First School in Turkey - A personal journey

By: Annie Onursan

I considered myself to be an exemplary ex-pat for the first 14 years I lived in Turkey. I learnt the language, embraced the customs and tried to see two sides to the story if ever there was any Turkey bashing going on. For a few years I was probably more Turkish than my Ankara educated husband but when my only daughter started school, I started questioning whether I could adapt to the local educational standards. When she was tiny, I laughed off complete strangers stopping the pushchair in the street and scolding me for not putting socks and boots on her waggling feet. I thought it unlikely she’d catch a chill in the blood-boiling summer heat, but I was less forgiving when I picked her up from nursery school and found all the adults sitting around the TV watching a Brazilian soap and blowing smoke over the heads of the toddlers on their laps. She came to the office with me after that. At 5 years old, she went to the local school’s pre-infants class. As learning to read and write was forbidden at that age, they spent the day playing or so I thought. I once arrived early to collect her and found the classroom empty. In a panic that I had missed out on some vital information, I paced up and down until a group of hyper infants pranced through the gate. The newly opened Burger King had offered free meals and off they had all trotted to be filled up with cola and e-numbers; a crime only marginally more acceptable than the crack dealer at the school gate proffering drugs to juveniles in my anti-fast food brain. It gradually dawned on me that once my daughter crossed the school gate, she was in the hands of the institution and I had little, if any, control over her. Trips were organized in seatbelt-less buses, which parents only learnt about afterwards. Vaccines were administered without parental permission (she had three jabs against measles so should be safe in the current UK epidemic) and the daily snack box filled at home had to contain, to my mind, the oddest of ingredients; cold fried potatoes being the only one I can remember now. At 6, we joined the First School. The morning started beautifully as we took family photographs of my little girl in her bright blue tunic and pristine white collar. She chattered excitedly as we walked three abreast holding hands all the way to the new school. After being kept corralled in the playground for 2 hours under the burning sun listening to speeches, our hatless family of 3 was beginning to turn against the thoughtless education providers. When we finally crammed into the classroom made for 30 with the 47 other children in her class, we were prickling with anxiety. Leaving her there, three to a desk made for two, was one of the worst moments I can remember. My husband was so unnerved that, unbeknown to me, he went back to the school and furtively spied through the classroom door watching the teacher leaning out of the window and chatting on his phone while the kids looked on. We pulled her out of class the same day and headed off to the only private school in the area, mutually deciding to worry later about how we would pay for it. With modern facilities and a maximum of 16 in a class, my child should have flourished but with an emphasis on learning by rote and a lack of any creative activities, she never settled. Soon she was being kept back after school for extra maths and at 7, was deemed a failure for being unable to memorise the terms of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. After an argument with her English teacher over the correct spelling of dolphin; my daughter was insisting on the “ph”, the camel’s back finally gave way when she solemnly informed me that her teacher said it was ok for her to love her mummy and daddy but she had to love Ataturk more. We soon made plans to move to England to see what a village primary had to offer. I’d love to say that the move all went swimmingly but of course it didn’t. My daughter was 14 before we found a school that had the ethos “every pupil is good at something and it’s the school’s job to find out what that is” rather than make all the kids jump through the same hoop. As a parent who has tried two completely different education cultures, I can honestly say that wherever you choose and however much or little you pay, you will never ever be satisfied. There will always be a gripe and accepting that fact in first grade is good preparation for the journey.