FIXing Hazırlık… (Pt 01 of 03)
It’s a bit ‘rude’, innit?8 BUT...that’s exactly the question (OK…I used the term ‘smarty-pants’ to convey the stress and intonation used…as well as some of the facial expressions I saw) that I have been asked in a number of conversations since I started:
Could it be our understanding of ‘Quality’…that is BROKEN, perhaps?
So…Hazırlık is BROKEN! – Time to play… (BTW – ‘hazırlık’ is the Turkish term for the English Language Preparatory Programmes run by many universities here…just so you know)! 8 Perhaps, I should just remind those people what my dear friend Hannibal ‘does’ with rude people…
…just wait till I do the series on what actually happens in faculty departments! The thing is that…this type of question started to be dropped into my in-box and the comments section of the posts before I’d even got to the second blog post. Some of them were not as rude…they were genuine questions, from genuine people…facing many of the genuine ‘problems’ that I was trying to draw attention to. Questions like:
…fair enough!8 The thing is…these questions reminded me of the wonderful work of Peter Block (esp. his perspective-shaking book - THE ANSWER TO HOW IS ‘YES’). For Peter, these types of questions are (usually) a defense against getting an 'improvement effort' started, a defense against change.
…so sad! …so true! …so common!8 Now, I’m not so sure that everyone who asks a HOW-question is running from the truth (or is trying to postpone actually doing something about a problem). However, Peter’s questions are used a heck of a lot by people in our hazırlık schools (and the guys that 'control' these schools with their 'decision-making') – especially those with those heady job titles we discussed. Very few of these hazırlık stakeholders, for example, ask one of the ‘alternative questions’ suggested by Peter: 8
8
…I wonder why, acaba? We'll come back to this - promise!8 Instead, many hazırlık stakeholders (including LEARNers…and their parents) ask questions like this:
Firstly, that these stakeholders are more interested in an ‘answer-orientat