have written before about the problem of an excessive focus on a single national university qualifying examination that creates a teach-to-the-test mentality that pervades high school education here, and how the Turkish Education Association has campaigned for reform. I believe one of the roots to this problem is too few places at universities for new students, which results in many otherwise intelligent and creative young people being stifled and redirected from their preferred career choices because of that single exam. Increasing the number of private universities is a step in the right direction.

Spokespersons for TED say that the establishment of a foundation university according to TED's principles will bring more diversity. We can also hope that it will provide educational opportunities more suited to graduates of Turkey's IB programs (two TED schools currently offer IB) who have already begun to learn a different approach to life long learning. In the long run this could give all of us a chance to benefit.

Click here for the original Turkish news article from Milliyet.

Teachers caution about Wikipedia; Wikipedia agrees

Andy Carvin at learning.now reports on a decision by the History Department at Middlebury College to bar students from using Wikipedia in research.  Andy gives a great summary of the discussion going on about Wikipedia's realibility, which on average is very good, but since it's open to editing by just about anyone, it's difficult to know at any given moment how reliable any particular article might be.

The interesting twist here is that Wikipedia agrees. Wikipedia, since it's a wiki, is easy to edit. In fact, school blogging guru Will Richardson just this week boasted about his son's first contribution to the online encyclopedia. I'm not saying at all that reliability has anything to do with the age of contributors, but Will's post does celebrate (since it's generally a good thing) the fact that Wikipedia is the result of the collaboration and vigilance of many different kinds of people.

While a complete ban of Wikipedia might be controversial, I agree with Andy's assessment that Wikipedia is still very useful for getting into a subject quickly (the word 'wiki' is Hawaiian pidgin for 'quick' by the way). If the article is done well, it will include a bibliography pointing the reader to just those resources that will pass muster on a university research paper. I've advised my own students that responsible use of Wikipedia should include a review of the discussion and history tabs to see whether the content has benefited from broad collaboration and whether anyone considers the article to be biased. That's something that even the Encyclopedia Britannica won't give you.

In the end, Wikipedia, like any other media, should be approached with a critical eye. With the proliferation of web based resources, it seems that a lot of teachers are naturally suspicious of the web. However, there's no reason why we shouldn't teach students to be cautious of print media as well. Just check out Regret the Error to see how our most reputable sources get it wrong all the time.

Click here to read Andy Carvin's article, and click here to see more resources on information literacy that I've tagged at del.icio.us.

Education news from Turkey

Two items of interest this week from the Turkish newspaper Radikal.

A survey of women's socio-economic status was conducted in 97 villages in the vicinity of Diyarbakir in Southeastern Turkey. The research showed that, of the 472 women interviewed, 79.4% are illiterate, 71% were married by age 19, 21% married for love, 43% had their first child by age 18, and that 18% of the school age daughters of these women do not go to school (but only 5% of their sons do not). Click here for the complete news article in Turkish.  Programs like Girls Education Campaign are making some inroads, but gender equity in education depends on more and better school facilities and economic development as well as addressing traditional biases.

A report on the success rate of students in the national university entrance exam (ÖSS) states that the money spent on the entrance exam and in exam prep courses is nearly one-third of the amount spent on higher education itself, and that more and more high school students see secondary education as a vehicle to exam success rather than as education per se. Nearly one million students are enrolled in exam prep courses, which are seen by many as a distraction from the regular school curriculum and an excessive drain on students' time and energy. The rest of the story is at this link. We certainly see these exams as an added burden to our IB students, and hope for the day when an IB Diploma is recognized in lieu of the ÖSS score.

Kızlar için okula gönderilmek yetmiyor...

Radikal'dan: Bitlis kentinde ilköğretime başlayan 100 kızdan sadece 27'si sekizinci sınıfa ulaşıyor. Buraya tıklayın.

Free online courses from Yale University

Yale University is undertaking a pilot project to produce free online versions of courses, complete with syllabi, video, transcripts and other course materials. According to the press release from Yale, "some of Yale's most distinguished scholars are taking part." For the rest of the story, and links to the Open Educational Resources Initiative, click here.

OECD: Türk öğrencilerin matematiği zayıf

Radikal'dan: Ekonomik İşbirliği ve Kalkınma Örgütü'nün (OECD) 2006 raporuna göre Türkiye gayrisafi yurtiçi hasıladan (GSYİH) eğitime en az pay ayıran ülkeler arasında. Türk öğrencilerin matematik performasları üye ülkelerin ortalamasının altında. Türk öğretmenlerin maaşları GSYİH'ye oranı açısından ise üst sıralarda. Haberin devamı için buraya tiklayın.

Tufts University uses creativity as factor in student admissions

Prestigious Tufts University is experimenting with assessing the creativity of applicants as an admissions factor alongside grades and standard test scores. Several other universities are watching closely to see how they might adopt similar strategies in selecting future students. An article in Inside Higher Ed reports the story, with a quote from Arts and Sciences Dean Robert Sternberg:

If we are interested in developing future leaders, we need to expand the way we think about student abilities. The college admissions process to date focuses 'on a sliver of what we need to know' and completely ignores 'skills that are important for success in college and life.'"

This certainly makes sense to me. We've known for a long time that the best leaders aren't necessarily the ones with the best academic performance; they're the ones who know how to communicate, how to assess problems quickly, and how to solve those problems creatively.

Let's hope that Tufts' plan includes education that improves the creativity and leadership abilities of their new students after they've been admitted. Click here for the whole story.

Turkish IB school looks eastward (part 2)

On 1 June I gave a summary of the recent news that Bilkent University plans to establish K-12 schools with international curricula (such as IB) in major cities in eastern and southeastern Turkey (click here for that post). A key part of the plan was the financing of these schools by diverting the income tax remittances of Bilkent employees.

We have just read in the 31 May edition of the Sabah newspaper that the law proposed to finance the establishment of these schools has passed. I checked Bilkent's website for their own version of the news in English, but could not find it.  Here is my English summary of the article (with apologies to Sabah and Bilkent for any errors):

In order to provide internationally accepted education to the children of high level bureaucrats and professionals working in Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia, a new law will allow Bilkent University to open preparatory schools in Şanlıurfa, Erzurum, Malatya and Van.

In order to receive high school diplomas from these laboratory schools, students will need to qualify for the international baccalaureate diploma programme. In addition, students in Erzurum, Malatya, Şanlıurfa and Van who reside with their families and have academic ability but limited financial resources will still have a chance to enroll. At least 70 percent of the students enrolled will be on full scholarships. Each school will have capacity for 1000 students, and in addition to education and research departments each will have a health center, residences, guesthouse and all other relevant facilities, all covered by tuition so that there will be no additional public expenses. As these schools will be centers for attracting talent to the Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia regions, it is foreseen that adult education programs will also open in the near future.

Each school will admit one hundred students in the first year of operation, and add students each year, class by class. Because of the goal that these schools fit into community based education planning schemes and the desire that students admitted to the schools live in the same province with their families, they will not provide boarding school facilities.

The full article in Turkish can be found here.

Bilkent bir adım daha atıyor

31 Mayıs 2006 tarihinde Bilkent Üniversitesi'nin Doğu ve Güneydoğu bölgelerinde yeni IB okulları kurmak planladığını bu sayfada bilgilendirdim. Şimdi bugünkü Sabah gazetesinde şu planın ilk atılımı çıktı.

Çocuklarının eğitimini düşündükleri için zorunlu hizmet yasalarıyla dahi Doğu ve Güneydoğu'da görev yapması sağlanamayan bir kısım kamu personelini ikna edecek yasa Meclis'ten geçti. Ankara'daki Bilkent Üniversitesi hazırlık okulları ve uluslararası okulun birer örneğinin Şanlıurfa, Erzurum, Malatya ve Van illerinde kurulmasını sağlayacak yasayla, Doğu ve Güneydoğu'da görev yapacak hakim, savcı, doktor, subay, mühendis ve öğretmen ile diğer üst düzey bürokrat çocuklarının uluslararası geçerliliği olan eğitim alması sağlanacak.

Haberin devamı için buraya tıklayın. Aynı haber Milliyet'ten almak için buraya tıklayın.

Turkish IB School looks eastward

The following is a summary in English –not a translation- of the article from the newspaper Milliyet which I cited in a blog post yesterday.  I have added some commentary after the summary. Readers are welcome to add their own comments in either English or Turkish, or to correct my understanding of the original article.

"Oxford" goes to Urfa

Bilkent University has submitted a draft proposal to the Turkish government which would allow the establishment of Bilkent private elementary and high schools in Ankara and in the eastern cities of Erzurum, Malatya, Şanlıurfa and Van (click on the map to enlarge). These schools would use Bilkent’s reputation for quality education as an incentive for professionals to relocate to eastern and southeastern Turkey to enhance the government’s efforts for development in these regions.

Bilkent proposes that these new schools, referred to as “laboratory schools” in the article, would be staffed by the best educators and would implement internationally recognized educational standards, including the International Baccalaureate, along with a well-rounded program that includes the arts, sports and community service. As an added bonus, Bilkent proposes that seventy percent of the students in these schools would receive scholarships, in contrast to the normal tuition of around 11,000 YTL (approximately 5500 Euro) which is far beyond the reach of most Turkish families.

The scholarships would be paid for through a special arrangement for employees of Bilkent University and Bilkent’s private schools: beginning in 2006, personal income tax remittances from Bilkent employees would be diverted to a scholarship fund for 25 years.

Commentary by Tom

Readers outside Turkey may not know that Eastern and Southeastern Turkey are significantly less developed that Western Turkey. The Turkish government has implemented regional development schemes for these regions such as GAP (where I worked for five years) and DAKP, which comprise large infrastructure projects, incentive programs for private sector investment, and social development projects. However, due to the lack of infrastructure currently, security concerns, a net outmigration of the region’s best talent, and the distance of these regions from the more developed western regions, development programs have not been able to attract professionals and businessmen in adequate numbers to reach a cricial mass. Since outside professionals who enter the region to work on development projects usually make commitments of only a few years and often leave their families behind in Istanbul or Ankara, the potential impact of these schools on reversing migration trends is anyone's guess.   

The article incorrectly implies that the IB is a European educational program and reports that IB courses are supplemental to, rather than coinciding with, the national high school program. The article also says that the new schools will require an IB diploma for graduation. This sounds extreme to me, since not even the IBO requires candidates to earn a diploma, and this approach may induce the schools to admit only students who are a sure bet for a diploma and thus contradict the spirit of the program.

Nevertheless, I congratulate Bilkent for their determination to cross some internal borders and use some creativity in pulling together the necessary resources. Far from feeling threatened by a competitor, I’m encouraged that ideas like this are making it into the public arena. There are enough places like Urfa for all the IB schools in Turkey to have such dreams.

Uluslararasi Bakalorya şimdi doğuya yönelik

(English summary will be posted tomorrow)

Milliyet'ten: Çocuklarının eğitimi nedeniyle Doğu ve Güneydoğu'ya gitmek istemeyen mühendis, doktor, hâkim, öğretmen, subay gibi çalışanların bu bölgede aileleriyle görev yapmasını sağlamak üzere köklü düzenlemeler içeren bir "eğitim formülü" geliştirildi. Hükümetin TBMM'ye gönderdiği yasa tasarısına göre, Bilkent Üniversitesi Ankara, Erzurum, Malatya, Şanlıurfa ve Van'da eğitim enstitüleri kuracak. Enstitülerin kampuslarında uluslararası standartlarda özel ilköğretim okulları ile liseler açılacak.

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Hayat şimdi 15 dakika daha değerli olmuş

Radikal'dan:

Türk Eğitim Derneği'nin (TED) araştırmasına göre son dokuz yılda öğrencileri sınavlara hazırlayan dershanelerin sayısı yüzde 154, dersanelere giden öğrenci sayısı da yüzde 198 arttı. TED'in anketine katılan öğrencilerin yüzde 43.7'si 'dershanede eğitim her bakımdan kaliteli' derken, yüzde 48.1'i dershaneye gitmeden ÖSS'yi kazanmanın 'çok zor' olduğu görüşünde.

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Çelik: "Oğrenciler zaman kaybetti."

Radikal'dan (27.04.2006):

Milli Eğitim Bakanı Hüseyin Çelik, Türkiye'de yabancı dil eğitiminin bir türlü tam olarak başarıya ulaşamadığından yakınarak, bunun için hazırlanan yeni müfredatın ve kullanılacak yöntemlerin meyvesinin, ancak sekiz yıl sonra alınabileceğini söyledi... Çelik, liseyi bitirmiş bir öğrenciden İngilizce olarak beş cümleyi yan yana sıralaması istendiğinde bunu başaramadığını dile getirerek, "Yıllardır bu ülkede milyonlarca ders yapıldı, binlerce öğretmen bu derslere girdi ve öğrenciler bu derslerde zaman kaybetti. O kadar uğraştık, yine de bu dili öğretemedik" dedi.

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"Buradan zaten kimse üniversite kazanamaz"

Radikal'dan (30.04.2006):

Öğrenci Seçme ve Yerleştirme Merkezi'nin verilerine göre, tek bir öğrencisini bile bir üniversiteye sokamayan liseleri araştırmak için yola çıktık. Yıllardır fizik, kimya, matematik öğretmeni olmayan okullar gördük. 'Türkiye'nin en kötü liseleri'nde okulların bodrum katlarındaki depolarda, hademe odalarında işlenen derslere katıldık. Sınıfta açlıktan bayılan, tarlada çalışmaktan avuçları parçalanan öğrenciler, çocuklarının okulunu bilmeyen veliler vardı. ÖSYM istatistiklerinin anlatamadığı çok daha vahim sorunlar gördük. Lise sonuncu sınıfta okuma yazmayı sökememiş öğrencilerle, okuyamazlarsa kara çarşafa girecek öğrencileri için gözyaşı döken öğretmenlerle karşılaştık.

Devamı için buraya tiklayın.

"Her türlü imkandan yararlanabiliyoruz"

Radikal'dan:

Türkiye'de 16 özel okulun uyguladığı uluslararası diploma şansı sunan IB programı, ilk kez bir devlet okulunda uygulanacak. İstanbul'daki sosyal bilimler lisesinin otorizasyon süreci başladı.... Kocaeli'nden gelen yatılı okuyan Ömer Uğurlu, ise liselerinin normal bir okul gibi olmadığını belirterek, "Ekonomi okumak istiyorum. Bu okul hayata yetiştiriyor. Her şey mevcut okulda. Her türlü imkandan yararlanabiliyoruz" diyor.

Devamı için buraya tiklayın.

IBO's new leadership

This is in response to Gautam's post on The IB and US Cultural Politics. Gautam raises several points that were difficult to respond to in the comment format, so I'm making a fuller commentary on his post here (and later).

First, about what happened in Pittsburg, I promise to write about that soon.

Second, about the new DG for IBO. I’m another one who gasped a little when I saw Mr Beard’s CV: head of Novartis’ corn division, chief operations officer for Syngenta. I mean, organizations like those practically wrote the book on how to flatten the world through the green revolution, GMOs and the eradication of land races. (If you need a rant, see ETC Group; I’m moving on to my next point.)

However, IBO needs to get a grip on their growth, and they need someone with serious management credentials. Considering that IBO is nearing 2000 institutional clients, has more than 200,000 individual clients, thousands of independent contractors working as examiners, moderators and trainers, in addition to staff in numerous offices spread around the world trying to deal with schools, governments and other stakeholders; effective management is an urgent need.

When you have a huge IT system that is fragmented and breaks down at peak times, an accounting system that can’t tell that you've paid your bills, requirements for training and consulting that IBO cannot help you fulfill; in summary, when you’re long on philosophy but short on delivery, you put the whole enterprise at risk. Somebody has to step in and put things right. As you say, “even” George W Bush is giving a big boost to IB; so just being blue doesn’t mean you’re more fit for the job any more than if you were red. Besides, I’d rather Mr Baird used his expertise for IB than for bionic corn.

Third, I think Friedmanitis is another manifestation of the desire for people to oversimply when they are too uncomfortable with complexity. In the 90s (long before 9/11) we had The Clash of Civilizations  and Jihad versus McWorld. More recently we’ve had reds versus blues, and now worlds flat and spiky (If you haven’t yet, please read The World is Spiky by Richard Florida (caution: the link is to a large pdf file).

The flat world hypothesis somehow struck a chord in the blogosphere, and I think the cache of Friedman’s name and the catchiness of the phrase resulted in usage that far exceeds an understanding of the underlying reality. Sort of like “globalization”, another catchy, pointless term used to oversimplify just about anything.  Click on the image to see the relative distribution of these terms:

 

I’ve been to lots of places in the world, and have yet to find a country, a city, or even a mountain village in Guatemala that was not simultaneously global and local, and simultaneously jihadist (reactionist) and mcworldly (assimilationist). Somebody ought to just ban dichotomies outright so we can try looking at reality instead of black and white caracatures of it.

As for IBO, I’d say that Mr Beard will soon learn that the organization itself is pretty spiky. I hope he has a good pair of work gloves.

 

Okul eğitimi böyle ise, ne öğreniyorlar?

Radikal'dan: Aynı okullarda 1992'de ve 2006'da yapılan araştırmanın sonuçları: Dayak yöntemleri aynı, cezalandırma sıklığı artmış, 'yeterli ve titiz' öğretmenin dayağa başvurma oranı yükselmiş.

Öğretmenlerin öğrencileri cezalandırma sıklığında bir düşüş değil, aksine artış söz konusu. 1992'de her gün ceza veren öğretmenlerin oranı yüzde 9.23 iken, 2006 yılında yüzde 13.66'ya çıktı. Öğrencilerini haftada bir cezalandıran öğretmen oranı da arttı. Bu oran 1992'de 25.6 iken 2006'da 27.31'e yükseldi.

Gözde yöntemler	1992	2006
Kulak çekme	% 45.97	% 43.83
Saç çekme	30.87	28.67
Tokat atma	57.55	38.17
Başı sıraya vurma	7.72	4.67
Sopayla vurma	14.60	11.67
Tebeşir, silgi fırlatma	25.00	28.33
Tekme atma	11.58	13.00
Çok şiddetli dövme	10.40	5.83

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Heartfelt thanks

I'd like to thank the TED Ankara students who were such a big help to me on the day of our IB Day 2006 conference a week ago. I originally assigned them to be my eyes and ears during the conference to help me quickly spot problems that I would need to attend to. All of them went well beyond that original assignment, and most of the times when they reported problems to me, they added, "... but we fixed it!"  To top it off, at the end of the day they thanked me for being able to help. There were more than 150 students involved in IB Day, participating in musical or other performances, participating in conference presentations, and helping our 'grown-up' participants find creative outlets during the breaks <photo pending>, but my team was the best!

We had around 600 participants at the conference, close to 80 different presentations by and for IB teachers and organized into 15 different program tracks,  the full cadre of school support staff, and several VIP guests, so planning, coordination and execution were big jobs. Responses afterward were overwhelmingly positive, so we've put this one down as a big success.

You can see more of my conference photos on Flickr. A big thanks once again to everyone for all their hard work!

How much have we learned about ICTs in education?

A report was released recently by the World Bank's Infodev program which attempts to assess how much has been learned so far about the use and effectiveness of information and communication technologies (ICT) in education. Such a report could be useful in setting priorities, planning new initiatives, and making sure program funds go where they will have the most impact.

Sadly, even though so much has been done, ICT programs have tended to operate in relative isolation from what's gone before. Lessons learned in one program don't get applied in other programs, and there are disconnects between theories about ICT's potential contribution to education and the actual design and implementation of programs. 

Just as there is a frequent disconnect between education and learning (and even between education and our learning about education), it seems there is also a disconnect between using ICTs and learning how they might be used as a tool for education reform. Instead, they have become a more expensive vehicle for the same old education.

Click here for an Eldis summary of the report Knowledge maps: ICTs in education, and to download the report in PDF.

For more on this topic, click here for another Infodev report, Monitoring and evaluation of ICT in education projects: a handbook for developing countries.

Update (26 Feb 2006): Eldis now has available another publication, Information and communication technologies in schools: a handbook for teachers on how ICT can create new, open learning environments. Click here for the summary and link to the PDF.

Thailand abolishes rote learning

The Prime Minister of Thailand has ordered the Education Ministry to overhaul the education system this year by eliminating rote learning. The PM says that the current system does not allow students to use their imagination, and then "end up as employees because they are unable to think for themselves and are only capable of taking orders from others."  Click here for the rest of the story.