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School Textbooks and PoliticsPage 1 of 2
While in the classical period, history education was limited to members of the ruling elite, especially those in the Ottoman palace, during the 19th century it came to be an important instrument for bringing up statesmen as well as learned classes. This is to some extend related to the emergence of history as an academic discipline in the 19th century. Besides the institutions of bureaucracy and military, education has been one of the most significant institutions by which the official state ideology is conveyed to mass population and their obedience and loyalty is assured. It is for this reason that one of the essential functions of education, not only in the Ottoman Empire, but also in other countries as well, has been the functioning of “social disciplining” (Somel, 2001, 5). As it is detailed below, this social disciplining easily shifted into “social engineering”. However, it is also a well known fact that the modern history has many examples of governments that tried to convey their values and ideologies to the society through educational means. They considered the educational institutions not only as places for obtaining knowledge, skills and talents, but also as places where the pupils could be indoctrinated with the state ideology or weltanschaung. In this context, the school textbooks and the curriculums are quite useful in tracing the reflections of state ideology. In a similar fashion, the textbooks in Late Ottoman Empire played crucial role in conveying the Ottomanism of Tanzimat period, the Islamism of Hamidian regime and the Nationalism of the Young Turk Era. It was during the Tanzimat period (1839-1876) that patriotism and citizenship came to the forefront in education. In accordance with the Ottomanism policy, congregational structures (millets) were allowed certain freedom with regard to primary education. The policy of Ottomanism was more visible in the sultani schools in which Muslim and non-Muslims were educated together. In parallel with the westernization/modernization process of the Tanzimat period, textbooks were translated in to Ottoman Turkish under the institutional guidance of Encümen-i Danis, established in 1851 (Alkan, 2008, 28). The result was that when compared with the courses on religion, the science courses dominated the curriculums. Courses on moral values and religion were almost not taught after the rüsdiye schools. History textbooks regarded the Tanzimat modernization/westernization as an achievement in Ottoman history. As Somel pointed out, the Hamidian period (1876-1908) prohibited any school instruction independent of the repetition of the textual content of those schoolbooks approved by the Ministry of Public Education. Thus the usage of textbooks with the desired educational content became a standardized procedure in the late Ottoman Empire (Somel, 2001, 7). The yearbook of education contains a section which indicates the time schedule of each topic to be taught in the schools. Which subject should be taught at which longevity? Which class is proper for the teaching of a particular topic? Similar questions were answered in the yearbook of education. |
