4+4+4=?
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The law has two fundamental aims: economical (turning the secondary education into a source of cheap or free labour force for the capital) and political /ideological(generalising Sunnite Islamic education).

 

01 April 2012 /International Bulletin / No: 115

 

The AKP government has started a comprehensive transformation in the education system by approving the "Draft Law On Making Changes In The Law No.222 On Primary Education and General Education And In Some Laws" in the congress, the draft law which is shortly known as 4+4+4.
The law followed the words of the Prime Minister Erdogan saying: "We want to bring up a religious generation", which provoked intensive discussions, and therefore the religious/ideological dimension of this law came to the forefront. Its content is the regulation of the education system according to the actual necessities of the capital, especially those of the green capital, in ideological, political and especially economical terms.
This transformation project was put forward initially by the 9th Meeting of the Abant Platform organised by the Gulen Community in 2005. The content of the law was formulated and decided as a Recommendation in the 18th National Education Council organised by the teachers' union Egitim Bir-Sen, the union controlled by AKP, which tries to stonewall the social struggles by creating its own Kurds, its own Allevites, its own unions and workers. The hurry of the Prime Minister Erdogan in approving the draft law can be considered in relation with its urge of gaining initiative using this topic, which is an important issue for the Islamist base, because of the ruptures with the Gulen Community, those came to light in the recent period.
Together with the "Law On Social Security Reform and General Health Insurance", by which the AKP government aims at a similar comprehensive transformation in the health sector and the seizure of the right to health care of the workers and labourers, and the Draft Law No.4688, named as the "Law of Fake Union", which completely disregards the regulations about the unions demanded by the labouring public employees, the law of 4+4+4 caused that the labouring public employees, those from the education and health sector at the first place, students and all workers and labourers started to resist against it through widespread actions.
According to the law of 4+4+4, education is regulated as 4-year-long primary school, 4-year-long secondary school and 4-year-long post-secondary, under the name of increasing the duration of the compulsory education from 8 years to 12 years. The minimum school starting age is decreased from 72 months to 60 months. The phrase "Primary education is gratis in state schools" which was included in the original version of the law on primary education is omitted. After the first 4 years consisting of the fundamental and general curriculum, optional classes start under the name of "orientation to profession". Pre-school education is even not mentioned in the law.
The law has two fundamental aims: economical (turning the secondary education into a source of cheap or free labour force for the capital) and political /ideological(generalising Sunnite Islamic education).
With the words "We will increase the number of the profession schools at a rate of %65-70", the government had given the signal of a further generalisation of the profession schools, which already provide free labour force for the capital through apprenticeship exploitation. With 4+4+4. the profession schools are systematised in such way to be able to form the vertebra of the primary education. These words of the government were a promise given to the capital; the credit for the project was provided by the EU and the foreseen comeback of the credits was the legalisation and generalisation of the exploitation of all kind of cheap labour force and especially infant labour force.
The regulation made by the 4+4+4 brings the following concerning this issue: The school starting age is decreased to 5, "orientation to profession" follows the first 4 years of principal education. As a result, through "education predominantly based on orientation to profession" as of the age of 10 and through direct apprenticeship exploitation by profession schools as of the age of 13-14, exploitation of the child labour as cheap or even free labour force is being legalised. In parallel, by a change made in the Law On Professional Education, the limit that every enterprise can employ a number of apprentices corresponding to the one tenth of the total number of the employed is being lifted and the way for using the apprenticeship as a system of exploitation of free labour force in a massive manner is being opened.
Moreover, it is promoted to open an important part of the profession schools directly in the Organised Industrial Zones. The government says "I'm already spending a certain amount of money for each student, so I will pay the money to the businessmen who open schools" and plans to pay the bosses 1000 TL pro student for the schools that will be opened in the organised exploitation zones. So it kills three birds with one stone: enterprise (the opportunities for establishing schools which will function in a commercial way - paid education), labour force (both direct exploitation by apprenticeship and education of qualified workers for the future) and credits (that the state pays promotions to the bosses once more using the taxes paid by the workers and labourers). Thus the workers are exploited or robbed three times; as a worker, as a consumer of services (education) and as a citizen (tax-payer). In addition, the fact that the draft law makes the distance learning (home-schools) possible after the first 4 years under the name of increasing the duration of compulsory education from 8 to 12 years actually decreases it in a de-facto manner to 4 years will obviously bear the result that a large sector will be even deprived of access to the profession schools and will leave schools for being exploited in outsourcing companies.
The law on education made by AKP represents a comprehensive respond to the necessities of development of especially the medium-scaled capitalists and for the green capital. However, yet it does not correspond to the labour-force demand of TUSIAD formulated as "a young generation of workers who are entrepreneurial, competitive, proactive, close to the technological developments, speaking at least one foreign language, and able to use computer at an advanced level". The contradictions between the AKP and TUSIAD concerning the law are resulted from this fact. The Fatih Project (Movement for Investigating the Opportunities and Advancing the Technology in Education - the abbreviation also corresponds to the name of the Ottoman sultan Fatih who conquered Istanbul form the Bizantines; thus carries an ideological meaning, too), as the self R&D project of the front of AKP-Gulen Community is also an important axis of the planned comprehensive transformation in the education system. By this draft law, this project is taken from the control of the Public Procurement Law and the way for a huge rent-profiteering is opened. The need of the capital for qualified education and technological support is again provided by the Islamic capital. So the Islamic capital gains an important advantage in competition by this aspect, too.
Not only the students and their families but also the teachers are brought face to face with an important seizure of rights by this law. Right after the draft law is put in force, all the teachers who teach for the 5th classes become "over-normed". Moreover, the transition to a system predominated by "optional lessons" and "branch lessons" without the preparation of the infrastructure, which means without having the enough number of branch teachers staffed by the Ministry of National Education, opens the way for flexible and subcontracted employment of tens of thousands of teachers.
The second fundamental aim of the draft law is the ideological aspect. First of all, the religious vocational schools (imam-hatip - "IHL"), that was lifted from the secondary education by the increase of the duration of the compulsory education from 5 years to 8 years as an element of the clash of the conflicts between the army front and the AKP-Gulen front, are becoming available even after the first 4 years. Moreover, however, religious education is being generalised not only by the IHLs but also by adding several optional lessons such as the Koran, Fiqh and Arabic language to the curriculum of the general education in addition to the existing compulsory religion classes. Although the government says that this kind of optional lessons will be available for the other religions, too, it is clear that only the Sunnite Islamic education will be generalised, through methods such as the fact that there is no infrastructure in terms of the respective branch teachers.
However, the fact that the question is frequently taken as a conflict between secularism and Shariah is also open to create big illusions. The supposed debates between AKP, which wants to bring up a religious generation, and the secular CHP hide away the fact that the CHP, "symbol of secularism", is the party who has opened the highest number of IHLs during the period of the republic and the one who brought the compulsory religious lessons into the curriculum was the "secular" army front. However, it is clear that the ideological aspect of the law is one of the main aims of the AKP. This ideological aspect of the law also brings the imbrications of sexism in education. Since the school starting age is decreased on the one hand and the age for starting "distance learning" is decreased on the other hand, the law meets the demand frequently raised by the Islamic sectors for a possibility to withdraw the girls from schools at early ages, to put them in Islamic covering and to get them married. In our region, where 33 % of all the women getting married are children, the number of the child-brides will burst out with this. Moreover, through the orientation of the girls to the fields such as "handiwork", "handicraft", "child care", "home economy and management" within the context of "orientation to profession", the sexist elements in the education system are multiplied.
In addition, the demand for education in the mother tongue, which is among the main demands of the Kurdish people, is brushed over under the name of "optional lessons of Kurdish language".
The law already brought the numerous actions and activities of the democratic organisations such as the KESK , Egitim-Sen and LOB . A united struggle against this move of education of the AKP under the slogan "equal, gratis, scientific education in the mother tongue", which is among the main democratic demands and slogans in our region for many years, being increased by the students, educators and all workers and labourers, who are a direct component of the question of education as parents, the Kurdish people and the Kurdish youth, who suffer from the seizure of their right to education in the mother tongue in addition to these questions, the democratic Allevite movement under the oppression of the monolithic Sunnite religious education can turn into an important channel of struggle in the close future.
 

 

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4+4+4=?
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The law has two fundamental aims: economical (turning the secondary education into a source of cheap or free labour force for the capital) and political /ideological(generalising Sunnite Islamic education).

 

01 April 2012 /International Bulletin / No: 115

 

The AKP government has started a comprehensive transformation in the education system by approving the "Draft Law On Making Changes In The Law No.222 On Primary Education and General Education And In Some Laws" in the congress, the draft law which is shortly known as 4+4+4.
The law followed the words of the Prime Minister Erdogan saying: "We want to bring up a religious generation", which provoked intensive discussions, and therefore the religious/ideological dimension of this law came to the forefront. Its content is the regulation of the education system according to the actual necessities of the capital, especially those of the green capital, in ideological, political and especially economical terms.
This transformation project was put forward initially by the 9th Meeting of the Abant Platform organised by the Gulen Community in 2005. The content of the law was formulated and decided as a Recommendation in the 18th National Education Council organised by the teachers' union Egitim Bir-Sen, the union controlled by AKP, which tries to stonewall the social struggles by creating its own Kurds, its own Allevites, its own unions and workers. The hurry of the Prime Minister Erdogan in approving the draft law can be considered in relation with its urge of gaining initiative using this topic, which is an important issue for the Islamist base, because of the ruptures with the Gulen Community, those came to light in the recent period.
Together with the "Law On Social Security Reform and General Health Insurance", by which the AKP government aims at a similar comprehensive transformation in the health sector and the seizure of the right to health care of the workers and labourers, and the Draft Law No.4688, named as the "Law of Fake Union", which completely disregards the regulations about the unions demanded by the labouring public employees, the law of 4+4+4 caused that the labouring public employees, those from the education and health sector at the first place, students and all workers and labourers started to resist against it through widespread actions.
According to the law of 4+4+4, education is regulated as 4-year-long primary school, 4-year-long secondary school and 4-year-long post-secondary, under the name of increasing the duration of the compulsory education from 8 years to 12 years. The minimum school starting age is decreased from 72 months to 60 months. The phrase "Primary education is gratis in state schools" which was included in the original version of the law on primary education is omitted. After the first 4 years consisting of the fundamental and general curriculum, optional classes start under the name of "orientation to profession". Pre-school education is even not mentioned in the law.
The law has two fundamental aims: economical (turning the secondary education into a source of cheap or free labour force for the capital) and political /ideological(generalising Sunnite Islamic education).
With the words "We will increase the number of the profession schools at a rate of %65-70", the government had given the signal of a further generalisation of the profession schools, which already provide free labour force for the capital through apprenticeship exploitation. With 4+4+4. the profession schools are systematised in such way to be able to form the vertebra of the primary education. These words of the government were a promise given to the capital; the credit for the project was provided by the EU and the foreseen comeback of the credits was the legalisation and generalisation of the exploitation of all kind of cheap labour force and especially infant labour force.
The regulation made by the 4+4+4 brings the following concerning this issue: The school starting age is decreased to 5, "orientation to profession" follows the first 4 years of principal education. As a result, through "education predominantly based on orientation to profession" as of the age of 10 and through direct apprenticeship exploitation by profession schools as of the age of 13-14, exploitation of the child labour as cheap or even free labour force is being legalised. In parallel, by a change made in the Law On Professional Education, the limit that every enterprise can employ a number of apprentices corresponding to the one tenth of the total number of the employed is being lifted and the way for using the apprenticeship as a system of exploitation of free labour force in a massive manner is being opened.
Moreover, it is promoted to open an important part of the profession schools directly in the Organised Industrial Zones. The government says "I'm already spending a certain amount of money for each student, so I will pay the money to the businessmen who open schools" and plans to pay the bosses 1000 TL pro student for the schools that will be opened in the organised exploitation zones. So it kills three birds with one stone: enterprise (the opportunities for establishing schools which will function in a commercial way - paid education), labour force (both direct exploitation by apprenticeship and education of qualified workers for the future) and credits (that the state pays promotions to the bosses once more using the taxes paid by the workers and labourers). Thus the workers are exploited or robbed three times; as a worker, as a consumer of services (education) and as a citizen (tax-payer). In addition, the fact that the draft law makes the distance learning (home-schools) possible after the first 4 years under the name of increasing the duration of compulsory education from 8 to 12 years actually decreases it in a de-facto manner to 4 years will obviously bear the result that a large sector will be even deprived of access to the profession schools and will leave schools for being exploited in outsourcing companies.
The law on education made by AKP represents a comprehensive respond to the necessities of development of especially the medium-scaled capitalists and for the green capital. However, yet it does not correspond to the labour-force demand of TUSIAD formulated as "a young generation of workers who are entrepreneurial, competitive, proactive, close to the technological developments, speaking at least one foreign language, and able to use computer at an advanced level". The contradictions between the AKP and TUSIAD concerning the law are resulted from this fact. The Fatih Project (Movement for Investigating the Opportunities and Advancing the Technology in Education - the abbreviation also corresponds to the name of the Ottoman sultan Fatih who conquered Istanbul form the Bizantines; thus carries an ideological meaning, too), as the self R&D project of the front of AKP-Gulen Community is also an important axis of the planned comprehensive transformation in the education system. By this draft law, this project is taken from the control of the Public Procurement Law and the way for a huge rent-profiteering is opened. The need of the capital for qualified education and technological support is again provided by the Islamic capital. So the Islamic capital gains an important advantage in competition by this aspect, too.
Not only the students and their families but also the teachers are brought face to face with an important seizure of rights by this law. Right after the draft law is put in force, all the teachers who teach for the 5th classes become "over-normed". Moreover, the transition to a system predominated by "optional lessons" and "branch lessons" without the preparation of the infrastructure, which means without having the enough number of branch teachers staffed by the Ministry of National Education, opens the way for flexible and subcontracted employment of tens of thousands of teachers.
The second fundamental aim of the draft law is the ideological aspect. First of all, the religious vocational schools (imam-hatip - "IHL"), that was lifted from the secondary education by the increase of the duration of the compulsory education from 5 years to 8 years as an element of the clash of the conflicts between the army front and the AKP-Gulen front, are becoming available even after the first 4 years. Moreover, however, religious education is being generalised not only by the IHLs but also by adding several optional lessons such as the Koran, Fiqh and Arabic language to the curriculum of the general education in addition to the existing compulsory religion classes. Although the government says that this kind of optional lessons will be available for the other religions, too, it is clear that only the Sunnite Islamic education will be generalised, through methods such as the fact that there is no infrastructure in terms of the respective branch teachers.
However, the fact that the question is frequently taken as a conflict between secularism and Shariah is also open to create big illusions. The supposed debates between AKP, which wants to bring up a religious generation, and the secular CHP hide away the fact that the CHP, "symbol of secularism", is the party who has opened the highest number of IHLs during the period of the republic and the one who brought the compulsory religious lessons into the curriculum was the "secular" army front. However, it is clear that the ideological aspect of the law is one of the main aims of the AKP. This ideological aspect of the law also brings the imbrications of sexism in education. Since the school starting age is decreased on the one hand and the age for starting "distance learning" is decreased on the other hand, the law meets the demand frequently raised by the Islamic sectors for a possibility to withdraw the girls from schools at early ages, to put them in Islamic covering and to get them married. In our region, where 33 % of all the women getting married are children, the number of the child-brides will burst out with this. Moreover, through the orientation of the girls to the fields such as "handiwork", "handicraft", "child care", "home economy and management" within the context of "orientation to profession", the sexist elements in the education system are multiplied.
In addition, the demand for education in the mother tongue, which is among the main demands of the Kurdish people, is brushed over under the name of "optional lessons of Kurdish language".
The law already brought the numerous actions and activities of the democratic organisations such as the KESK , Egitim-Sen and LOB . A united struggle against this move of education of the AKP under the slogan "equal, gratis, scientific education in the mother tongue", which is among the main democratic demands and slogans in our region for many years, being increased by the students, educators and all workers and labourers, who are a direct component of the question of education as parents, the Kurdish people and the Kurdish youth, who suffer from the seizure of their right to education in the mother tongue in addition to these questions, the democratic Allevite movement under the oppression of the monolithic Sunnite religious education can turn into an important channel of struggle in the close future.