Introducción al conflicto en el Ecuador

Another striking observation made by almost all groups was the idea of “beginning life with a 1-0 deficit,” “falling

behind” and “running behind.” All students interviewed said that they considered themselves at a disadvantage

in comparison to students who received their education in their mother tongue (namely Turkish students) because they began school and life “with a 1-0 deficit,” they “fell behind” and “ran behind.” Many teachers from both groups used similar expressions to state that when they begin school, Kurdish children who speak little or no Turkish are at a great disadvantage in comparison to children whose mother tongue is Turkish. As is pointed out in many studies concerning children’s acquisition of reading and writing skills, children who are forced to learn to read and write in a language they know very little or not at all, are not equipped with the necessary oral skills to acquire these skills and therefore will not be able to make a successful start in school.118

This observation has also been made in studies concerning other countries and linguistic environments. Stud- ies have shown that students read and write in the language they know best and that reading materials that are culturally familiar to students hasten language acquisition.119_{In places where completely different educa-}

tional policies and practices are implemented, students fall behind in comparison to peers who receive their education under better conditions. Cummins draws attention to the state of “falling behind” and cites as a major cause the underdevelopment of the second language skill – out of the aforementioned BICS and CALP distinction – which is necessary for success at school.120_{According to Collier and Thomas, it takes American}

Caucasian students whose mother tongue is English to make the progress that should be made in 10 months, but it takes 15 months for students from linguistic minority groups who learn English as a second language to realize the progress that should be made in 10 months.121_{Cummins states that students of linguistic minorities}

are only able to reach the stage where they should normally be with an average delay of 5 years.

122_{For a comprehensive debate on this subject, see Lindsay Lipscomb, Janet Swanson and Anne West, “Scaffolding” in: Emerging Perspectives}

on Learning, Teaching and Technology, ed. Michael Orey, 2004. Also http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/

123

See also Lev Vygotsky’s “Zone of Proximal Development” which deals with the same subject: Lev Vygotsky, “Mind in Society”, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978.

124

Cummins, Fundamental Psycholinguistic, 32

125

The following points need to be paid attention to: that teachers who speak Kurdish use their own initiative and speak Kurdish with the students may not be valid for Kurdish students going to school outside the Kurdish region.

126

Jim Cummins, “Bilingual Children's Mother Tongue: Why Is It Important for Education?” Sprogforum, 19, (2001), 15-20. See also http://www.iteachilearn.com/cummins/mother.htm

to explain this situation in education sciences is referred to as “scaffolding.”122_{This is used to indicate the}

process by which educators lead their students’ cognitive development gradually, providing them with sup- port and setting an example for them, thus helping them develop their knowledge.123_{According to this con-}

cept, students come to school with a certain repertory of knowledge and language. Under normal circumstances, they acquire new information and add it to their existing knowledge with the help of teachers and of school materials and sometimes with the support of their peers. Cummins states that the mother tongue of students may constitute important “scaffolding” in the learning process of a second language, and that encouraging students to use the language they know best in the learning process of a second language may create greater positive results.124_{However Kurdish children, who start school with little or no Turkish,}

not only are not able to start from a level from which they can make progress; on the contrary, their repertory of knowledge and language are ignored, which results in situations such as “beginning life with a 1-0 deficit” or “falling behind” and other disadvantages associated. Support or help for these Kurdish students, if at all, can take two forms, as can be seen also from the interviews: either classmates who speak Turkish can provide some help, or teachers who speak Kurdish can use their own initiative to explain some subjects in Kurdish or supply the Kurdish equivalent of words they teach, thus using a kind of “scaffolding”.125

3. Failing and Quitting School

Our findings show that Kurdish students who speak little or no Turkish are only able to start reading and writing with a considerable delay since they start recognizing letters only at the end of their first year. They are unable to develop literacy skills and consequently are generally made to repeat the year. Most students who repeat a year cite their inability to understand what is being taught to them as the reason for failing. Many students stated that students who had to repeat a year felt their self-confidence decreased and negatively influenced their relationship with school. Teachers whose mother tongue is Kurdish particularly said that students who found it difficult to learn Turkish and failed their class generally quit school within a few years.

This consequence, frequently referred to in studies on education of students from subordinated language groups, goes a long way toward explaining the low rate of school attendance among children studying in re- gions where Kurdish is spoken and the low rate of success in secondary and university exams. As Cummins also says, an approach where “one removes one’s language and culture before entering school and leaves it outside,” has caused children to leave their identities outside the school and has resulted in an inability to benefit from the right to education.126

127

Fırat and Atlı.

128_{Ayan-Ceyhan and Koçbaş, 15.}

129

Michael Foucault, “Governmentality”, in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality: With Two Lectures By and An Interview With Michel Foucault, ed. Graham Burchell, Gordon Colin and Peter Miller, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

130

Jamil Salmi, “Violence, Democracy and Education: An Analytic Framework” in Suffer the Little Children – Advances in Education in Diverse Com- munities: Research, Policy and Praxis, 4, ed. Carol Camp-Yeakey, (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2004), 207-230.

4. Stigmatization

Another important issue arising from interviews with students consists of the stigmatization that children who speak Kurdish sometimes encounter both in and outside school. We learn, from the interviews, that especially in high school years, students who speak Kurdish become conscious of their identity and linguistic differences; when they insist on speaking Kurdish they are referred to by names such as “peshmerga” or “ter-

rorist.” Similar findings have also been reached by Bahar and Atlı.127_{Researchers state that the word “Kurdish”}

can be perceived as an insult. People who speak Kurdish are thought to “swear” and Kurdish students are disturbed by the pressure and bans preventing the use of Kurdish, as well as by the above perception. One of the reasons for the lack of self-confidence referred to by many students may be that knowing and speaking Kurdish is frequently stigmatized by teachers and other students or in the mainstream media. Ceyhan and Koçbaş, who write of the concept referred to as “the ideology of contempt” by Nancy Dorian, state that this consists in asserting that a particular language is in some way incomplete in order to justify the suppression of that language.128_{Likewise, in a debate on the concept of “governmentality,” Foucault states that linguistic}

practices in schools “regulate” how the language should be used; this results in the emergency of hierarchies among languages and their usage, rendering some languages more or less valuable than others.129 _{An ex-}

amination of this study’s findings could be that teachers continuously tell students “not to speak Kurdish anywhere.” This is perceived by students as meaning that “Kurdish is bad and an obstacle” to learning. It also causes Kurdish, which is an inseparable part of their lives, to become a burden and something that needs to be hidden. The fact that a student said “my mother speaks French,” because he was afraid of being ostracized when his mother was heard speaking Kurdish, constitutes the best possible example to this situation.

5. Violence

Salmi, who discusses violence, states that there are four main types of violence: direct, indirect, repressive and

alienating.130_{Direct violence refers to deliberate physical interventions aiming at causing injury to human}

life. Wide-ranging physical acts including war, murder, female genital mutilation, torture and battery are ex- amples of this type of violence. Indirect violence refers to harmful or deadly situations caused by institutions, population groups or individuals, where a direct relationship with victims is prevented through human in- tervention. According to Salmi indirect violence can be of two types: violence by omission refers to the failure to intervene when people are in danger or when the harmful effects of a negative situation are technically avoidable or controllable. The unequal distribution of resources and hunger or disease arising from civilian or military interventions constitutes examples of violence by omission. Finally, mediated violence refers to de- liberate human actions whose harmful effects to the natural or social environment are felt in an indirect and sometimes delayed way. Examples include major damage to the environment and the use of harmful

pesticides in agriculture. The third type of violence, called repressive violence, refers to acts and situations such as the violation of human rights, rights of freedom of speech, thought and religion and inequality before the law. Last of all, alienating violence refers to the deprivation of individuals or of groups to higher rights such as psychological, emotional, cultural or intellectual health. According to this definition, people’s well- being does not come only from fulfilling material needs; it also requires paying attention to nonmaterial needs such as empowerment in the community, the opportunity to engage in creative activities and the feel- ing of social and cultural belonging. The best known examples of alienating violence include racism, social exclusion, the oppression of a culture and living in fear.

Salmi also examines how education can be a powerful instrument to reduce violence and improve human rights. On the other hand, he claims that schools can also be violent environments and the educational process, or the lack thereof, can be an important determinant of violence.

When we look at many of the interviews in light of the above definitions, it is clear that a majority of Kurdish children who begin school with little or no knowledge of Turkish are subject to many of the above types of violence. That students are frequently beaten by their teachers for not understanding what is said, for finding it difficult to learn to read and write or for speaking Kurdish among themselves, in or out of school, consti- tutes direct violence. Conversely, the educational, social, linguistic, psychological and economic damage arising from the failure to include Kurdish in the education of Kurdish children can be cited as an example of both types of indirect violence. Likewise, prohibiting Kurdish children from speaking Kurdish in the classroom, with their friends in the school garden and even at home with their parents are clear examples of repressive vio-

lence. Lastly, forcing Kurdish children to receive their education in a language with which they are unfamiliar,

negating their identity in the educational system, in classroom practices or in textbooks and causing them to be embarrassed of their mother tongue and culture constitute examples of alienating violence. Similarly, teachers from both groups and parents can also be said to be subject at times to alienating violence and at times to repressive violence.