Turkmen universities don’t provide a real education. Again, to get your diploma, all you have to do is slip another bribe if your grades aren’t up to snuff. I have a student at club who has been trying to get into Turkmen university for a couple years now and even though her English is better than most Turkmen I’ve heard, she won’t ever get in because her parents can’t afford a bribe. Lindsay is trying to get her into an American university.
But even though she’s a hard worker, she’ll be at a serious disadvantage in the States because of the Turkmen public school system. “Teaching” is done by assigning work from the text without really explaining anything. Turkmen are really bad at math, for example, because the way it is taught is the teacher reads from the text and asks if everyone understands. Everyone says they do because if they say they don’t, the only thing the teacher will do is reread the text. That’s why I’ve started teaching math in one of my clubs to help prepare students who want to take the SAT.
I know how terrible the English classes are of course, with their textbooks full of errors and teachers who mispronounce words and were “educated” at Turkmen universities by teachers who know less English than Turkmen kids who have studied under volunteers.
I know their history knowledge is bad too because when I started asking my students questions about civilizations like the Greeks and Romans or asked if they knew who Albert Einstein was, they gave me blank stares. That’s why I started world club and have begun teaching them about the Egyptians, Greeks, and now the Romans.
Turkmen students don’t fail. They are graded on a scale of 5, and I’ve never seen a student awarded anything less than a 3. When teachers ask me what American teachers do when a student doesn’t do their work, I say “we give them a failing grade, and if they get enough failing grades in a course, they fail the course and have to take it over again.” Their eyes get really big when they hear this.
Turkmen students are not encouraged to think for themselves. They never do research projects or conduct real science experiments or write persuasive essays. Everything they do is rote memorization of sometimes false information. Teachers look the other way when students cheat. And no one comes to work early or stays late so students can come get help on their assignments.
Noticeably absent from Turkmen schools are extra-curricular activities, both clubs and competitive teams. Sometimes there might be a sport team competition between some schools but the teams are not focused and organized to the extent they are in the States. There aren’t uniforms and no fans come. Maybe a few other students, but you will never see a parent at a school sport competition. (What did I already say about parenting in this place?)
Also noticeably absent from Turkmen schools is a counselor or school nurse. First of all, the whole concept of mental health, psychology, etc. is nonexistent here, so that aspect of a counselor wouldn’t occur to them. But the other duties of a school counselor also don’t really apply here. It doesn’t cross anyone’s mind that students might need help deciding what career to go into (they usually follow in a parent’s footsteps) or need help applying to a university (again, we know the process is simply to grease some palms). And there are no standardized tests to administer. And there are no electives here for students. They all take the same courses, so there are no tricky schedule requests to figure out. I could go on about the absence of a school nurse but I think I’ll just cover medical treatment and ideas in this country in a separate post.
Turkmen students wear a uniform (even at university level) that includes wearing a Turkmen flag pin. They must raise their hand and ask permission to even get up and sharpen a pencil. They go to school six days a week for about 5 ½ hours with a twenty minute tea break. There are no government provided meals for poor students. There’s no Head Start. And there’s no such thing as Special Education. Students who are severely handicapped are kept under lock and key at home. Everyone else goes to school and is expected to perform like everyone else, so if a student has dyslexia, for example, he will be subject to more name calling and berating from the teacher.
This has been one of the most frustrating things for me here. Last spring when I sat in on my counterpart’s teaching I sat next to a boy that I’m pretty sure has dyslexia or some other learning disorder. So I decided to teach about learning disorders in my next teacher club. I told them about how in the States we have special education and about how some kids need a little more help and patience and that if they have a student that seems to always be struggling with reading, that student may have a learning disability. The very next day, my counterpart lost patience with this student and yelled at him. That’s why I no longer work in the classroom and have devoted all my time to after school clubs. Teachers here will not change because there is no motivation for them to do so. No one is evaluating them and the Turkmen government tells them exactly what to teach when. It’s so disheartening to know that Peace Corps will never change the educational system here like it could if the government cared about its citizens.