Beatings at Schools

Our 1968 generation was subjected to violence at school. It was very violent.

My primary school classroom teacher used to put a bench beating on us, and if we made a lot of noise when she left the classroom, she would hit all of us with a ruler, but she would scipt the District Governor's son.

As a lesson to other children in middle school, the small innocent students who were caught were beaten, the teachers encouraged each other to beat students, my art teacher pulled the ear of a student by forcing him and his face was distorted as if he was in pain.

In the years of 1965-1968, there was a serious beating of teachers at Ankara Atatürk High School. But the most mischievous, naughty students always run away, they are not caught, and the naive, the frail students, were beaten. This time, the job of beating fell on the floor manager assistant principals, most of whom were  sports teachers.

I was in the last year of high school, the school was almost over, we are on the break between classes, we ran down the hall with a friend, we chase each other between the desks in the classroom. There was a sudden silence. I looked back, he stands at the classroom door, said "come here", what could possibly be, I did not do anything important. I walked calmly towards the door. I got a terrible slap in the face, like a volleyball player hitting the ball so hard, I must have turned around. I could not recover for a long time.

Years passed, the sports teacher who slapped me retired, bought a land on the seaside in Ayvalık Burhaniye with his savings, first set up a tent camp there, added volleyball basketball tennis courts to the empty area, then enlarged the facility with the loans he received, the tent areas became bungalows, cafe restaurant swimming pool added.

In the 1990s, I had a job to site seeing a place in Çanakkale cement factory before an important tender, I rented a jeep from Izmir airport, stayed two nights in one of the Behramkale motels, and on my way back I wanted to go by the sea shore. I came across this camp. I knew the place earlier. The time was September, early in the morning, I parked my car, went inside, told the attendant at the door that I wanted to visit the facility, the owner of the camp was drinking tea at the cafe with his ex-teacher wife. They invited me, I sat at their table, tea came to me. I told him that I was a graduate of Ankara Atatürk High School, a common topic emerged. At the end of the speech, I reminded my teacher of the great slap he threw at me in the last year of high school, he turned red. No more conversation, I left.

Now there is no beating in schools, on the contrary, teachers are subjected to violence, there is no failing in the classroom. Students pass the class, then they pile up in the university entrance exam threshold

In our time, it was said that students of private foreign language schools with a fee do not get beaten. TED, Yükseliş and Yenişehir colleges in Ankara were such privileged schools. But I see that the students were beaten by violence, and the students were also subjected to serious violence.

That generation of those abusive teachers have left this world. They left bitter sorrow behind them.

You definitely have a similar unpleasant incident, you have a memory of being beaten at school, it's been a long time, but tell it, don't let it go, with my deepest respects.