“I fear the man of a single book”

Timeo hominen unius libri

“I fear the man of a single book” are the words written in the footsteps of the Hacettepe University. I understood the quote from the first moment I saw it, I knew that it had got something to do with education, that  in order to be educated properly we should think, search, discuss and most importantly read as much as possible, educational pluralism in other words. But I've never given too much of a thought to it, and now that I have, I realized that I've been sharing the same fear. These words are generally used today in disparagement of the man whose mental horizons are limited to one book, a very religious man who disagrees all scientific or literary sources and proves, can be a good example. However the quote, meant that a man who has thoroughly mastered one good book can be dangerous as an opponent, or in my personal opinion, a man who only and only read a single book can get very affected by it since he or she has no other information on the matter and have very strict ideas and thoughts on the matter and therefore become mentally blind on the matter in time.

Free education that costs too much Part 2 of 2

In almost all, well developed countries, education is not free of charge, but they have great scholarship programs. Let's take US for an example. A student who graduated from an American high school, can get many scholarships; from sports, to doing voluntary work in the community, having decent grades, simply by choosing to go to a university with in his or her state and more. Although education in the US is very expensive with this scholarship system students who are good enough to get a degree, usually does, of course their family will have to support them in someway. In Turkey we have free education, or do we? Lets think this through for a second, your family sends you and therefore pays for a private school (called 'DERSHANE' in Turkish) through almost 4 years of high school, than if your family really wants you to go to university they pay for private lessons, on the subjects that you are week for the university exam, which are extremely expensive. That is not it, after all that money and afford spend you go to university than you pay tuition for each semester, and when you add all these up, and also think about the quality of the education that is given, its a little rediciouls to think you are getting a free education. A few weeks ago a nano technology center, first ever in Turkey, was found in the Bilkent University. What is nano technology? That is not important what is important is that its expensive and the reason Bilkent University found the first nano technology center in Turkey is  because its a non-profit private school just like all the other private school in Turkey that means the money collected from students are spend for the students. My point here is simple, theoric departments such as teaching, literature or political science can be free of charge depending on the need of the country. But it is not psychically possible to have engineering, medicine and technology departments all over the country free of charge and to give quality education at the same time.

Free education that costs too much part 1 of 2

Today I want to talk about University system in Turkey, how many of you actually believe that the education that we are getting is good? Well I can tell you that the education we are getting is at its worst, and I am not just saying that, I know it, I've been around and I have seen how real education is in well developed countries. But my point is not to compare Turkish education with those of other countries, my point is simply to draw a picture of how we are being coned under the name of free education. As you all know Turkey is governed with statism where more than half of the country doesn't pay taxes like they should be. So unfortunately some people are paying more than they should be and some people are just not paying at all, however this is a very deep issue so I am going to jump in to the educational part of it right a head. There are 172 universities in Turkey that number is almost twice as much as the number of universities in France, a country that has almost the same population as Turkey. Even though universities in France are state controlled, they are not out of control because of their understanding of education and tax payment, however the same is not true for Turkey. Nowadays everyone's  kid in Turkey has to get a degree, no body wants to do labor, people who are not capable of getting higher education are forced to get a crappy education under the name of  university. And going to university became to bee seen as a right that the government has to provide to every individuality no matter what their capacity is. In the result of this, we found universities like supermarkets, and give university graduates like supermarkets sell newspapers. Everyone's kid, whether their parents are tax payers or not get a free education, and for some reason believe that their country owes them something even though they have been consumers all their lives. Its easy to talk about the problem but what about the solution. Well I believe in countries that are still in the progress of developing, paying for education can be a solution. Listen to what I am saying in part 2, before you disagree right away...

What is up with speaking Turkish through the lessons?

Okay, we were just discussing this today with one of our teachers, whether or not teachers should use Turkish during the lessons. In my point of view since we are all going to be English language teachers, we should all get costumed to the language as much as possible, therefore teachers should speak English and English only and they should not respond to the students who speak Turkish during the lessons, that way we can at least feel like we have an international environment. The students should also be capable of answering any questions that the teacher poses, so that the lessons can go smoothly. Unfortunately this is not the case in our department, actually I thought that the reason for our tuition money to get a %65 raise this year, was so that the education can be %100 English. Lets put a side the fact that the teacher are supposed to speak English and the fact that only 2 or 3 of them actually do speak English during classes. Taking phonetic, the study of the sounds of human speech, tests verbally would be enough for now.

What I will be blogging about

Every now and than I will be blogging about problems of my department and the educational system in Turkey in general. As you may have already figured out from my profile, I am a ELT student at the Hacettepe University. I will be writing about how things are going with the department and more. I would love to hear different points of views, so feel free to drop comments at anytime.