Nesin Mathematics Village

[azrazeynep]

azrazeynep

2024-05-10 at 22:44 #1057

Şirince, the world’s best tourism village, which Yaren has already mentioned in the Entrepreneurship in Turkish Materials section, is home to another great initiative.
The Village was founded in 2007 as a place to do advanced mathematics – back then it was called the Nesin Mathematics Village. After a while the Village started to organise events related to philosophy and the arts in response to demand from programme participants and followers – from 2009 for philosophy and from 2010 for the arts. When these events became regular, the Philosophy and Arts Villages were founded and the Nesin Mathematics Village became the Nesin Villages.
Everything began when Ali Nesin decided that his students needed extra support for their studies and started to look for a fixed but remote place to hold summer study camps.
Ali Nesin started with extra study for his students in his own home, and later at the Nesin Foundation in Çatalca. These soon became a month-long summer camp taking place in a different region of Turkey each year. In 2004, he opened these summer camps to all atudents of any Turkish university. As the camps’ popularity increased, it became increasingly difficult – not to mention expensive – to arrange both relatively tranquil accommodation and lecture halls for so many people. He began to dream of creating a space dedicated to mathematics only.
It was built with donations from ordinary people and the voluntary labour, both manual and mental, of many young mathematicians. It was built with a communal spirit and has been serving people, young and old, ever since Summer 2007.

The Village is a non-profit organisation. Its purpose is to provide a calm, beautiful, and above all free environment where people enjoy learning, thinking and creating.
At first the target audience for the summer camps was university-level mathematics students. After a few years, the Maths Village gave in to popular demand and opened its services to students from primary through to high school. The mathematics classes taught at the Village are not controlled by any national curriculum, and don’t aim to prepare students for any kind of exam. In fact, there is no assessment at the Village at all, nor do we give out certificates or diplomas. Its only aim is to show students what professional mathematicians think of as ‘real mathematics’, and to introduce them to mathematical research.

The Art and Philosophy Villages, just like the Maths Village, aim to offer an alternative to the present education system, and to give participants space to learn in depth, to understand and to produce. They are open to young people from all over Turkey, and allow people to learn and produce art and philosophy in a constructive environment.

Just as the fields are not completely disjoint, neither are the three villages – some classrooms and living quarters are used by all three villages, while others are exclusive to each (such as the Art Workshop). In this way the fields can interact and feed off of each other.

At the same time, the Village aims to be a scientific and artistic centre, hosting conferences, workshops and seminars organised by various groups.

• This topic was modified 11 months ago by azrazeynep.

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