My Educational Authobiography

My Addiction of Knowledge: September 11, 2013

I am an addict of knowledge, reading and seeking wisdom of the life. These are the most painful and also the most beautiful, healthy addictions of my life. I have been thirsty to learn new things since I knew myself and started to question the universe. This thirstiness is a lifelong specialty of my soul and mind. I see the formal education as a bridge to reach a more free condition to learn and do what I like by getting away from some dependents, but sometimes I feel hard time to grasp in this educational system especially when I see it as a trade system and political turning machine. I am an international student in the U.S. I came here just to continue my educational life which was impossible thing to do in my home country; Turkey. Studying in Turkish public school with headscarf has been forbidden by the government and deep states for many years. I had to work for a while as a domestic worker to collect enough money for my school tuition. For this reason, I feel tired and sad for being late, not to learn, but to study my favorite topics deeper professionally and more freely. This is a modest story of my educational journey. My educational life is full of sacrifice. This sacrifice is very big and meaningful for me, because the object and subject of this sacrifice is my life.

I was raised in a house that has more than 2000 books and no television by my parent’s conscious decision. Reading was the main point of our lives. I’ve learned that even my mother had given a book list to my father as a wish of dowry. Unfortunately, sometimes this motivation was even too extreme for me, because we were drinking tea with my family members only for reading or discussing some intellectual, theological topics. My father was playing with my younger 2 sisters and 2 brothers and I, and pretending himself as a horse and trying to make us memorize many religious passages from books and when we were making mistakes he was stopping and neighing to make our education process enjoyable. This is the earliest teaching method that I remember in my life. In addition, the second one was a modest race chart. It had some conditions, rules and goals which ever we suppose to achieve. My parents were giving us points based on our behaviors and when we reached to 10 points they were giving us a book as a reward. For instance, some of the conditions from this chart were; getting rid of a stone or something else from the sidewalk which might bother people or helping an elderly person’s groceries bags by carrying them or praying on time, etc. These are the things that made me proud and happy about my parents and my childhood when I remember. However, my father was a teacher not only in his school, but at our home, too. Sometimes, this was making him so pushy . When I was in 4th grade, I was studying with a scholarship and once, for the first time despite of all As, I got one B plus and my father made me stay awake whole night as a punishment and forced me to study and summarize all the chapters and examined me at the end of the night. Because of all these kinds of discipline experiences, I was crying when I was getting A minus. Thankfully, my only learning motivation was not my parent that is why I did not lose my passion about learning. I am still a hard working person who is trying to have balance between being perfectionist and modesty. Studying in a second language creates a big pressure on me and tortures my self-esteem, even though I have been studying more than native speakers and managed to learn many things in English in such a short time. In addition, it is hard for me to be too confident in a society that nearly all people have self-confidence obesity. I had to take a break to collect enough money to continue my educational life and became a domestic worker and this made my speaking rusty.

I did not go to kindergarten or preschool, but I was reading before I started the elementary school. In our culture, nearly all students manage to read in the first grade and when the child manage to reach this level the instructor put a red ribbon on his/her collar as a reward and honored the child. The first day of the school I got the red ribbon and this made me very happy and proud. My first elementary school was in a village. My first teacher was male, and I had some kind of female teacher phobia due to being witness of many of their cruelty. I realized that in many cases, people are more merciful to their opposite sex. When I was a little child this was my belief based on my observations and during all my elementary school history, I consistently had male teachers. My family was agreeing with me and for this reason they chose all my siblings’ teachers from the opposite genders. I had some good experiences nowadays that balanced my old belief.

When I was ten years old, I managed to finish reading all parts of holy Quran in Arabic and my family organizes a big celebration to congratulate this success. In Turkish culture, people organize these kinds of party only to facilitate boys during their circumcision. I am against this feast because it produces and internalizes masculine mentality. So, this reading party was a nice alternative for my childhood to create a balance for my character vs. masculine culture. My family organized a similar feast for my brother when he circumcised. Mine was a fruit of my effort, his was not. I guess at least in my subconscious, I realized that reading can give me some opportunities to fill this gender gap. 

After the 3rd grade, we moved to a city center and I also received some scholarship for a private teaching institution as an after school program. The new school was very secular and nationalist which I did not like it. Moreover, all children who are attending Turkey’s primary schools are expected to read aloud the “Andımız” (“Our pledge”) every morning when they come to school. When I was in elementary school, I refused to say pledge which contains nationalist and dictatorial phrases such as: “I am a Turk; I am honest; I am hard working. Let my entire being serve as a gift to Turkish existence.” My family was talking about my country’s dictatoristic behaviors and criticizing it and even imprisoned because of this, but at the beginning of my educational life no one from my family told me specifically about the racist part of this pledge. However, I did not like it and change it to a funny poem and always had some trouble when my teachers heard. I was aware that my friends were from different nations and culture and this phrase seemed to me unfair. More than this, also it was very rigid, forced action and I hate all mandatory things from the beginning of owning my unique willpower. As a Turk why did I need to sacrifice all my existence to a nation that I even did not know the meaning of it and also why we were shouting this pledge every day as a part of the brain wash! The modern Turkish founder father, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk has a weird sentence which is everywhere in public institutions’ walls: “Happy is the one who calls himself a Turk.” As a reflection of this phrase, I sometimes ironically was telling people that “I am Turk, but not happy.” They were trying to defense this sentences by saying that he was not saying happy is the one who is Turk, but calls himself Turk. It is basically the key stone of the assimilation. In Turkey, many of Turkish nationalists are from minorities, because they think if they can be so radical nationalist they can be the part of the dominant nation, but normally they never can be. I guess, this can be similar with “model minority” notion. I see these things in my very early ages, but years made the meaning deeper.

After the 5th grade, I wanted to practice one of my religious belief; headscarf, but in my hometown wearing scarf in public school was banned. There was only one private school which was letting some students wear it secretly. I created a pressure on my family to apply there and the school accepted me with half scholarship. This created many financial problems for my parents’ and psychological problems for me. Spoiled, rich students were always making fun of my unchanging dress during our picnics etc. and on the other side oppressive system and scarf ban were making my life harder. Because of these conditions, I became a refuge of the books’ world. Once, the school principals decided to collect my private books from my locker to force me to socialize more with classmates. While they were collecting my books which I was reading only during my free break times, they took my diary, too, but only left my psychology books. The only reason of this privilege was a psychologist who was also involved to this unacceptable action. I was very pissed off and took those psychology books and throw them to floor in front of the school principals and told them they forgot to take those! When I remember this action, I am still surprised that how I could manage to do this as a student with scholarship.

From 6th grade to 9th grade, I continued to study in the private school that I mentioned shortly before in a hidden class room. Some of my friends and I had to be locked up if some inspectors were visiting our school. The building was an additional building inside the main school’s garden and did not have any restroom, so we always need to get permission to use the restrooms to not risk the school authority. Another thing, once, I have applied to a poetry competition and won, but the school authority decided to pick someone from my classroom who were not wearing a headscarf and brought her to the award ceremony with me and introduce her with my name and made me clap to congratulate her. They made someone played my identity in a fake person’s appearance which can fit and fulfill to the system’s wish. For me, it was very an respectful mistreatment. This is only a sample of a big picture of what I have been experiencing for many years just to reach an upper education.

Hopefully, one they all of these experiences can feed my intellectual world and be useful skills for my Sociology major. I desire that all these steps help me to create some meaningful achievements that can make my existence useful for this world. All the paths of the education that I have been trying to pass are just because of this. Based on my experience, I can say that after several years of private school experiences, I believe that public schools are better than private schools despite of all their disadvantaged conditions to able to gain an intellectual and realistic world.

Moreover, I believe that if I add the population of my classes to this autobiography, during my elementary school, from the first to fifth grade it was about 35 and during my junior high school which was private, it was 25 and same in the high school. I did not remember any race discussion during my school life (except national pledge) which might be a problematic and also a good thing, too. It is a problematic from one side, because there are always some people from different regions of the country and cultures I guess, but we did not have any awareness of those richness. It is also a good thing, because I think we did not have a highlighted racist dialog, either. In addition, for instance, when I was around 14, my father gave me Alex Haley’s Malcolm X book as a gift. He was giving this book to his students as an award. I have never felt Black people or different nations as others. On my hometown’s street walls, young people were making graffiti of Malcolm X as a role model of disobedience against domestic oppressors. Based on racist perspective we were white, he was black, but our discomforts about oppressor system were very close. He was very brave thinker and good speechmaker. I have never questioned his and his same destiny friends based on their race or color and I am very happy to have this quality about this issue. I am not proud about it, because I think it must be the basic humanistic way. However, in my class, I remember my instructors were crueler to more poor and orphans and kinder to physically more catchy or rich children. Most of the poor children were coming from Eastern part of the Turkey who was minorities. After I learned that they came to the big cities because the government burned 3500 villages of minorities at that time. I had always warm feelings for gypsies of my town and cross breed people when I realized them from their external appearance. They have been experiencing not the same but similar institutional discrimination with African Americans in the U.S. 

When I was 14, I took my parent’s permission and left my hometown and moved to a different metropolitan city called Istanbul to continue my educational life without scarf ban at high school. At that time, my hometown was a pilot city to practice this scarf ban in public schools. A year later, scarf ban had started to be practiced in my high school, too.  As a result of this limitation of our freedom, we were organizing protests and arrested and physically and psychologically tortured. After a while, my hundreds of friends and I was kicked out from our school or were ironically plowed while they were not letting us to enter our schools. We had to transfer our record to open high schools. I started to study at a Theology Boarding school and continued for two years which was totally against my free character. They were seeking to raise good followers and obedient teachers for their world widely schools, but I was questioning everything. This school was not included my goal, but I did not have a lot of options to make my time useful after kicked out from the high school. I was longing to stay in Istanbul, but my family was letting me to stay only if I was going to this school. I used this boarding school as a tool to stay in Istanbul and to go different Philosophy and Art courses at weekends. In Turkey the barrier for a higher education was politic and here is financial. I still could not exceed these barriers, but one day when I manage to graduate, I will use my experiences of these sacrifices to help other people especially students. My educational autobiography will be completed when the death finds me. This is a story of a meaningful sacrifice, because the object and subject of this sacrifice is my life. I hope one day I will share these memories with a bigger smile on my face.

Meryem Rabia Taşbilek