Educational Metaphors: High School Students' Perceptions of Schools in Kyrgyzstan

Focusing on the case study of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, this article examines high school students' perception of their schools and education by using metaphors. A total of 1433 high school students participated in this research. Based on the data that we collected from 9th and 10th grade students during field research (January - February 2020) in various regions of Kyrgyzstan and analysed students' answers about their schools. The findings show that the study's participants produced 178 metaphors about their schools. The participants used 102 positive, 108 negative metaphors and 32 metaphors for both positive and negative metaphors. These metaphors were categorised into seven main and 18 sub-themes according to their associated meanings. This study shows that some school students perceived school as peaceful and comfortable places and used positive words to describe it: home, family, nest, sky, sun, star, moon, ocean, mountain, garden, flower, book, library, key, candle and road sign. However, some of them described their schools as crowded, boring, regulated and restricted places and used more negative words to describe it: prison, criminal world, factory, hospital, laboratory and, barn. They also used metaphors, such as Wi-Fi, internet, night club, the ceremony hall, supermarket and the names of Kyrgyz and Russian television show programs like Tamashow (Humorous Show), Modnyi prigovor (Fashion Sentence) and Pust govoriat (Let Them Talk).