4+4+4 > 8

Without beating around the bush, I propose placing the recent breakthroughs in National Education within the "democratic opening" package. Perhaps presenting it this way was a mistake, but not all steps of the democratic opening process need to be exclusively about the Kurds. Yet all the steps taken touch upon the country's problems of democracy and affect them, so that the Kurdish issue too is affected, by moving in the direction of a solution, through all the steps taken.

Legal arrangements concerning going after unsolved murders, rolling back military and judicial tutelage in politics, settling accounts with the coup mentality, and developing the human rights regime... All of these can at the same time be recorded as giant steps in the democratic opening process as well.

Undoubtedly a significant part of our chronic democratic problems has to do with mentality, and the most important ground on which this mentality is cultivated is our National Education system. The curriculum, content and style of the courses taught in National Education are so ideological that people with a democratic mentality emerging from this curriculum can only be described as a production defect. It can only be a miracle for healthy personalities to come out of children who listen to the jingoistic and semi-mythological narratives of history lessons, constructed in black and white, leaving no place for real personalities. Thankfully, human nature is not entirely closed to these miracles, and a considerable number of healthy people, or people who could not be sufficiently corrupted, can still emerge from this education system.

In recent weeks, the abolition of the National Security courses in high schools in their existing form, and before that the withdrawal of the 19 May ceremonies from stadiums and their transformation into commemorations held inside schools, were recorded as very important steps. These days, on the agenda of National Education is the extension of compulsory education to 12 years, but with its being diversified through a graduated structure in the meantime.

During the 28 February process, the junta members' most important target was the Imam-Hatips. Extending compulsory education to 8 years would give them a great opportunity to attack these schools. By extending basic education to 8 years and making it uninterrupted, the middle sections of the İHL's would be closed, and with the coefficient practice also preventing İHL graduates from going to universities, it was hoped that interest in the schools would decline and that they might perhaps close on their own. While rushing into this practice, the students who lost their rights were treated almost like criminals who had been rounded up and locked away, being allowed neither to transfer to regular high schools nor to have their acquired rights recognized.

On the other hand, in doing this they did not show the courage to target the İHL's directly. To defend the claim that they were presenting it as a system, they applied it as a project covering all vocational high schools. It was quite clear that in the meantime they had no scientific-pedagogical preparation whatsoever regarding the intermediate-staff needs of industry that would arise or the vocational orientation of the students. They were so fixated on annihilating the İHL graduates that they did not even care what it would cost.

They also lacked a politics subtle enough to see the school as a field of opportunity for complex class divisions within itself. Plainly, their politics consisted of nothing but a crude politics of annihilation. Perhaps the only subtle politics they applied while annihilating the İHL's was that they included the vocational high schools alongside them; perhaps in this way they showed that, despite everything, they took the "charge of hostility to the İHL" seriously and somehow avoided it.

If the objections to extending compulsory education to 12 years rest on a miscalculation, let us remind them that 12 is greater than 8. The duration of education is not being reduced but increased. But after the first 4 years of this period, the second four years are arranged so as to allow guidance according to inclinations. With this, both the diversification and reinforcement of vocational education is aimed at, and the most suitable system, with all pedagogical assessments taken into account, is developed.

In truth, the system being developed is not peculiar to Turkey; it exists in all but a very few European countries. Apart from its allowing the middle sections of the Imam-Hatips to reopen, the other point objected to in this graduated structure is allowing girls to take part in this system from the second stage on through the open education system.

In fact, open education as an opportunity does not address only girls. It is merely an opportunity offered to those who, for one reason or another, may not be able to attend formal school. Besides, in an education whose compulsory duration has been extended and which therefore risks becoming an element of pressure, the open education option will not reduce but increase the overall schooling rate of girls. If the goal is to raise the status of women by increasing educational opportunity, one should have no doubt that this too will offer a clear opportunity. Moreover, in such a diversified school system, the proportion of those who would prefer open education to formal education will be very small. But an opportunity lets people feel a little freer. That is no small thing either.

More important than all of these is that education has now become a matter that does not exclude some people but, on the contrary, cares equally about the development of all the country's citizens.