To benefit from the current education system, one needs to make the students want to work. We cannot get results as long as this is not done.

I have been writing a lot on academic life recently. Today I look at it from a different perspective: I am concerned primarily with the student.

I would not be exaggerating if I said that the bleakest scenario for a professor is to be faced with students who only sit and listen without asking questions. It is worse if they gaze absent-mindedly. And it gets really unbearable when, despite the best efforts of the professor, there is no discussion in class.

In a class with a lot of these students test scores are usually bad as well. One ends up insufficiently educating young people who have the capacity to learn. One should force them at least to use part of that capacity.

This tension makes the questions at the beginning of this column all the more important: How to make them curious? How to make them study? Difficult questions indeed.

Improvement discussed

"Capacity utilization" is an important term. If you don't use your labor capacity, for example - which, due to the low labor force participation rate of women, is the case in Turkey - your potential growth rate remains low. Also, think about low educational attainment of the labor force; your potential pace of growth is even more limited. In a time when you are growing at a record pace of 11 percent, your economy gives warning signals in other places because you have exceeded your potential. The press, along with news of this record growth, also discusses the current account deficit. You can't be entirely happy. Improvements to the education system are always discussed. Yes, this too is very important. But there is another topic which needs to be addressed: In order to benefit from the current education system - regardless of its level - we need to make students want to study. Unless this is done, an improvement in the quality of education might not bring the desired benefits. And education reform cannot be done with the wave of a wand. In this case, one must benefit from the current education system as much as possible. Another question: How can we do this?

Is increasing difficulty a solution?

One way is to leave it to kids who have reached university age and expect them to take up responsibility. But this does not answer my questions. The reason I ask these questions in the first place is that a significant part of them do not take up said responsibility .

Would making it more difficult to pass classes and graduate be a solution? Perhaps, increasing the number of assignments and exams for a given class? Upon some reflection, I feel that this could be a solution, but it also brings to mind this question: How would this work with the current number of students? Also, how would we make things more difficult in a country where student amnesty is common? I have asked a lot of questions. The twelve years I have worked as a teacher are not enough to find answers. I am not sure I will find an answer even if I should work another twelve years.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 02.07.2011