I’m still in Turkey. This seemed relevant so I am cross-posting it from my trip blog.
- Some of Turkey’s elite high school science students
We learned today why other countries are eating our lunch when it comes to education. We paid a visit to Ibrahim Büyükkoyuncu hıgh school on the outskirts of Konya, a provincial capital in south-central Turkey. It’s a private Gülen school for boys grades 9-12. Actually, it’s two schools in one (and there is a girl’s equivalent across town) – one focused on sciences, one on languages.
Before I describe the graduation requirements, think about where you or your children attend or attended high school. Three years of math, maybe three of science, right? If you were a math and science geek, you could elect to take four years of each.
OK, get a load of this: Students in the science school must take four years of physics, four years of chemistry, four years of biology and four years of math. In the 14 public science high schools, students must take at least five hours of math per week and three hours each of the three science subjects. At Büyükkoyuncu, though, each of those requirements is doubled.
So not only are these top students, the ones against whom our top students will be competing, taking science all four years of high school, they’re actually taking the equivalent of 12 years. And where our students might be taking five to seven hours per week of math and the same amount of science…well, you get the picture. Oh, and the school day is nine hours long.
I’m not trying to go all Thomas Friedman on you, but isn’t it glaringly obvious why U.S. students fare so badly on international comparisons? And the empirical evidence I gathered today suggests that the gap would be even greater if we compared our top students to, say, Turkey’s.
I wrote on this blog last week that I wasn’t overly impressed with the Gülen school in Izmir, not because it wasn’t a fine school, but because it was the equivalent of an elite private U.S. school, filled with kids from wealthy families. It’s a lot easier to be a top performer when you’re working with kids from wealthy families. Study after study has shown this to be true.
Such is not the case at Büyükkoyuncu. Yes, the kids are high-performing, especially those at the science school. To gain admittance, they must ace a 100-question test, which, according to physics teacher Murat Demirors, is a difficult test of general scholastic aptitude.
- High schools physics teacher Murat Demirors
“You had better score a 97 or higher if you want to have a chance to get in,” said Demirors, who earned a master’s degree in physics from City University of New York. But the students who get in come from all walks of life.
“Teaching here is a challenge because the students are really good,” Demirors said as we ate a four-course school cafeteria lunch (it was superb and may well have been several cuts above what the students get, but I’ll never know for sure). “As a teacher, you have to be prepared every day. I have to study two hours each night to keep ahead of the students.”
Here’s one of several kickers: All 110 science students get full scholarships. That’s right. It costs them nothing to attend one of the top 10 private high schools in Turkey. Students in the other section of the school pay $4,500 per year, plus $1,700 for students who board at the school (200 of the 600). But 30 percent of the language-focused students are on full scholarships as well.
Alptekin said that the school solicits donations from businessmen in Konya to fund scholarships.
The school’s origins also demonstrate a commitment to education that surpasses ours. A man named Ibrahim Büyükkoyuncu, a Gülen follower, donated the land on which the school sits some 20 years ago. It’s on the outskirts of town and was well outside the city limits back then. But a new university is opening nearby, and the area is crazy with construction.
In any event, Büyükkoyuncu, an elderly and successful businessman, donated not only the land but enough money to fund the school’s construction. But the money ran out before the school’s founders could buy furniture or educational materials. At that point, Büyükkoyuncu sold his apartment in Konya so he could see the job finished.
“He said his dream was to see students in this school,” according to Hanifi Davarci, the principal. Büyükkoyuncu saw his dream come true. He died, in his early 90s, a year after the school opened 14 years ago.
- Principal Hanifi Davarci
How do followers of Gülen explain their overriding commitment to education? “Turkey has a very large popuation of young people,” Davarci said. “The only way to a bright future for our country is give all these young people an excellent education.
“We love human beings, that is our main philosophy of education. That is why we are opening schools like this all over the world.”
There are over 1,000 Gülen schools in Turkey alone. Over 4,500 students attend Gülen schools in Konya. It’s a growing movement, and it’s hard to imagine its influence doing anything but grow in the years to come.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Alan,
Give me a quick history lesson of the makeup of Turkey’s population and then compare that to the U.S. Also how do they measure reasoning, creativity, adaptability, etc… I think if all this was included the top U.S. students might match up more favorably that you think.
Anyway let me how diverse Turkey is compared to the U.S. I think I know the answer I just want you to prove me wrong.
This cop out response. The truth is that the rest of the world wants to learn and it puts education at a high priority in the culture.
Here we complain about taxes, we dont’ want a nationalized curriculum that might us together to create and we follow the mantra of local control. We are hopeless paralytic monolinguals with unicultural perspectives, We it just isn’t working anymore.
Besides other countries have to right to excel…despite the beliefs of some who think only the USA can lead. Here comes the reality check.
Actually, ALL the students graduate – no matter how poorly they do academically.
Alan,
We all talk about the need to get more into the schools. Yet one of the problem is us, the parents and citizens who throw roadblocks in front of this type of reform. I’ve worked as a parent volunteer for years within Jeffco Schools, and more often than not, it was the parents who complained when the school day or calendar was to be extended, or when the administration offered to expand science and math curriculum, etc.
Yes, there are other part of this “story”, but you’d think the simplest and easiest part to fix would be us, the parents.
Not only would parents complain about a longer school day and school year, they won’t pay for it. Colorado has among the lowest funding for public schools in the nation and people still complain about having to pay for it. They want everything for nothing.
And the USSR had thousands of nuclear warheads and stuff…and Sputnik. The rest of the country was crap. In the research lab I work in now, most of the grads and postdocs are foreign nationals and most will stay right here. Brain-drain still sucks.
Fair enough, Gerald. Turkey is by no means homogeneous, but is no melting pot (or salad bowl if you prefer). Still, I don’t see how that’s relevant to the point I made in the post (and pardon its many typos, by the way — I am writing in a huge rush and often while crammed into a minivan with laptop perched on knees). The lesson is simple: If we want our kids to do better, we have to make many changes. But one of them is to make school more rigorous and challenging. And, we have to live out our professed beliefs — that nothing is more important than our children, and giving them a world-class education is one of the biggest favors we can bestow upon them.
Alan,
Several questions: with all these elite schools teaching all those elite students, am I missing the fact that Turkey is the world’s leading power in any field of science? Is Turkey leading the world in any scientific innovation and/or research? Has any of these elite students discovered a cure for cancer yet? Seems like they should have by now. And what jobs do these elite students go into? Again, am I missing the fact that Turkey has companies leading the world in scientific innovation driven by this great educational system? Are there any graduates from these schools working at the LHC and if so, how many?
Didn’t read anything about what kind of music, literature, physical education these elite students get. Didn’t read anything about what kind of people these schools produce. Do these schools produce people who can function on a team that may have Germans, British, South African, Chinese citizens on them? Boys and girls go to separate schools, how do they learn to function on a team in the real world where men and women actually work together?
Let us not forget the other side of the educational picture. Success also lies in the hands of the learner. “I don’t have to learn if I don’t want to and you can’t make me,” as one student matter-of-factly stated in class one day. The students must take responsibility to learn. We need to quit “giving something for nothing” and let them know that in order to have something they must do something, not get something for doing nothing, as so many are accustomed to experiencing. Set high standards and expect students to meet them, not cave in out of sympathy when they choose to plateau in learning.
Alan, Some thoughts:
1) Most European schools, including Turkey, use a triage model. They test students at various stages in the educational ladder and the brightest are the ones educated with the rigorous curriculum. It is not fair to compare a public universal system, such as we attempt in the US, with the triage model where there is consistent selection for the brightest and attention and funding is prioritized to educate them.
2) Having said that, I will argue that the US has regressed in the last decades from a system where the best/brightest could advance to more demanding curriculums on their own merits. Time was when entrance to the most demanding public high schools..ie.using the model of Bronx Science; Boston Latin…was based on entrance tests which emphasized demonstrated achievement, not merely IQ.
I am not familiar with other public systems, but in DPS there is not guaranteed admittance to the best high schools or programs on demonstrated achievement. So, a student can work very hard, but there is no guarantee that the student will be allowed entrance into a superior program. Denver Arts is by audition and some subjective criteria. Science Tech is by quota by income level and then lottery; the exception being residence in Stapleton, which is relatively high income. Other programs are choice in, or lottery, or space available. Now I may be wrong in terms of the IB program at George. Is there guaranteed admittance based on grades and scores alone? Private school have admission tests. If a student works to get into a program, chances are he/she will want to stay in that program.
I do not think there are incentives for kids to achieve. Back in the day, Colorado awarded tuition scholarships to all public school students graduating in the top 10% of their class to any Colorado public college or university. Oklahoma offers tuition scholarships to all students scoring 29 or better on the ACTs. Kids take that test over and over; kids study for that test, and many hit the 29 mark. I think CSU offers or did offer the same deal to those with a ACT of 28 or better.
Way back in the day, in the fifties, the US was very concerned about falling behind in science/math/foreign languages. However, the solution focused on incentives and funding directly to students – National Defense Scholarships, for example. I suspect that when you come back from Turkey, there will be a flurry of conferences, committees, consultations, consensus developers, flip flop charts devotees, all about how do we “fill in the blank”..”change the culture, ” etc. This will cost a lot of money, none of which will go to students. That is the problem. There is an education industry which has nothing to do with students. I bet Turkey doesn’t have one.
Lotus School for Excellence in Aurora, CO is a Gulen Charter school. Majority of teachers and principal are fresh off the boat from Turkey. They tried to open a charter in Longmont but were rejected.
They purchased a church and converted it to a school (sounds like the conversion of the St. Hagia Sophia Church to a mosque) These schools and teachers are not so great, they push one thing and that is Turkish nationalism. More about Turkish culture, language then anything academic. The only awards they boast about winning are in the contests that the Gulen movement or their numerous foundations owns like: Turkish Olympiad, Science Olympiad, Math Matters, etc., Charter School is a business, they manage cheap and make the numbers look good.
http://www.lotusschool.org/articles.asp?id=13
Alan- I am deeply concerned that in your blog there doesn’t seem to be any awareness of the propagandist nature of your trip. You are on a classic Gulenist “Turkey trip,’ very carefully and skillfully choreographed by members of the Gulen Movement. They have taken you only to select places, where people stayed strictly on script. You may think they seemed so natural, so convincing, so kind, that you believe it is all sincere. The people involved in your trip have it down to a routine; they have done this many, many times before. But what you have seen is not representative of all of Turkey. There are certain places that Turkey trips always stop at, and Yamanlar College is one. Turkey trips are either subsidized or completely paid for by BAKIAD, the partner in Turkey of Gulenist foundations here in the US. Nobody outside the Gulen Movement understands where the money is coming from. What is clear is that you have already paid them back for that subsidy many times over, by publicizing exactly the ideas they want you to publicize. Please open your eyes. The Gulenist education model is elitist; read some articles by Bayram Balci on the schools in Central Asia. Please take a look at the PhD thesis of Joshua Hendrick, UC Santa Cruz 2009. Look at the PISA study too; the USA may lag many European countries which have less challenging demographics, but Turkey still lags the US. People keep looking for some “method” that will fix the education problems of the US, but the only method that would really work is to do something about the huge fraction of America’s youth who are growing up in poverty. Increasing hours spent studying math will not help a child who goes to school hungry, or who has an alcoholic mother. For various reasons, the US is a far more heterogeneous society with much more poverty than other advanced societies such as Finland, Japan, etc. Let them try bringing their methods over to our population demographics and see what miracles they can accomplish. I’m not saying our education system couldn’t use improvement, I’m saying the Gulen Movement is not the place to look for answers. Education for them is a means to more political and economic power, not an end. Do you really wish to become the propaganda tool of a foreign political and religious movement that is very controversial even in Turkey and about which many questions have been raised and few have been answered?
Okay, I’ll try again.
Ahhhhhh…. it’s clear to see that you’ve been seduced. Free trips, free food, lavish praise, and charming hosts will do it all the time. But don’t worry, tens of thousands of charter school parents have been seduced, too, by Turkish charter school founders with advanced science degrees, invented school awards, and questionable waiting list figures and test scores. Even their children have been seduced by charming Turkish teachers, and all those special and gorgeous Turkish costumes for Turkish Olympiad events.
http://charterschoolscandals.blogspot.com/2010/07/learning-to-love-turkey.html
It’s too bad you didn’t enter into the relationship a bit more skeptically. The Gulenists who are your friends in Turkey are, in the U.S., also extraordinarily deceptive.
Here’s a piece about the fake scientist shortage.
http://www.miller-mccune.com/science/the-real-science-gap-16191/#
Cheap labor is what it is really all about.
Excerpt:
“There is no scientist shortage,” declares Harvard economics professor Richard Freeman, a pre-eminent authority on the scientific work force. Michael Teitelbaum of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a leading demographer who is also a national authority on science training, cites the “profound irony” of crying shortage — as have many business leaders, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates — while scores of thousands of young Ph.D.s labor in the nation’s university labs as low-paid, temporary workers, ostensibly training for permanent faculty positions that will never exist.