Education in Turkey

EDUCATION IN TURKEY

Education is the act or process of providing knowledge skills or competence by a formal course of instruction or training. Through out history societies have sought to educate their people to produce goods and services, to respond effectively and creatively to their world, and to satisfy their curiosity and aesthetic impulses. To achieve reliable knowledge and to think systematically. Over the course of human history education has appeared in many forms, both formalised and informal. Major thinkers have always recognised the educational value of intellectual exploration and of concrete experimentation. Most societies have attempted to standardise the behaviour of their members. These societies have apprenticeship systems by which the young have learned to imitate the beliefs and behaviours of a given group. Teachers have worked within schools of thought cults, monasteries and other types of organisations to shape desired convictions, knowledge and behaviour. Such philosophical and religious leaders as the Budha, Confucius, Pythagoras, Jesus, Moses, Muhammad and Karl Marx instructed their disciplines through informal education.

Turkish State and Turkish Society give great importance to the education since the Turkish Republic was established in 1923. The fall of Ottoman Empire at the end of the first world war and the foundation of the republic after the successful conclusion of the war of independence are two important factors which have made the existence of the new Turkish Society possible. The great desire of this society which is adopted in the social and economic fields to the general life conditions of western civilisations is to work for the benefit of mankind while enjoying all the privileges of civilised life within the family of Nations. In order to reach this goal, it has above all been necessary to establish an educational system in all its stages in such a way as to diffuse its light to all classes of the population.

Bases of the Turkish Education leans to the last years of the Ottoman Empire. The road towards modern education was charted by Selim III and Mahmud II and was followed with accelerated speed by their successors. In the 1876 constitution, educational reforms had been mentioned for the first time ‘For education continued to be regarded as the necessary foundation for the reorganization of the empire and the creation of a cadre of new leaders to maintain it’ As one contemproary writer put it ‘The solution of the ‘sick man’ was not through extemination but through education’. Educational reorganization and westernization were seen as a necessary condition in the general movement towards the social and political modernisation of the Ottoman State and Society. The Tanzimat Period was characterised by attempts to set up a modern administrative framework and a grade system of schools different in many respects from traditional institutional arrangements. Except his trial to bring back autocracy to the Ottoman State he was successful he had faith in the value of education. The constitution of 1876 provided that all schools should be under government supervision and the first stage of education should be compulsory under the young Turk regime another attempt was made to reform the system of primary education. In 1913 a new law enforced, aimed at public support at primary schools and better organisation of the program of study “Provisory Primary Education Law (Tedrisatэ Эptidai Kanunu) consists compulsory and free six year education in public schools and limitation of class size not more than fifty pupils. High institutions such as Galatasaray, Daruююafaka, Mьlkiye and Эstanbul University was established in this period.

The war years were hesitation period for education like the other institutions. Budget of every institution were being transferred to war. After the war in embarking upon the task of building a new nation , Ataturk and his Associates coceived of education as the most important foundation. In the emerging ideology of Ataturkism, education was inevitably bound up with political , economic and cultural independence and with breaking the shackles of traditional beliefs and outlooks; it was the means of creating national feelings , creating the consensus necessary to sustain a free national state training new Turkish leaders and paving the way towards a dynamic and modern society . Knowledge an science were regarded as power and as the leverage in transforming and uplifting the entire society. Ataturk made several statements on the important role assigned to education. In 1921 , he said that “our national system of education should be something different from the old and something that grow out of our own nation…and national genious can only be developed through our national culture.” Mustafa Kemal Ataturk placed the future of republic squarely