‘No‐one respects them anyway’: secondary school students’ perceptions of human rights education in Turkey

Abstract

The incorporation of compulsory courses on human rights into the secondary school curriculum in 1998 has been an important first step in developing respect for human rights and responsibilities among the younger generation in Turkey. Yet, these courses have many shortcomings in terms of materials, pedagogy and teacher attitudes. This paper explores Grades 7 and 8 (ages 13 and 14) students’ experiences in Citizenship and Human Rights Education courses on the basis of qualitative data collected through focus group discussions in Ankara and Istanbul in the 2006–2007 academic year. The responses of the students indicate that these courses have had little impact in empowering students or in facilitating them to consider their own or others’ human rights as an integral part of their lives. Rather, the students perceive the national and the global arena as characterized by mass human rights violations against which they feel powerless. The paper draws attention to the importance of a revised human rights education for students along with a global focus and appropriate methodology.

Keywords:

• human rights education
• education in Turkey
• textbooks

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey) for providing financial support for his studies at the Centre for Citizenship and Human Rights Education at the University of Leeds.

Notes

1. The Ministry of Internal Affairs announced in 1999 that all governors, provincial governors and police chiefs had attended human rights seminars organized by the Education Department of the Ministry. The Ministry of Justice also reported that a great majority of judges and public prosecutors have been trained in human rights (Çayır 2007).

2. Göle (2000, 48) points out that ‘Non‐Westerners are alienated from their own present which they want to overcome by projecting themselves either to the utopian future or to the golden age of the past’.