University of Applied Sciences, Fulda

Turkmenistan

Part One

Turkmenistan is one of the former Soviet Republics. The educational system is very much influenced by the Russian system. The culture in Turkmenistan is strongly collectivist, and tribal affiliations and values are still of great importance. The interviewee once explained that the hats that the locals put on have special designs which show to which tribe the individual belongs to. This can be detrimental to social opportunities of the individual.The bigger and more powerful the tribe is, the better possibilities one gets. The society is, then, strongly hierarchical, and again the individual’s identity depends on his rank in the group. The student from Turkmenistan comments as follows on the extent of personal responsibility: ". . . to a rather small amount, that is, I mean they did what they were told to do by the speakers [authorities], and rather small parts was given to their own responsibility . . . even in their studies, within the organisational matters of their studies, they had, the most of us had very little to say, to influence, so that the most things came from above, from the speakers . . ."
The professor, as the authority, is the one who provides the information and the students are more the recipients. Teaching is not mutual interaction. "We did [get a lot of homework], which was also– not very good . . . we also had Referats, but most of them was still held by the teachers, because they stressed on it, well, speaking themselves during the lessons, so that we, we, to– had to
get satisfied by doing the homework or writing the exam at the end of the term . . ."
The relationship is influenced by this hierarchical organisation. ". . . well, the hierarchical link between the students and the lecturers is in Turkmenistan much broader or much larger, much stronger than in Germany, as in Germany. So all we were like soldiers and a captain . . ."[emphasis added by the writer]. In such a soldier-captain relationship, the individual definitely has to take a lot of unwritten rules into consideration. "We had our certain roles and we had to keep this discipline, and we had to rather strongly follow what we had to do to get ready with our tasks . . . the relationship due to that was not very close . . . we have to see what we say to each of our lecturers and how we behave ourselves, within the frame of the behaviour and em–conditions he likes us to behave ourselves . . . it could have had some negative consequences on your mark . . ."