The cost of the silent revolution in education

Last week, while inaugurating a school in Sinop, the Minister of National Education stated that Turkey has achieved a silent revolution in education over the last twenty years. In this column, I generally aim to write about current and historical debates regarding Turkish foreign policy, which is my field of study. However, as we welcome a new academic year, I wanted to reflect on the minister's words, highlight a few points, and write about the projection of the transformation taking place in education. 

In my opinion, one of the most important dynamics of the transformation taking place in education in Turkey—which is not very silent at all—is the "privatization" of education. Over the past decades, Turkey has experienced a remarkable wave of privatization in certain public services, such as education and health, which were previously provided by the state for free or at a low cost. This market-centered process is also closely related to the erosion of the "social state" principle in Article 2 of the Constitution. Because this concept, which is based on the understanding that the state ensures social justice through socio-economic rights granted to its citizens and protects the economy from crises by keeping demand alive, seems to have been defeated by the market both globally and locally.

Turkey began to experience the reflection of this in education, particularly from the 2000s onwards. Education has come to be referred to as a "sector" rather than a "public service." There is no need to provide too much statistical data to understand the situation. I believe the fact that while the rate of private schools was around two percent at the beginning of the 2000s, this rate has exceeded twenty percent as of 2023, summarizes the situation. Behind the development of education as a sector to this extent are also certain incentives provided by the state to private schools, such as tax exemptions or reductions. 

However, it must also be said that explaining this increase in Turkey solely through marketization would leave the issue quite incomplete. Since we are talking about a sectoral initiative, one must also look at the demand side of this supply. However, it should be noted that parents who mostly attended neighborhood schools in their childhood did not become private school enthusiasts overnight. This is also closely related to the other component of this silent revolution in education: the gradual loss of the contemporary, secular, and scientific nature of education. Former Chief of General Staff Hulusi Akar, who also served as Minister of National Defense in the previous government, stated again last week that the purpose of education is not to acquire knowledge, but to instill in a person the feeling of fearing God and being ashamed of people. He emphasized that where this is not the case, there will be atheists, deists, LGBT individuals, and drugs.

The reason I am bringing these words here is not because they are unexpected or surprising. On the contrary, these words summarize the transformation that has been systematically taking place in education for years in a nice and current way. For the discourse of national/spiritual values, which has replaced universal and scientific education, has shown and continues to show itself in the transformation into Imam Hatip schools where what our generation called "regular high schools" have disappeared, in the increase in the number/hours of religious courses, in a homogenizing values education, in the appointment of religious culture teachers in numbers far exceeding those of science teachers, and most recently in the "Century of Turkey" Education Model, which was presented under the guise of a collection of national and spiritual values. In such an environment, scientific education has become a product for which a financial price must be paid to access it, rather than a free public service. So much so that, for example, in the eyes of the middle classes thirty years ago, colleges—with the exception of a few top-tier ones—were not very prestigious institutions and were places where less successful students went compared to public schools. Today, they have turned into places for which one of the two salaries entering the household is sacrificed. Of course, it should be said that another side of this, besides quality education, is buying a lifestyle. Because it is not very wise to claim that all private schools offer quality education. (I would also like to open a parenthesis for working mothers. The fact that most public schools are half-day forces families where both spouses work into the private school option out of necessity.) As a result, there is a cost that this transformation in education imposes on families. And this cost has increased significantly under the current economic conditions. 

But it is also necessary to talk about a much more important cost: Turkey's future. Ultimately, we are talking about the country's children and youth. The place of Turkish education in international rankings, where spiritual values are prioritized and scientific quality can only find a place in the curriculum as long as it does not contradict these spiritual values, appears to be below the OECD countries of which it is a part. Moreover, the results we are talking about cover not only mathematics and science but also areas such as reading skills. On the other hand, the gap between those who receive quality education and those who cannot access it is widening. This corresponds to both socio-economic and socio-cultural distinctions and, at the same time, divisions. The fact that concepts like the "Imam Hatip generation" are talked about more today, or that there are fewer stories about shepherd children who come in first in exams, are examples of this situation. 

The economic crisis deepens both the problems in education and inequality of opportunity. I think everyone is aware that we have started to talk about many things that are diametrically opposed to each other in this field. On one side, there is a world where we talk about international baccalaureate programs and analyze that German-language high schools have become more popular because they promise more later on. Most of these analyses always end with the dream of "getting out of the country." These are certainly not baseless or unfair. On the other side, despite increasing (primary) school enrollment rates, we observe an increase in dropout rates, especially after middle school. We can relate the increase in these rates to poverty and the fact that education does not promise anything to the student in deepening poverty. The increasing rates of child labor already point to this. Where boys drop out of school and join the workforce, there are also girls who are neither in employment nor in education, which I think many will explain with "values" and "essential duties." This must be the high social cost of the transformation...