TURKISH EDUCATIONISTS SEEK REFORM TO CURB ‘BLIND’ NATIONALISM
Emma Ross-Thomas
The Brunei Times, Brunei Darussalam
April 3 2007
HAPPY is he who says he is a Turk, pipe hundreds of uniformed children
in unison, lined up in the playground before a golden statue of
Turkey’s revered father Ataturk, for a daily pledge of hard work
and sacrifice.
The enthusiastic chanting ends and the children file into school,
past an inscription saying their first duty is to defend Turkey
and another of the national anthem texts which appear again on the
classroom walls and preface of all their textbooks.
When they move up to high school, they will take a weekly class
from army officers about the military’s exploits. Their school books
will tell them European powers have their sights set on Anatolia and
Turkey’s geography makes it vulnerable "to all kinds of internal and
external threats".
Textbooks are peppered with the sayings of Kemal Ataturk, who founded
modern Turkey in 1923 after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
"Homeland … we are all a sacrifice for you!" comes particularly
recommended by one textbook’s authors.
These are just some of the features of Turkey’s education system that
reformist teachers and activists want changed. They say it encourages
blind nationalism something Turkey is looking at more seriously since
the ultranationalist-inspired murder in January of Turkish-Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink. Political rows with the European Union, which
Ankara hopes to join, have also fanned nationalism especially in an
election year but many experts say the seeds are first sown at school.
This government has reformed the curriculum in a way teachers say
makes students more active and reduces traditional rote learning,
but the emphasis on nationalism remains.
"There’s still some emphasis on militarism, the importance of being
martyred, the importance of going to war, dying in war and so on," said
Batuhan Aydagul, deputy coordinator of the Education Reform Initiative.
Teachers also say they feel pressure not to stray from the official
line or curriculum in class.
"If you present some arguments which are the opposite of the
established arguments … you might get reaction, absolutely, from
students, from other teachers, from directors negative reactions of
course," said one teacher who declined to be named.
His colleague, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, laughed at
the idea of criticising Ataturk in a history lesson, saying to do so
would spark investigation by prosecutors. "They think … if you do
such a thing you confuse their minds and confusion is not good for
young people," the first teacher said.
But the textbooks could be confusing for some: while foreign historians
say Ottoman forces massacred Armenians in 1915, high school history
books here say it was the other way around.
"It must not be forgotten that in eastern Anatolia the Armenians
carried out genocide," one 2005-dated book reads.
In its latest progress report the EU also criticised the portrayal
of minorities such as Armenians, saying further work was needed to
remove discriminatory language from textbooks.
Nationalism is not the only problem with schools in Turkey, which,
hemmed in by the budget restraints of an International Monetary Fund
accord, spends little on education.
With a population of 74 million, Turkey already struggles to find
jobs for its ever-growing army of young people.
But in terms of spending per head as a proportion of the economy,
Turkey spends least among OECD countries.
Primary school teacher Ayse Panus said parents at her public school
where there are 21 teachers for 680 pupils make contributions of
about 50 lira (US$35) a year to keep it going.
Turkey is also around the bottom of the OECD league in terms of
years spent at school, the proportion of the population with tertiary
education and the maths ability of 15-year-olds.
Teachers are low-paid and spend the first years of their career in
a state-assigned posting.
This government has increased spending, but experts say more is needed
to narrow the gap in Turkey’s two-tier system between high quality
selective academies and regular schools. Enrolment has also improved,
especially for girls helped by a high-profile government and Unicef-
backed campaign to persuade conservative rural parents to send their
daughters to school.
Citing such progress, the EU says Turkey is well prepared for accession
when it comes to education, but many disagree.
"On the one hand they want to be in Europe, and on the other … they
are encouraging the feeling that there are enemies all around,"
said Panus.