I don't think she was reading it from a pre-prepared text; she was not repeating what she had memorized. Instead, she spoke her mind and heart, or at least this was my impression.She started her lecture by saying that everyone talks about how bad it is to discriminate, how important democracy and tolerance are, and that just about everyone speaks about traffic rules. She added that unfortunately many people do not obey traffic rules and that discrimination, in all its forms, is rampant.
Her lecture took me to my very first days in elementary school. I remember only a few things from those days, but the things I remember the most are related to discrimination.
In those years, it was still possible for students from different social segments of society to be gathered in the same classroom. My class was one such class. Our teacher was very quick to divide us into groups according to our families' economic status. She did not pay attention to the poor children, and many of them subsequently dropped out of school or were transferred to the classroom next door in time.
The classroom next to ours was heartbreaking. Disabled students, impoverished ones and students with learning difficulties were assigned to this small room. Any children who did not look like “us” were there. Our teacher used to threaten us by saying that she would send us there if we didn't do our homework or if we misbehaved. Of course these threats were valid only for the children whose families were not strong enough to oppose them.
Well, thank God, such classrooms no longer exist -- at least to my knowledge -- but this does not mean that discrimination in school is finished.
Like many people who are interested in discrimination, when I heard that the circular of the Ministry of Education said the first lectures would be devoted to the subject of discrimination, one of the very first questions that came to mind was if the teachers would be able to make good on this promise.
Turkey's young teachers are really different from mine, but it is hard to say that all of them are aware of discrimination. Zübeyde Kılıç from the Education Personnel Union (Eğitim-Sen) told me that related courses at departments of education are not compulsory but elective. She added that the whole education system has aspects of discrimination.
Not giving equal opportunities to everyone is another form of discrimination.
For example, according to a survey conducted by Sabancı University, the richest 20 percent of the society are able to spend 21 times more on education than the poorest 20 percent.
The same survey indicates that 15 percent of youngsters between the ages of 15 and 19 have not graduated from elementary school and that 70 percent of these are girls.
Aside from this economic discrimination in education, school textbooks, according to another survey done by the History Foundation (Tarih Vakfı), are full of social discrimination. Despite efforts to fix them, schoolbooks are still sexist, militarist and discriminative.
The survey also found that the books did not develop critical perspectives and were problematic in terms of creating an “us versus them” mentality and not promoting peaceful values.
According to the report, indirect discrimination is also a common tool in schoolbooks. For example, books used to teach reading give no space to writers who are not ethnically Turkish.
Discrimination does not start or end with education; it permeates all aspects of life. Unfortunately, there are no specific anti-discrimination laws in our judicial system. We also have no regulations about hate speech or hate crimes.
Turkey urgently needs a strong institution to monitor discrimination, this in addition to educating its young generations.
But then again, hearing Çubukçu speak about discrimination and tolerance was very nice. It was very nice to hear her underline gender discrimination.
Yes, there is a long way to go, but it is in our hands to shorten the way and pick up the pace.
