I am honored to have Darren Elliott guest posting this week. Darren often has insightful posts on the conflicts and issues that emerge between students and foreign teachers on his blog. In this vein, check out Which English: Why Your Opinion is Irrelevant, I Want You to Express Your Opinions Freely (as long as they’re the same as mine), and Responsible Racism: A Guide for Teachers. Darren was kind enough to give us a series of anecdotes about his experiences with Turkey and his understanding of what those anecdotes tell him.
I once worked with a man from Turkey. As we sat in the canteen one icy morning, he looked out the window at the thin light peeking above the horizon and told me that the winter sun always made him feel sad. Mind you, working night shifts at a cake factory in a provincial English town will do that to you.
According to Thompson (2001) there is no ‘be’ verb in Turkish. However, there are three different /r/ sounds, none of them like the English. So, what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts. I’m guessing that Turkish language performances of ‘Hamlet’ lose something, as do discussions of Cartesian philosophy.
Amongst the list of First World War peace treaties I had to learn as a schoolboy, I was especially impressed with the Treaty of Lausanne signed in 1923, as it was a re-negotiation of the 1920 Treaty of Sevre. That was the kind of schoolboy I was; one who sat up the front in history and memorized pacts, alliances and peace treaties.
I once taught a Turkish student, a labourer, at a private conversation school here in Japan. He was the exact inverse of his two Japanese classmates. While they would go through agonies before allowing tiny, perfectly-formed droplets of language to fall from their lips, he spewed forth streams of consciousness in which the flotsam and jetsam of English grammar bounced and tumbled.
So, to answer the question, “What does this tell me about Turkey?” – none of this teaches me anything about Turkey or the Turkish people. Gert Hofstede claims that Turkish people are keen to avoid uncertainty, maintain a fairly large power distance, and are members of a collectivist rather than an individualistic society. An awful lot of data analysis has gone into reaching such conclusions, but I wonder about reducing national cultures to numerical scores on a five-point scale? Why not buy the cultural GPS app for your I-phone (it’s a real product!) next time you travel? We can all too often pick out those little factoids we half-know about countries we have never visited, and pass them on as truths, extrapolated to express an entire society. It’s a danger that teachers, in particular, should never lose sight of.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard the stereotypes about Japanese students. Japanese students are quiet, they lack creativity, they can’t think critically, they are stifled by fear of losing face. I could find you a number of examples from my own teaching career which would bear these stereotypes out – in fact, there is one listed above. Without visiting Japan, or ever having taught Japanese students, you may have a similar image. But I could also find you a number of examples of Japanese students who are talkative, who think around corners, who have no shame!
The stories you hear first, the ones you choose to remember… is there a danger that the teacher will put their students into a box before they even walk into the classroom?
So that’s what I “know” about Turkey. I’d love to hear your notes on countries you have never visited, as long as you recognise that they tell you absolutely nothing.
February 3rd, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Not sure they tell you absolutely nothing. They are like Lonely Planet or an overgeneralised grammar explanation- a good short cut to survival level understanding as long as you don’t get hung up on sticking to them. Great post though, and gave me an idea for my long overdue return guest piece here- how about “Teaching English in Turkey- Notes from an idiot” (which is what I was when I taught there)?
February 3rd, 2010 at 2:31 pm
I’d agree with you on that one Alex. I think tidbits do have some value as long as you don’t get too hung up on them. As for the “Notes from an Idiot”, sounds like a great post:) I also started here back in Ankara and often shudder when I think about some of my first lessons
I’m not going to comment too much on Darren’s piece. The only thing I’d sort of disagree with is that Turkish lacks the verb be. The Turkish ‘be’ would be ‘olmak’ and can be used as a copular verb, just like in English. It also functions as an auxiliary in a way some questions. The similarity ends there though. I’d point readers to the Challenges Faced in the Turkish Classroom and scroll down to Language for a good summary of major linguistic differences.
February 4th, 2010 at 3:33 am
I’d love to hear what people ‘know’ about Japan… I’m sure you would too, Alex.
Notes from an Idiot – must be a winner.
You are both right though. I guess I can say SOMETHING about Turkey from these brief notes. But I would be a fool to base any meaningful conclusions on such nuggets.
February 4th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
Here’s what I “know” about Japan. Despite the misnomer of a blog name, you’ll notice the profusion of question marks and competing explanations…
http://japanexplained.wordpress.com/
February 4th, 2010 at 5:57 pm
thoroughly enjoyed that piece.food for thought but I am still ambivalent about not regarding data. I also was happy to find out that there is someone who loves history as much as I if not more. keep up the good writing..
February 4th, 2010 at 11:22 pm
Lovely post, Darren and Nick – it’s so easy to put people into categories but stereo-types wouldn’t be stereo-types if they weren’t a little bit based in something…
As I said to you months back, I found your comments on Turkey very interesting and more balanced and reasonable than they were taken at the time on Jason’s blog.
Oh, it’s so hard, really – I’m hardly the “stereo-typed” Caribbean, I tell ya.
But you know, while off sick I’ve been watching the 7-up series which films a bunch of kids throughout their lives in Britain, it was TRULY fascinating!!!
I understood so much more (backwards) about the Brits despite knowing so many of them for so many years – all the insecurities, issues of accents, their rigid class system, opinions regarding education (which made so little sense to me before now) all of it, I got out of.. well, a funny sort of TV program.
Take care,
Karenne
February 5th, 2010 at 8:13 am
Karenne- As I know Darren will agree, if you enjoyed that just wait until you read Watching the English
February 5th, 2010 at 9:43 am
Is that available on dvd now? Terrific series… started before I was born.
February 5th, 2010 at 10:45 am
I really agree with you Karenne. You can learn a lot about other cultures through other people, programs, books, etc and I often find outsiders have a better perspective on what’s happening in a country than the actual people living there do. Outsiders come with perspective and comparisons that insiders can rarely make. Both have good insights to help understand the bigger picture really.
Ironically, I remember a student I had when I did a class on 9/11. She said that many Americans couldn’t see the reality that the government implemented the attack because they didn’t have the distance and objectivity necessary to make such judgments. One week later we read an article in Newsweek about some Western opinions on a Turkish incident with some kidnapped soldiers and she was outraged. She stated that it was ludicrous for foreigners to comment on issues in Turkey because they couldn’t possibly know more than the people living here. I think this is how most people think. It’s ok to make judgments on outsiders and an outside opinion is seen as better, but when the same is done to you, it’s unacceptable.
Also, as I mentioned to Darren in a private conversation, I think stereotype is bandied around a lot these days and is overly applied. Saying that there is more violence in American schools than elsewhere or that Turks tend to cheat on exams are considered to be stereotyping these days, which I don’t think is really the case. How many other countries do you know where guns at school are a serious issue? Obviously we should take precautions and raise awareness based on this knowledge. In the same way, I’m going to take preventive measures against cheating in my Turkish classes. Many people these days seem to be confusing stereotyping with trends and data analysis. It’s an over-application of PC culture and a Western desire to see everyone as unique and individual. Interesting, but sometimes annoying.
February 5th, 2010 at 10:48 am
There’s a funny book out called Stuff White People Like in a similar vein about Americans. It tends to focus on middle and upper-middle class next generation hippie types, but it’s good for a laugh.
February 5th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Alex – my wife read that book with increasing dismay as she realised how common I am….
February 5th, 2010 at 4:34 pm
Yes, Darren, the series is on DVD!
Ummm… but there’s one thing I don’t quite understand – public schools were for the “posh” but what were the differences between grammar and comprehensive? They talk about two girls going to one and one to the other but each thought they’d made the better choice.
Sorry, Nick, ‘spose I could just google it.
K
February 5th, 2010 at 11:01 pm
Grammar schools are a hangover from the old system of exams at 11 to determine if you go to the elitist and very middle class grammar schools or the mainly working class secondary moderns. The comprehensive system was a right on attempt to merge the two and is mainy what we have now. Back in my day some people chose comprehensives for ideological reasons even if the was a local grammar school that their kids could have got into. Given the number of Labour MPs with their kids in private schools, I doubt that’s true very much anymore
February 6th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Thanks, Alex!!! I didn’t google it, so thanks so much for giving me the answer – sorry, Nick, you can go back to Turkey now