Guaranteed Lifelong Unhappiness
My household was one of those experiencing this excitement. My son, who studied at one of the better private high schools in Ankara, scored enough points to entitle him to receive the type of higher education he wants, despite the fact that he will be unable to enter the university of his choice. He is capable of scoring better than he actually did, but I don't think I have any reason to condemn him by asking, "How come you didn't score higher?" I know that he studied as hard as he could.
I am an eyewitness to the fact that the examination system in Turkey requires students to go through two agonizing years in a boot-camp environment. The amount of daily studying needed for these youngsters to keep up with their high school education in addition to the private lessons they have to receive to prepare themselves for the university entrance exams is exhausting. And this year, university candidates met with another problem. The exams, which had been scheduled for June 2, had to be postponed due to charges that thieves had stolen the exam booklets. This postponement put a serious damper on students' motivation.
According to my son, based on the results announced on Sunday, most of the students from his school who took the entrance exams can be considered halfway successful. There are also those, as in any exam, who came out on top. Gokhan Mumcu, a student at the Nilufer Private School in Bursa, received the top scores on all three sections of the exam. A few other students shared second and third places among them. Many of those are students who, like Mumcu, either studied in private schools or received supplementary tutoring in private courses. After the exam results were announced, one newspaper carried the headline "Top Positions Garnered by Private Schools Accused of Fundamentalism," and looking at the list of winners, this headline can really be justified.
The Nilufer Private School is one of the educational institutions founded upon guidance from Fethullah Gülen, the religious man whose video cassette recently created discussions in Turkey. Some of the first or second runners up are graduates of Ankara's Samanyolu High School and Istanbul's Fatih College. And some of the graduates from state schools who scored high on the exam appear to have received supplementary education in private courses that are under the influence of Fethullah Gülen.
If we look at the university entry exam as a sieve, those exemplary specimens that were filtered out are the youngsters who received training at educational institutions which, according to the media, maintain ties with fundamentalists and which the state is being asked to take over. During my son's high school graduation ceremony, administrators kept bragging about their adherence to secularism. The schools operating under the influence of Fethullah Gülen, on the other hand, attract people's attention through their achievements.
No one can claim that the examination system in Turkey is fair. This year the balances were tipped further, when the exam, which had previously been given in two phases, was reduced to a single test. The reason for adopting this new process was to keep children away from the private courses their families send them to so that they can enhance their knowledge and familiarize themselves with the testing system. Most of these supplemental courses are assumed to be sponsored by religious organizations. A great majority of those students who were deceived by promises and did not attend any of those private courses will be deprived of the right to attend any university at all. Seven thousand of those who entered the exam received "0" points. Nine-hundred thousand candidates either lost their chance to be placed in a university or will have to be satisfied with enrolling in a two-year college.
In households like ours where there are young high school graduates wishing to receive a university education, all of Sunday was spent on making calculations. The fate of those young people, who went through 12 years of elementary and high school education, will be determined by a two-and-a-half hour exam.
Only one percent of the 1.5 million students who took the university entrance exam will have the chance to receive a scholarship to study at the university of their choice. While the next one percent will not get scholarships, they are also very fortunate, because they will encounter no difficulty in enrolling in the university of their choice. The real struggle will be among those in the next one percent, which is where my son finds himself. Those youngsters will have to act with extreme tact in making their selections when they fill out their forms prioritizing their choice of schools. Those who are overly modest may be forced to receive an education that will be a source of anxiety for them until the ends of their lives. Those who are very ambitious may end up ruining their chances of getting into any university. The majority of students who fall below the first three percent must have already started to strongly worry about their situations.
Our son has one other chance that is keeping his hopes alive. The Supreme Education Board (YOK), which is considered to be the master of the university system and which administers the exams, does not base their placement decisions solely on student preferences. Using a certain method of calculation that is not thoroughly understood by anyone I know, "the school average success rate," which is based on a student's average grades over his or her last three years in high school in comparison with the averages of the other candidates who graduated from the same school, also figures in YOK's placement determinations. The actual score that my son's placement will be based on will be determined by calculating his score on the entrance exam, his high school grade-point average and the school average success rate. This system provides an advantage to students from the big cities over those from rural Anatolia. Moreover, it differentiates between schools located in the same city. As a result of this point system, a successful student studying in a select high school has a 30 to 60 point advantage over students who are not so lucky. This is a very unfair system.
Since the time we learned my son's results on the Internet, our household has not had to endure the same environment as that of the households of 1,450,000 youngsters throughout the country, yet we are not nearly as happy as the families of the 25,000 lucky students who found themselves in the top two percent. Of course, this is true only if there is any possibility of creating a festive environment in the lucky homes of those successful students amid an examination system that produces so much unhappiness. Those administrators who adopted such a confusing examination system based on a ridiculous assessment of "saving the children from the fundamentalists" are, I am sure, extremely upset to realize that success is being achieved by the schools and courses founded by Fethullah Gülen.
The university exam system is a system that guarantee lifelong unhappiness.
TURKISH DAILY NEWS
- Created on .