EDUCATION
HISTORY EDUCATION AND TEXTBOOKS
The History Foundation started to deal with the problems of history education by organizing two international symposia and one national symposium, during the years 1993-1995. The proceedings of two symposia were published as Tarih Ögretimi ve Ders Kitaplari (History Teaching and Textbooks) and Tarih Egitimi ve Tarihte 'Öteki' Sorunu (History Education and the 'Other' in History).
The "Youth and History" project, organized by the Körber Foundation and covering 26 European countries, was implemented in Turkey by the History Foundation. The Foundation collaborated with the Ministry of Education in conducting a survey, involving 1,200 students in 35 high schools to determine their views on the subject. The findings of the study conducted in Turkey were edited by Ilhan Tekeli and published in a volume titled Tarih Bilinci ve Gençlik (History Consciousness and Youth).
Following these activities, a program was undertaken aiming to produce elementary school social sciences and high school history textbooks as well as supplementary teaching material. In this context, a workshop titled “The Restructuring of History Education in Turkey at the Middle School Level” was organized at the end of 2000 with the support of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. The workshop included the members of the Ministry of Education Training and Education Committee in addition to history teachers and the results were published as a book. This program seeks to facilitate the mental development of kids and young people by encouraging them to research and analyze, as well as by creating open-minded and creative citizens with empathy for others.
 The Foundation is also carrying out its work on the history textbooks at the international level. “Meeting of European and Turkish History Teachers” supported by the European Union and “Betterment of History Textbooks in the Balkans” supported by the UNESCO, the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the MATRA-KAP Fund of the Government of Holland were two projects that were among the most important activities of 2001.
The Foundation is organizing periodic meetings among history teachers to discuss various aspects of history education. Reports on the meetings held by teachers since May 1999 in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir have been published in the monthly Haberler and are also available on the Foundation's web-site.
In addition to bringing the experienced European history teachers and experts together with a limited number of Turkish history teachers, the History Foundation is seeking to materialize the project to translate into Turkish the series titled “Learning and Teaching European History in the 20th Century” published by the European Council and to distribute it to all primary and secondary schools at the national level.
Another project that the History Foundation has undertaken in the field of textbooks is “Promoting Human Rights in the Primary and Secondary School Textbooks,” supported by the European Council within the framework of “The European Initiative for Human Rights and Democracy – 2001” program and by the Open Society Institute. Within 24-month this project, the History Foundation, in cooperation with Turkish Sciences Academy and Turkish Human Rights Foundation, aims to reconsider the textbooks from the human rights perspective and improve the consciousness for human rights.
An exhibition titled “Rethinking Human Rights and Civil Society in Turkey - A Historical Account with Photographs” will be displayed at 20 different cities, where public conferences will be held. This project is also carried out in cooperation with Turkish Sciences Academy and supported by the European Council.
The History Foundation is a project partner in the two-year project entitled “Training, Education, Management and Pre-History in the Mediterranean - TEMPER” also funded by the European Council and coordinated by Cambridge University. The project aims to develop site management plans and educational programmes for prehistoric sites so that information on Euro-Mediterranean prehistoric sites can become more accesible and more beneficial to all levels of society and that an awareness on cultural heritage management can be developed. Among the four pilot sites selected for the project is Çatalhöyük in Konya, Çumra. Working along with project partners from various universities from Malta, Greece and Israel, the Foundation will specifically focus on creating educational programs for and producing educational materials, web site, CD-ROM and a documentary on Çatalhöyük and the archaeology discipline in general.
The History Foundation also carries out work towards the improvement of history teaching at the university level. In this context, the first of the annual meetings that bring together the student representatives of the history departments of universities was held in May 2001 at the Middle East Technical University Conference and Cultural Center with support from the History Department of the University. The History Foundation continues to work towards making these meetings continuous and more productive.
PROJECT FOR PROMOTING HUMAN RIGHTS IN PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS
The Project for Promoting Human Rights in Primary and Secondary School Textbooks which began in May 2002, was carried out under the auspices of the Turkish Academy of Sciences, by the History Foundation in cooperation with the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey and with the financial support of the European Commission and the Open Society Institute. Its aim was to determine the human rights content context of school textbooks, formulate recommendations for their improvement, and to foster awareness of and respect for human rights norms in school textbooks and the school environment, among school teachers, textbook writers, parents, and educators in general, at both the grass roots and the official levels.
The findings of the survey of 190 textbooks from all subjects and years, conducted with the participation of close to three hundred volunteers, who consisted mainly of school teachers, but also included senior university students and parents, are reported at length in a volume titled Human Rights in Textbooks, the Turkish Case (in English) introduced and edited by Prof. Gürol Irzik and Dr. Deniz Tarba Ceylan. In vindication of the basic premises of the survey, an overwhelming number of reports of problematic usages were related to basic educational practices, and therefore these also constitute the main issues which are emphasized in our final recommendations.
In Turkish, three different volumes, one on the survey results, another on writing more human rights sensitive textbooks, and a third, a guidebook for the teachers, for a more human rights friendly school environment, appeared in December 2004.
A survey for qualitatively and quantitatively determining the attitudes and practices towards human rights, with the aid of a questionnaire and focus groups, was conducted in six cities in Turkey with 1200 students and 300 teachers. The findings of this survey are due to appear in books form.
Grass roots watchdog committees have been set up in six provinces in Turkey to keep up the surveillance of textbooks with respect to human rights criteria, and trainer training programs have been conducted for 165 teachers, with the aim of enabling them to critically assess their own school and teaching experiences.
An international symposium was held in April 2004 on Human Rights Education and Textbook Research to compare approaches and experiences on an international level, to develop suggestions for the sectors concerned and communicate key findings. The proceedings of the Symposium will apear under the title How Are We Educated?
The Recommendations to the Ministry of Education is final action item of the Project for Promoting Human Rights in Primary and Secondary School Textbooks.
RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION
BASIC PREMISES
There is an intimate connection between the transition to a knowledge-based society, the fostering of a pluralistic cultural climate, the institution of a culture of peace and aims of democracy, on the one hand, and the modernization of our educational system and instructional materials in compliance with human rights criteria, on the other. Raising active, responsible and participatory citizens presupposes that the educational system and textbooks are brought in line with these aims.
i) A modern and a democratic society can only be constituted by citizens who can establish realistic relations with their environment, and who can reason in terms of causes-and-effects.
ii) We believe that a society and mode of production founded upon science, technology and communications also call for such individuals.
iii) A didactical approach to education is unable to provide the skills demanded by a knowledge-based society.
In the course of the "Project on Human Rights in Textbooks," textbooks in current use and the present educational practices have been scrutinized on the basis of the above assumptions, and criteria developed during the project. A discussion of the criteria is to be found in the Introduction of Human Rights in Textbooks, (in English) introduced and edited by Prof. Gürol Irzik and Dr. Deniz Tarba Ceylan (Tarih Vakfi Publications, Istanbul 2004). For a complete list of the survey criteria please see Appendix, HRITB.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Below is a series of recommendations based upon the findings of the textbook survey. The recommendations are organized under the headings of
A . Textbook content
i) Basic pedagogical approaches
ii) Human rights education context in school curricula
iii) Human rights education content of the textbooks
iv) Peace and human rights
B. Curriculum reform
C. School environment
D. Respect for the “right to a good education”
A. Textbook content
i) Basic pedagogical approaches
Recommendation 1. We recommend that special care be taken to put social phenomena and historical processes in their proper, historical context and that the causality relations between events, trends, etc. should be emphasized and discussed; it should be stressed that societies are subject to change and transformation under both internal and external influences and interactions. Views maintaining that social and historical phenomena emanate in some inescapable way from innate attributes (essentialism) form systems of belief closed to scientific criticism and scrutiny, and therefore should be avoided in textbooks.
An essentialist approach ignores the existence of societal and historical processes and offers ahistorical “explanations” of social phenomena, denies that society and the world can be changed by the interaction and participation of citizens, and presents change as degeneration and a form of moving away from the "true essence.” It thus fosters individuals who are authoritarian, insular, and who are not at peace with themselves and others, and who lack the capacity for consensus seeking and flexibility.
Recommendation 2. We recommend that the very widespread didactic approach based on impressing the “right thoughts” on the student (rather than fostering careful and critical thinking habits) should be abandoned. Great care should be taken to distinguish between expressions which contain moral, religious, emotional, political, ideological opinions, wishes, suggestions, value judgments, from falsifiable assertions that have a claim to being scientific, or have an empirical or logical basis. The presentation of various articles of belief –religious or nonreligious- in the guise of objective information should be avoided.
The course on "Religion and Morals" should be reformed in such a way that it imparts information on the various belief systems in the world.
Recommendation 3. We recommend that information should always be presented in a way which is well motivated, and should rest on empirical facts or logical reasoning. Material in the textbooks must be accessible to the student; it must be well grounded and testable, at least in principle. The presentation should take into account a student's language skills or the conceptualization ability appropriate to the student's age. Arguments should not make references to some higher " authority" to establish the legitimacy of a claim.
ii) The context of human rights education in the school syllabus
The aims of human rights education are the strengthening of the respect for human rights and basic freedoms, to promote democracy, social justice, solidarity and friendship between peoples and countries, to foster active citizenship, and to establish a culture of peace resting on universal human rights values.
These aims should be pursued not just in the course on human rights education or in civics, but also throughout the rest of the curriculum.
Recommendation 4. Textbooks should embody and transmit the image of a pluralist society and a world model which perceives diversity as an asset, and not as a threat.
Students should learn to resolve conflicts by mutual understanding and negotiation, in ways which benefit all sides and avoid rigid and unproductive dichotomies.
Empathy between individuals and between social groups should be acquired by the student, as well as the social skills to facilitate the coexistence of diverse groups in equality, in peace and mutual respect, rather than “tolerance,” implying an “implicit hierarchy."
Feelings of solidarity and justice, which underlie human rights values, should be given their due.
Recommendation 5. Human rights education is indissolubly coupled with civic education. In the text books, civic duties should be framed in a participatory, creative, productive and transformative context.
In a modern society, the measure of love for one's country should not be to "die and kill for the motherland." Instead of such simplifications which exalt death and killing and which prejudice the culture of peace, textbooks must serve to raise an awareness that individuals can positively change their lives and environments through active participation while respecting democratic values and human rights. Instead of blind obedience, critical reasoning and democratic participation should be encouraged.
iii) The content of Human Rights Education
The definitions of human rights and freedoms are enshrined in international documents. The definitions and interpretations given in he textbooks should be in accordance with these basic documents.
Recommendation 6. Civics instruction is based upon duties and responsibilities as much as rights and liberties. However, the stressing of the duties and responsibilities at the expense of the rights and freedoms, in such as way that the latter are reduced to a secondary or subordinate status, comes into conflict with the aims of human rights education. Moreover, the arbitrary definition of some duties as "rights," thus creating semantic confusion in this way, should be avoided in the textbooks.
Human rights cannot be abridged at the discretion of the state, or their enjoyment arbitrarily limited to given areas recognized by the state. Human Rights should not be de-contextualized from their historical framework. Rights and liberties should not be represented as if they were the antithesis of security and stability.
Recommendation 7. Textbooks should be freed from violations of the liberty of religion and of conscience. A close relation between secularism (laicism) and human rights should be established and secularism should be elaborated as a universally accepted political and philosophical value instead of a matter of historical or national convenience.
Recommendation 8. All forms of discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, cultural identity, class, religion, language should be eliminated.
Textbooks must be purged of all kinds of usage and applications which associate only a certain, restricted, set of social roles with women.
Expressions that may cause a general hostility against a religious, ethnic or cultural group must be avoided.
All statements that may cause a discrimination against the members of minority groups must be avoided.
All forms of xenophobia must be avoided.
iv) Peace and human rights.
Peace is the precondition for the enjoyment of human rights. Human rights education therefore has to be coupled with Peace Education.
Recommendation 9. Overtly or covertly, textbooks must not glorify assumed “national values,” presumably pertaining only to “us,” at the expense of “other” societies and cultures; condescension and enmity towards "others" must be avoided.
Interest, curiosity and respect towards the common cultural heritage of humankind and towards different cultures should be fostered.
More space should be reserved for the history, geography and cultural studies of countries other than Turkey, especially its neighbors. Information regarding Turkey should be placed in its proper context within Europe and the world, so that the student can form a balanced sense of belonging at the local, national, European and world level.
Recommendation 10. Construction of the national identity on the assumption of ever present external threats and references to eternal and immutable “friends” or “foes” are obstacles on the way towards the establishment of a culture of peace.
The recent past should be taught in a way that it transmits the common will for living in peace with Turkey's neighbors, on the basis of a capacity for negotiation and mutual accord among equals, respecting the interests of all parties.
Depicting Turkey as if it were always surrounded by enemies, or a part of the citizens as “internal enemies” is not to be allowed in any textbook.
Students should be helped to achieve a consciousness of being a member of a complex, pluralistic world and of “being an equal member in the family of humankind.” The love of one's country tempered with such feelings of belonging and solidarity are the only basis on which to build greater security for our society.
Recommendation 11. The content of the course on National Security, which comes into conflict with the above stated guidelines, should be reevaluated. Ways should be sought to implement a peace education based upon the principle of "peace in the country, peace in the world," with the aim of safeguarding and deepening peace as the way to achieving security.
B. Curriculum reform
There is a close relationship between the school context, educational aids, the Ministry of Education, school administration, teachers and students, and the curricula. It should be our aim to improve the performance of this whole, not just textbooks.
Recommendation 12. The curriculum, which is the basis of the textbooks' general design, must be prepared as a short, flexible guiding text, in line with the educational approach outlined in the above paragraphs.
Recommendation 13. Course materials other than textbooks, especially parallel “teacher's guide books” specific to each textbook must be produced in keeping with the above educational tenets.
Recommendation 14. The relation of the Ministry of National Education with the community of education must allow participation, be dynamic and open to changes. It must provide for continued "on the job training" of teachers.
C. The school environment
Recommendation 15. The school environment must be as equitable and innovative as possible, so that students have the opportunity of expressing themselves, and establishing relations of respect and trust with their surroundings. There must be laboratories where they can perform experiments. Such an environment should provide them with the chance to develop projects and to take responsibility.
Recommendation 16. The relation between parents, teachers and school administration should be revitalized, enabling parents to actively assist the achievement of universal standards in education. The “Parent and School Associations” should make a contribution towards educating the parents as well as the children, especially with regard to human rights values.
D. Respect for the “right to a good education ”
Recommendation 17. In addition to the above outlined improvements regarding human rights in textbooks, all kinds of outdated information, tautologies, contradictory statements, incorrect definitions/explanations, inconsistent and irrelevant conclusions, false premises, questions and tests based on rote learning, visual materials unrelated to the text, out-of-context tokens or symbols of an ideological nature, and mystification and obfuscation in general should be eliminated from the text books.
The expertise of university professors should be called upon to ensure the factual correctness of the textbooks.
Textbooks should be printed with proper attention to quality. To affect the above improvements, a reasonable amount of subsidy by the Ministry of Education, rather than an artificial ceiling on the textbook prices, may be called for.
CONCRETE GAINS AND SUSTAINABILITY
In the course of this project, several positive developments have taken place on the education front.
One of the concrete, and very important developments accompanying the Human Rights in Textbooks project is enshrined in the Amendments to the Ministry of Education Regulations on Textbooks, (Official Gazette 17/3/2004/25405) Article 6, paragraph a-3), which now stipulates that textbooks may not contravene the basic tenets of human rights, and may not harbor discriminatory elements based on gender, religion, denomination, language, color, political persuasion, philosophy or similar grounds. This condition should be complemented with the inclusion of this criterion in the evaluation form for the textbooks.
The Rules and Regulations on Primary Education have also been amended (Official Gazette 21.10.2004/ 25620), and now it is stated that among the aims of primary education is to impart to the students an awareness of human rights, children's rights, and their rights under international agreements, and the skill to use them. The new Rules and Regulations also stress that the student should acquire the skills and habits of actively taking part in collective projects to benefit her/his society and environment.
Beginning in August 2004, the new primary education curriculum was made public and a lot of the pedagogical concerns voiced in the course of the Project are echoed in the new curriculum. The present changes are toward greater autonomy for the teacher, a more loosely structured program, with many "activities" involving the students in the learning process, and a departure from rote learning, towards a more creative and less book-oriented approach. Moreover, teachers' books, and supplementary material for the students, are being made into an integral part of the educational materials. (The Turkish Academy of Sciences has published its opinion on the new curriculum reform at the web address http://www.tuba.gov.tr, in Turkish.) In the light of these developments, it was deemed necessary to formulate the supplementary recommendations presented below:
SUPPLEMENTARY RECOMMENDATIONS IN THE LIGHT OF THE CURRICULUM REFORM
Suppl. Recommendation 1. The effective participation of all concerned parties of the educational community should be secured in the formulation of the curricula, textbooks, teachers' books and other instructional aids.
Suppl. Recommendation 2. Greater funds should be set aside for the continuing education of the teachers, in order for the curriculum reform to be successful.
Suppl. Recommendation 3. It is clear that human rights education cannot be accomplished just by means of a single course. It is indeed appropriate that the concern for the acquisition of the skills and attitudes intended by the Human Rights Education Course should permeate the whole curriculum. However we believe it would be detrimental to human rights education to take this course off the program. The content of Human Rights Education is just as important as the general context. Taking this course off the program will create an essential gap in this regard.
Suppl. Recommendation 4. It is of the utmost importance that all the textbooks, teachers' books and other teaching aids developed in the course of the present curriculum reform be surveyed by teachers, parents and other members of the educational community, in accordance with the guidelines and the criteria elaborated during this Project. Such a follow-up and wide-spread evaluation is indispensable for sustaining the awareness brought about by the Project. |
