Teachers' Discriminations in the Narratives of Primary School Students of Different Periods in Turkey: 1950s, 1970s and 1980s

This study zeros in on rendering the teachers' discriminations among their students in various aspects in the narratives of primary school students of 1950s, 1970s and 1980s' Turkey. Construction and reconstruction of personal and social stories of teachers and students is also a sort of education and educational research. The method of the research is oral history through the agency of which it was possible to disclose the narratives of primary school students about their teachers' discriminations that basically appear as male-female, poor-rich and hardworking-lazy. In doing so, twenty students from 1950s, fifty students from 1970s and thirty students from 1980s' Turkey have been reached and interviewed at different times since 2010. Apart from these hundred students, ten more interviews were carried out for testing. About thirty of the interviewees assert that their teachers had segregated them because of being rich or poor, hardworking or lazy and gender. There are also about ten other students who state that their teachers had discriminated them due to being children of civil servant, neighbor relations, children of working mothers, speaking Turkish properly and parents' political views. The narratives in the research denote that teachers' discriminations had kept going in the course of time despite the progress in the social, economic, political and educational conditions of country. While their narratives are originally presented in the text, the real names of the narrators are not used, instead they are renamed. These narratives are crucial to see the teachers' educational practices in the words of their students who reveal on what basics their teachers discriminated them or not. The study exposes that despite the fact that forty three students remark their teachers discrimination resulted from certain factors, fifty seven students do not recollect any discriminations and believe that their teachers behaved them equally. It displays that discrimination is remarkably faced due to the students' success, their social and economic conditions; gender and income rates. It also proves that the words of most of the students gainsay how their teachers had been fair to their students.