Are the Village Institutes just nostalgia?

The 80th anniversary of the Village Institutes, which were founded on April 17, 1940, with their foundations laid in 1935... Is remembering, commemorating, and talking about them just nostalgia, or is it a breakthrough project in education that is sorely missed and needs to be modernized and adapted to the present day?

The Village Institutes, the work of İsmail Hakkı Tonguç and strongly supported by Hasan Ali Yücel, were implemented to solve one of the fundamental problems of the time: education. They were cited as an example for underdeveloped countries and entered the literature of educational science as "Turkish-invented educational institutions."

Reaching a total of 21, they trained thousands of teachers from among village children despite their short-lived existence. They integrated education with life itself... The Institutes were institutions that created conscious and questioning individuals who took the soil in their hands and felt it, harvested crops in the field, played the piano and violin, built and performed in their own amphitheaters, worked in carpentry shops, produced their own electricity, built their own schools and libraries, and read constantly; in short, they brought people together with the land, books, and labor.

17,000 teachers and nearly 3,000 health workers were trained...

Despite all their shortcomings and mistakes, this important educational breakthrough of the Republic, a project to train social leaders, could not be long-lasting due to the pressure of landowners and feudal elements; it was ended in 1947 and closed in 1954!

Educator Cengiz Öksüz, Istanbul Branch President of the New Generation Village Institutes Association (YKKED), with whom I had a long conversation about the Village Institutes, states that the Village Institutes' status as an educational revolution was not only in our country but on a global scale, and that this stemmed from their originality.

He emphasizes that it is very meaningful that they are still being commemorated and celebrated with increasing popularity even so many years after they were closed, and adds: "The events we have experienced in education and politics in recent years make the importance of the Village Institutes even greater."

Cengiz Hoca emphasizes that in recent years, only the enlightenment aspect of the Village Institutes has been highlighted, which is important but incomplete: "We should not ignore the production side of the Institutes. İsmail Hakkı Tonguç sent technical personnel and carpenters to the villages. 20 Village Institutes were opened. Tonguç established 20 modern villages. He transformed what he took from the village and sent it back to the village by giving them a craft. This is very important. Unfortunately, our middle schools, high schools, and universities alienate people from the environment they come from."

HOW CAN THEY BE ADAPTED TO TODAY?

In the 1930s, there were 40,000 villages in Turkey. 35,000 of these villages did not have schools. In the 5,000 villages that did have schools, the schools were only 3-year programs...

Educator Cengiz Öksüz, noting that the signs of the Village Institutes were taken down in 1954, states that the Village Institutes, which trained 'useful personnel for the village' until 1947, trained teachers from 1947 to 1954.

Is it nostalgia to talk about the Institutes today, in a condition where urbanization has increased so much and production and socio-cultural relations have changed so much? We cannot help but ask, 'What can be done today, how can that model be taken as an example?'...

Cengiz Öksüz states that Village Institutes cannot be established in villages with their similar status today, saying, "Today, in cities, schools with an applied education approach, an education approach through work, can be built under names like 'City Institute' or other titles, in cooperation with municipalities and a government that sides with the people. The problem today is the problem of agriculture. It is the same all over the world... If there is no agriculture, industrialization remains crippled," he says...

Thinking, asking, and striving to take positive examples from the past, adapting them to the present, and carrying them further is certainly not nostalgia...

Reading Suggestions:

Village Institute Years Through Letters – İsmail Hakkı Tonguç

Village Institutes in Turkey – Fay Kirby

Village Institutes and Beyond - Mahmut Makal

The Village Institute Youth - Fakir Baykurt

The Act of Emancipation: Village Institutes - Mehmet Başaran

Village Institute Years (The Power of Darkness) - Talip Apaydın

Letters from the World of Village Institutes to Hasan Ali Yücel - Canan Yücel Eronat

The Sharecropper's Son Talip Apaydın - Feyziye Özberk

Orphan's Patch - Mustafa Ekmekçi

The Revived Utopia: Village Institutes - Prof. Dr. Güler Yalçın

Cılavuz Village Institute in the Light of Oral and Written Documents – Prof. Dr. Firdevs Gümüşoğlu

In the Footsteps of the Village Institutes - Sabahattin Eyüboğlu

Tonguç and His Institutes - Pakize Türkoğlu

A Collective Look at the Village Institute System - Dr. Niyazi Altunya

Hasan Ali Yücel's Writings and Speeches on Village Institutes and Village Education - Village Institutes and Contemporary Education Foundation

The Enlightenment Revolution and Village Institutes - Mevlüt Kaplan