Broken mirror: The silent collapse of an education system

Here is the article written by psychoanalyst Ümit Eren Yurtsever:

"I know... but I do it anyway."

This sentence has been recited like a national anthem in Turkey over the last twenty years. Everyone knew. The teacher knew, the parent knew, the student knew, the minister knew, the man on the street knew. Everyone knew, but no one did anything. No one could stop. No one could say "stop." Because to say "stop" meant falling outside the system. And those who fell outside the system were considered non-existent. And those considered non-existent would eventually vanish.

Now we stand in the courtyard of a school in Kahramanmaraş, on concrete where the blood has dried. Ayser Çalık Secondary School. Most of us heard its name for the first time. Eleven children, one teacher. Twelve coffins. In a city, in a country, in a system. And the day before in Siverek, the day before that in Çekmeköy. All children of the same week. All children of the same system.

So how did this happen? How did this country begin to lose its children in its own schools? How did education turn from a project of liberation into a waiting room? Or is it the mortuary of an imam hatip school? Does it serve only the dead as a place where bodies are washed and shrouded according to Islamic rites?

How did the dream of a generation with "free ideas, free conscience, and free wisdom" turn into a generation with "high exam anxiety, high future anxiety, and high anger"?

The answer to these questions does not lie within a single government, a single party, or a single year. This is the story of a long dissolution, a slow collapse, a silent surrender. And to tell this story, one must first start with that great dream.

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A Brief History of a Dream

1923. The Republic is only a few months old. Anatolia is burned, destroyed, exhausted. But Mustafa Kemal knows that the victory he won on the battlefield must truly be won in education. He says, "It is education that keeps a nation as a free, independent, glorious, and high society; or it leaves a nation to captivity and misery." In the middle of the war, in 1921, he convenes the Maarif Congress. While the enemy is still at the gates of Ankara, he sits down with teachers to discuss the future of education.

At that time, the vast majority of the public is illiterate. The madrasas are rote-learning based and disconnected from life. The villager thinks that education is not for them, but a privilege belonging only to the city dweller. Mustafa Kemal wants to change this. Secular, scientific, national, practical education. Schools will be a miniature of society. Children will not just be individuals who memorize information, but individuals who can use it in life, produce, and think.

And to realize this dream, he invites a name not yet well-known in the world at that time, John Dewey, to Turkey. 1924. Dewey is the pioneer of the progressive education movement in America. He says, "Education is not preparation for life, but life itself." The school should be intertwined with society. The child should learn by doing and living. Democracy is not just a form of government, but a way of life.

Dewey travels around Turkey for two months. Istanbul, Ankara, Bursa. He writes reports. He suggests increasing teacher salaries, strengthening teacher training, applied education, handicrafts, agriculture, and vocational training. He says, "There is a big difference between unity and uniformity." He emphasizes that centralization should not kill local initiative.

This vision later comes to life in the Village Institutes. The 1940s. Children come from the remote corners of Anatolia. They both study and produce. They become teachers, carpenters, farmers, and blacksmiths. When Dewey returns to Turkey in 1945 and sees the Village Institutes, he is amazed: "The schools I dreamed of have been established in Turkey," he says.

But this dream does not last long. The 1950s. The Village Institutes are closed. In their place comes a centralized, uniform, exam-oriented system. Years pass. Coups, crises, ideological conflicts. Education becomes a field where every government transfers its own ideology. The teacher stops being an "intellectual worker" and turns into a civil servant implementing the curriculum. The student stops being a "researcher" and turns into a competitor who must pass the exam.

The 2000s. The AKP government. A series of changes under the name of "reform" in education. 4+4+4. The closure of private tutoring centers (dershanes). The constant changing of the exam system. The ideological reorganization of the curriculum. Loyalty replacing merit in teacher appointments. The physical conditions of schools are improved, but their substance is emptied. Parents become "customers." Students become "data."

And now. 2026. Kahramanmaraş. Siverek. Çekmeköy. Twelve dead. Dozens injured. Hundreds of traumas. Thousands of fears. Millions of silences.

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The Collapse of Containment: The Unbearable Emotion

Bion says that a baby's raw emotions (beta elements) can be carried and transformed by the mother's mental apparatus. The mother takes the baby's crying, screaming, and anger; makes it thinkable and meaningful; and then gives it back to the baby. In this way, the baby learns to carry its own emotions. It builds its own mind.

School should be like this, too. The teacher should be able to take and transform the child's raw emotions. The classroom should be a space where fear, anger, shame, and curiosity can be discussed. The child should be able to ask the question, "What am I feeling?" They should be able to ask, "Why am I feeling this way?" They should be able to ask, "What can I do with this emotion?"

But the child in Kahramanmaraş could not do this. The anger, emptiness, worthlessness, and "bad" emotions inside him could not be carried anywhere. He wrote his intentions on Discord. He practiced shooting at a firing range. He went to the guidance service many times. But there was no adult anywhere who said, "I see this thing inside you, let's think about it together." Only records were kept. Only forms were filled out. Only the label of "at-risk student" was attached.

And then, that uncarried emotion was put into action. He entered the school with his father's weapons. He killed eleven of his friends and one of his teachers. Then himself.

This is not an individual pathology. This is an institutional failure. The system could not carry the "bad" inside the child. It did not see, hear, or understand him. And that "bad" returned as the Real, as a bloody reality.

It is the same in Siverek. A nineteen-year-old former student entered a vocational high school with a pump-action shotgun. Sixteen people were injured. Why? Because the school could not once say to him, "You belong somewhere here." It could not say, "You have a future." It could not say, "We understand your anger."

It is the same in Çekmeköy. A seventeen-year-old student stabbed his teacher to death. He had recently been discharged from a mental hospital. He had gone to the guidance service many times. But the system reduced him to "individual treatment." It did not see the structural problem. It did not ask how the school, family, society, economy, and culture brought a child to this point.

As Bion said: If emotion cannot be carried, it cannot turn into thought. Emotion that cannot turn into thought either collapses inward (depression, anxiety, silence) or explodes outward (violence, bullying, vandalism). We have been seeing both in Turkey in recent years. Children who commit suicide. Children who raid schools. Children who become silent. Children who become angry.

And the system still says the same thing: "We will increase security measures." Metal detectors. Security cameras. Police in schools. But containment does not happen with a metal detector. Containment happens when a person, a child, can carry their emotions. It happens when a teacher, a counselor, a mother, a father, a neighbor, or a society "hears" that child.

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The Emptying of the Symbolic Order: The Loss of Meaning

Lacan says that the Symbolic order provides a guarantee of meaning through language, law, and the Big Other. The child receives the message that "here, one speaks, boundaries are set, and one thinks." There is "right" and "wrong." There is "justice." There is "meaning."

The early Republic tried to establish this Symbolic order. Science, critical reason, secularism, a "free-thinking" generation. The school was to be the place where meaning was established. The teacher was to be the carrier of this meaning. The curriculum was to be the framework of this meaning.

But today, this Symbolic order has been emptied. The school does not offer a consistent area of law and meaning. Constantly changing curriculum. Constantly changing exam system. Constantly changing teacher appointment system. Constantly changing ideological discourse. The child asks the question, "What am I learning here?" They ask, "Why am I learning it?" They ask, "What use will this information be?" But they do not get a clear answer.

Instead, they receive performance pressure. "Work harder." "Solve more tests." "Be more successful." But the "why" question remains unanswered. Because the system does not want to ask the "why" question. Because the "why" question leads to questioning the system itself. And the system does not want to be questioned.

The child in Kahramanmaraş clearly wrote his intention on Discord. "Tomorrow I will go to school and kill everyone." This was a Symbolic call. "Stop me. Set boundaries for me. Say 'no' to me." But the Symbolic intervention did not happen. No one said "no." No one said "stop." No one said "we understand you." Only records were kept. Only forms were filled out. And then the Real stepped in: death, blood, madness.

It is the same in Siverek. The child entered the school with a pump-action shotgun. "See me. Hear me. I am here." But the system did not see him. It only said "security vulnerability." It said "domestic problem." It said "social media influence." But it did not see the real problem: the collapse of meaning, law, and the Symbolic.

And now, the system is doing the same thing: the debate about "turning schools into police stations." More security. More cameras. More police. But the Symbolic order is not established with police. The Symbolic order is established by a society building a consistent narrative about itself, its children, and its future. It is established by answering the questions, "Who are we?" "Where are we going?" "Why are we here?"

Turkey cannot answer these questions. Because asking these questions means questioning the system itself. And the system does not want to be questioned. It only says "security." It only says "stability." It only says "survival." But a child cannot live with "survival." A child lives with meaning. A child lives with hope. A child lives with the belief that "tomorrow will be better."

And if that belief is gone, the child either collapses inward or explodes outward.

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The Institutionalization of the Paranoid-Schizoid Position: The Fragmented World

Klein says that the paranoid-schizoid position fragments the world into "good" and "bad." The baby splits its mother into a "good mother" and a "bad mother." Because it cannot yet establish an integrated object. The depressive position, on the other hand, offers the possibility of combining these fragments, guilt, reparation, and integration. The baby accepts that its mother is both good and bad, but that it is the same mother.

The education system in Turkey has institutionalized the paranoid-schizoid position. "Us" and "them." "Good student" and "problem child." "National" and "subversive." "Successful" and "unsuccessful." These dualities prevent the transition to the depressive position. They make integration, taking responsibility, and reparation impossible.

After the Kahramanmaraş attack, the social reaction reproduced this paranoid-schizoid splitting. The perpetrator was declared a "monster child." "Not our child." "Exception." "Deviation." The system was completely exonerated and called an "exception." The middle ground — the question, "Why did this child become this way? How do we repair the system? What conditions brought this child to this point?" — narrowed. The transition to the depressive position was blocked.

Yet, the depressive position requires asking exactly these questions. "I also have responsibility." "I am a part of this system." "I am a part of the conditions that made this child this way." "What can I do?" These questions bring with them feelings of guilt, a desire for reparation, and an effort for integration. But Turkey is not ready to ask these questions. Because these questions mean questioning the system itself. And the system does not want to be questioned.

Instead, the discourse of "security" comes into play. "More cameras." "More police." "More punishment." But this feeds the paranoid-schizoid position. "Us" (good, innocent, victim) and "them" (bad, deviant, monster). And this duality fuels violence even more. Because the child pushed into the "them" category begins to see themselves as "them." And being "them" legitimizes violence.

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Zizekian Ideology: "I Know But I Do It Anyway"

Zizek defines ideology not as classic "false consciousness," but as a practical operation. "I know... but I do it anyway." People know the truth, but they ignore it with their behavior. Ideology does not prevent knowledge; it renders the knowledge itself dysfunctional. The most powerful ideology is the one that says, "there is no ideology, only reality."

The basic ideological formula of the Turkish education system is this: "We (the state, national will, values) think. Children obey. Questioning = subversion, betrayal, or corruption."

This formula declares thinking itself dangerous. Critical thinking is coded as "foreign ideology," "un-national," or "disruptive." Thus, thought is left outside the system. As a result, the system produces a subject that cannot think. This subject is the success product of ideology: They do not think, the system thinks for them (or imposes that they do not think).

"I know... but I do it anyway." The teacher knows the curriculum crushes them, yet they teach it. The student knows the system consumes them, yet they do their homework. The parent knows the school is an assembly line, yet they follow the "success" numbers. The administrator knows the system is collapsing, yet they fill out the reports. The minister knows the reforms are not working, yet they announce a new reform.

Everyone knows. But no one does anything. Because to do something means falling outside the system. And those who fall outside the system are considered non-existent. And those considered non-existent eventually vanish.

This ideological formula combines with Turkey's psychological structure. Dependence on authority and fear of belonging. Thinking carries the risk of being excluded from the group. Separating from "us" is perceived as an existential threat. The habit of fragmentation. "Us/them," "good/bad," "national/subversive" dualities prevent depressive integration. Repetition of trauma. Historical traumas (war, coup, economic crisis) make thinking a "luxury" or "dangerous." The language of security replaces the language of thought. Collective denial of the symptom. When violence explodes, it is said, "this is not ours, it's an exception." Thus, the structural problem remains invisible.

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Pessoa's Mirror: The Book of Disquiet

Fernando Pessoa's Bernardo Soares is a subject in whom thought, emotion, and action are disconnected from each other. A man who thinks about life without living it in the gray offices of Lisbon. "I have never done anything but dream," he says. "Action is the disease of thought, the cancer of imagination."

Soares embodies the collapse of containment, the emptying of the Symbolic, the Imaginary fragmentation, and the ideological "I know but I do it anyway" denial. He is the subject successfully produced by the system: he thinks, but his thought connects to nothing; he feels, but his feeling is not carried; he knows, but he does not live with what he knows.

"My soul is impatient, it sees itself as a restless child; its disquiet grows constantly and always remains the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I participate in everything, while at the same time I dream."

This is a bombardment of beta elements. Emotion comes, thought comes, but no "carrier" takes them and gives them meaning. Soares's inner world is a vortex where uncarried emotions constantly collide.

"Each of us is several people, we are many, a crowd of selves. The self that despises its surroundings is not the same as the self that suffers or enjoys those surroundings."

The ego is not a consistent "self," but a sum of conflicting images and voices. The depressive position cannot be reached. In Turkey, the distinction of "us/them," "good student/problem child," "national/subversive" is the collective state of the same Imaginary fragmentation.

"Life is like a ball of yarn that someone is carrying around. If it were tightly wound or completely unwound, it would have meaning. But as it is, it is a tangled ball of yarn that leads nowhere."

Meaning cannot be established. The Big Other has been emptied. Soares says "I think," but his thought does not turn into action, decision, or the production of meaning. This is the individual portrait of the "group that cannot think": Thought exists, but it cannot find a place in the Symbolic order; therefore, it falls into the Real (emptiness, meaninglessness, disquiet).

Soares was at least able to make this rupture the material of literature. The child in school, most of the time, remains a "functional subject" successfully produced by the system without even being able to produce that material.

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Children in School Raids: Those Who Fall into the Real

Pessoa's Soares is a subject in whom thought, emotion, and action are disconnected. The same rupture appears in a rawer, more destructive form in the children involved in school attacks in Turkey between 2024-2026 and their peers affected by these attacks. While the rupture in Soares turns inward, into dreams and disquiet; in these children, it most often explodes outward, into violence and the Real.

The 14-year-old student in Kahramanmaraş clearly writing his intention on Discord before the attack, practicing shooting at a firing range, going to the guidance service many times... These are the screams of beta elements. The system kept these screams as "records," but did not carry them emotionally. The child was forced to put the unthinkable mass inside him into action.

The same inability to carry is seen in children affected by the attack: Instead of turning into a discussable experience, trauma turns into fear, silence, or anger. The school ceases to be a space that holds emotions; it turns into a place where emotions explode.

In the child involved in the attack, the "self" is often fragmented: On one side, the image of the "invisible, worthless, humiliated child," on the other, the "powerful, frightening, finally noticed" image. These two images cannot come together. The transition to the depressive position (integration, guilt, reparation) becomes impossible.

The same fragmentation works among peers: "Us (victim, good) / them (monster, bad)." Children who survive the attack often rebuild the world according to this duality. Soares's "orchestra inside me" becomes the "enemy inside me" and the "enemy outside" here. The self becomes a battlefield of conflicting images.

In children involved in the attack, the Symbolic guarantee has largely collapsed. The school has not been able to offer a consistent area of law and meaning. Performance pressure, ideological language, constantly changing rules, and the message "obey" have emptied the Symbolic. The child says "I think" (writes their intention, plans), but this thought does not sit in any Symbolic context; it falls into action, that is, the Real.

The same emptiness is felt in children affected by the attack: The question "Why did it happen?" remains unanswered. Because meaning cannot be established, the trauma remains as an untellable hole. Soares's "shapeless ball" becomes a bloody ball here.

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How Much Can a Society Tolerate Its Own Children Thinking?

This question is perhaps the most crucial question of this article. Because this question questions not only the education system, but society itself, politics, culture, economy, media, and the family. How much can a society tolerate its own children thinking? Its own children asking questions? Its own children criticizing? Its own children saying "no"?

What answer does Turkey give to this question? In the last twenty years, the answer given to this question is clear: "Not very much." When children ask questions, they are silenced. When they criticize, they are punished. When they say "no," they are excluded. The system wants subjects who obey, do not question, and submit. Not subjects who think, question, and criticize.

But thought does not disappear when silenced. Thought does not disappear when suppressed. When thought is suppressed, it returns as a symptom. School violence is the bloodiest form of this symptom. It is the result of a society that says "I know but I do it anyway" turning into a system that says "I actually do not think."

The dream of the early Republic was a generation with "free ideas, free conscience, and free wisdom." The reality of today is a generation with "cowardly ideas, silenced conscience, and pruned wisdom." This is not a failure. This is exactly the desired result. The system wants to produce subjects who obey, not those who think. And it is succeeding. But this success comes with blood, tears, and trauma. Because when thought is suppressed, it turns into violence.

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Final Word: Broken Mirror

The school was once a place where thought and emotion were carried, symbolically processed, and subjectivity was established. Today, it has turned into an exhausting space where the uncarried explodes. Thought does not connect, emotion is not carried, knowledge is not lived. The result: either sinking inward (depression, anxiety, silence) or exploding outward (violence, bullying, vandalism). Both are two sides of the same rupture.

Soares was at least able to make this rupture the material of literature. The child in school, most of the time, remains a "functional subject" successfully produced by the system without even being able to produce that material: they think, but their thought connects to nothing; they feel, but their feeling is not carried; they know, but they cannot live with what they know.

This is not a failed education. This is an education that works exactly as it wants. The system produces subjects who cannot carry thought and emotion, but who continue to spin within the system anyway. And in this production, it shows its greatest success in those who say, "I know but I do it anyway."

The school is no longer an educational institution, but a containment factory. And when containment collapses in the factory, what emerges is neither learning nor liberation. What emerges is a bloodier, more fallen-into-the-Real, more silent version of Pessoa's Soares.

In Kahramanmaraş, in Siverek, in Çekmeköy. And perhaps tomorrow, somewhere else. In another school. In another child.

"I know... but I do it anyway." Until when? How much longer? How many more children? How many more coffins? How many more tears?

How much can a society tolerate its own children thinking? And when that tolerance ends, what remains?

Perhaps the answer is, as Pessoa said: "Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing."

But perhaps, just perhaps, a beginning. The restarting of thinking. The restarting of talking. The restarting of carrying. The restarting of answering a child's question.

Because thought is not taught only in the classroom. Thought is formed in the answer a society gives to a child's question.

If we silence a child when they ask a question, we are not just silencing a child; we are narrowing the space where experience can turn into research, emotional life into thinking, life into narrative, and the student into forming their own question.

And sometimes, the greatest crisis a society will experience in the future begins, while nothing has happened yet, within a question that is not allowed to be asked.