Pontificating on TEFL & Turkish Culture

Jana pulls up, sets her feet, and launches another three-pointer. The Turkish adolescent moans "Oh no" as the ball swishes cleanly through the net. She gets another round of applause from the boys we are playing with. I haven't received any vocal praise. Then again, I am not a girl, and in Turkey, girls don't play basketball. They swim and play tennis, but the physical nature of basketball is too much for the country's conservative nature. What makes the applause so great is that Jana is one of the best players on the court, and she isn't afraid to drive inside for a close shot. The Turkish boys are friendly and my fear of her being molested in some way is put to rest. The game is spirited and fast, and I think the Turks are pleased to play against citizens of the sport's original country.

Unfortunately, my citizenship does not help on the football pitch (soccer field). Although I am in better shape than almost every player, I imagine myself to resemble a chicken with its head cut off, seemingly purposeless in the direction I run. I manage to muff a number of shots on goal, and after a couple of miserable attempts at dribbling downfield, I resort to passing as quickly as possible so as to avoid further embarrassment. Maybe I could blame my clumsiness on the time. Due to work during the day, Turkish men (women don't play football) usually don't play until late at night, our game having started at 11 P.M. These late-night matches are a national custom, and on the ride home I see many brightly-lit fields filled with men, their inherently Turkish bellies protruding out at the mid-section. A stranger named Karim is driving me home, and there is a little conversation though he has forgotten much of his English. Due to this, I am not sure whether, after my confession of poor football skill, he actually said, "You are really bad."

Every country has its taboos concerning appropriate topics that can be discussed, and Turkish tend to be more open and direct than the American and British person is comfortable with. Karim's brazen remark caught me off-guard, but should it have? My female colleagues describe how they have, on numerous occasions, been approached by a student who, utilizing the indirect question form, pleasantly remarks "You've gained a few kilos, haven't you?" They, of course, respond "Why yes I have, thank you for noticing and being so kind as to inform me of my appearance." Actually, their response was closer to silence, though the Turks do not seem to notice. Here are a few more cultural differences I have observed:

▪ The Turks are very generous with their food. They always offer me a portion of a snack, regardless of whether it is a bag of pretzels or a candy bar. The candy bar is particularly difficult for me since personally I know that if I buy a Snickers bar, I just do not want to share that small treat with anyone. I must learn from their openhandedness.
▪ A spotlessly clean house is a Turkish requirement, and the American standard of "clean" does not float here. We actually have a cleaning lady which makes me feel like a rich colonialist.
▪ Since I don't speak Turkish, the popular newspapers here can be divided into two categories. One would be the serious press of long articles and small pictures. The other is the equivalent of USA Today, except that the pages are plastered with pictures of non-Middle Eastern women in scanty clothing. This blatant appeal to eros seems an aberration in a culture where I never see a woman's midriff, low-cut tops are rare, and the naked legs of the fairer sex are never seen, that is except on the front page of eighty percent of the newspapers. My theory is that these pictures are a product of a self-deceiving, conservative society who would like to perceive the West as licentious while Turkish women are chaste and pure. If so, it is a cover for the Turkish man who is practically expected to have extramarital affairs.

"Our work keeps us free of three great evils: boredom, vice, and poverty." So says Voltaire's Turk at the end of his masterpiece Candide, as a guiding principle for how humans should conduct their lives. Ironically, this race that Voltaire despised so much has taken the message to heart with the average person working around sixty hours a week. A six-day week is quite usual here, working ten hours a day to make a decent living. It is the requisite life in a developing economy that wishes to raise itself to the top tier of nations. For a foreigner, it is equally difficult. I did not come here to be overloaded with work, but rather to explore a culture, and yet this very culture wishes to sweep me off with the current to the perpetual grindstone. I presently work six days, accumulating a mass sum of forty-five hours a week. Throughout the month I have the opportunity to teach eight different classes ranging from 10-year old children at the elementary level to high school advanced to university students to adults and even an exam class for those who would like to study at a North American school. Some classes are good, some are dull. After two distinguished years in the illustrious profession of TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language), I have come to the pragmatic philosophy that as a teacher, I can only prove to be a conduit, a spark plug while the student must provide the steady energy that powers language learning. I have often taught the identical lesson to two different groups with drastically different but predictable results. The enthusiastic class thrives and indubitable progress is made. I feel like the world's greatest teacher, like a conductor directing the execution of his masterpiece, and I leave work energized. Meanwhile, their counterpart, the slugs, bring time to a halt. The clocks melt languidly on the wall as in a Salvador Dali painting, the energy level in the classroom approaches absolute zero, and I feel like an oompa-loompa kicking at a hibernating grizzly bear with my short stubby orange legs, attempting to rouse the slumbering beast to a communication exercise. More to the point, the TEFL teacher must guard against the idealistic notion that he or she can inspire a class if only the lesson were a bit more creative, if only I could find something that interested them, if only a bit more time had been spent combing the dark entrails of the internet, if only I could find something that interested them (hey, what am I, a dancing monkey or something?), if only, if only, if only...yet I, along with the U.S. government must desist. Just as public spending will never sustainably fill the gap that the American consumer has vacated for vogue thrift, so I must come to terms with the unquenchable vacuum that encompasses the indifferent language student. On the sanguine side of things, I have had the privilege to teach many ebullient pupils, and it is always a fulfilling pleasure to work with these lovely people.