III.2. Demography of Growing Numbers: Quantity or Quality

III.2. Demography of Growing Numbers: Quantity or Quality

The democratic “Spirit of the ‘46”, using the slogan that “Laicité is not paganism, atheism or enmity of religion”, has remained in power ever since, except for interim periods of coalitions and three interventions by the Armed Forces (in 1960, 1971 and 1980), all supposedly on behalf of the “Secular Republic”. The democratic platform rose and rode on a “5-point program”: water, roads, land, credit and the mosque for peasants. Death rates were going down and life expectancy coming up, from an average of 35 years to upwards of 60. The internal migration was gaining momentum. Roads allowed peasant to discover the city for the first time. Land and credits improved the daily cycle at the homestead. New domes and renovated minarets symbolized the surviving spirit of Islam in the countryside.

Demographically speaking Turkish society was growing and rapidly changing. It was growing at the rate of 2.5 % per year. This rate was enough to double the national population every two decades or so. More significantly however, due to internal migration, the country was urbanising at the rate of nearly 5%, double the rate of national growth. Riding pretty on the wave of rural push and urban pull, peasants began settling in the city but did not turn urban. With limited employment opportunities waiting for them, they began building their own gecekondus (“built-overnights”) on somebody-else's property. They created new marginal sectors of the city. They became their own employers and employees. Come election time, political parties promised them everything under the sky. Fines and debts would be forgiven, taxes deferred, or refunded, their municipal services like electricity. running water, paved roads and public transit would soon be provided, free of charge. The Gecekondus have grown so rapidly that they began outranking, and outflanking the traditional (agrarian/commercial) city, lacking the infrastructure of a modern metropolis. Migrants outnumbered the urbanites. For the first time informal or social processes of education were becoming more effective than the formal schools. That cities were becoming ruralized could be heard in the form of Arabesque (melancholy) music playing in the dolmut (collective) taxis (a Turkish innovation for rapid-transport: the cars depart as soon as full). Unable to integrate with the city socio-economically, rural migrants congregated with their own kind from back home. Thus cities became a museum of historical collectivities, representing the cultural diversity of Anatolia. Schools were becoming more crowded by the year. First, they practiced two shifts, then three shifts a day. In a ruralising environment and decreasing school hours and substitute teachers, the quality of education rapidly deteriorated. No system of municipal administration or government could cope with problems of this magnitude. Industrial projects beginning to take off made things worse by preferring urban or near urban sites. As central and local authorities conceeded their inability, new urbanites began attending and solving their own problems as best as they could. The age of post-modernism came to mean “anything comes anything goes”. Economically it was an anachronistic wild capitalism or “laissez faire”.

Nearly everybody agreed that the problems encountered could only be solved by education, ie., by the Ministry of Education. Hence the education ministers were expected to perform “shamanistic” miracles, tricks or wonders. People believed in them and they did not let their pupils down. The fact that the 70/30 rural to urban ratio in 1950 will be reversed to 30/70 by the year 2000 may give an idea of the magnitude of socio-economic problems encountered. In theories of modernisation, this is known as “demographic transition” from rural to urban, from agrarian to industrial services, more technically, from a high birth-high death rates pattern to a low birth-low death rate pattern through which the population growth rate first explodes then gradually slows down and eventually stabilizes. In Europe this transition, beginning about 1650 was completed in 300 years (1650's-1950's). With the yearly rate of population growth coming down to 1.5 % from 2.5 %, Turkey seems to be completing the transitional cycle in 50 years. That is at least several times faster than the average course of modernisation. This increased pace of change also reflects the magnitude of educational problems.

Table III.2.1

Demographic Growth: Primary School Statistics:

1923-1992

Students Teacher

(rounded to the nearest thousand)

Years Schools Boys Girls Males Females

1923-24 4 894 273 63 9,0 1,2

1930-31 6 598 315 174 11,5 4,8

1940-41 10 596 661 294 14,6 6,0

1950-51 17 428 1 017 600 26,7 9,2

1960-61 24 398 1 800 1 066 48,9 14,0

1970-71 38 232 2 893 2 120 87,5 45,3

1980-81 45 507 3 087 2 567 126,1 85,5

1990-91 50 669 3 634 3 236 135,7 98,4

Source : Akyüz : 1994 : 304

Table III.2.2.

Demographic Growth: Secondary School

Statistics:l931-91

Students Teachers

(rounded to the nearest thousand)

Years Schools Boys Girls Males Females

1930-31 83 20, 1 6, 9 0, 84 0, 22

1940-41 252 69, 1 26, 2 2, 42 1, 45

1950-51 440 50, 1 19, 0 2, 44 2, 09

1960-61 776 241, 2 76, 9 9. 11 4, 16

1970-71 1842 569, 7 213,7 18, 58 9, 87

1980-81 4103 786, 5 393,7 20, 35 10, 58

1991-92 7078 1497, 7 905,0 32, 50 18, 60

Source : Akyüz 1994: 308

From the mid-twenties to 1990 the national population increased nearly fivefold from 12 to 60 million, and school statistics reflect this incredible explosion. For samples see Table III.2.3.

While letting the numbers speak for themselves, the following trends may be underlined:

At both primary and secondary levels, republican education has achieved remarkable results. Even allowing for the natural (demographic) growths, (ie, by reducing the virtual growth by five), primary schools doubled, secondary schools increased nearly 17 times.

While the schooling ratio at the primary level increased five times, the number of girls seems to have increased nearly four times faster than boys. So that in 1990, the sex ratio in primary schools came very close to 1 (= 0.9)

At secondary levels, achievements are even more impressive-numerically. Student enrolment went up 18 times: boys 15, girls 26 times, as compared to the natural growth.

Whereas the total number of primary school teachers went up 4,6 times, women teachers increased four times faster than the males. At the secondary schools, the total number of teachers increasing nearly ten times, with numbers of female teachers increased appreciably faster than those of males.

As for the sex ratios in schools: compared to 1920's the numbers seem to be converging rapidly in the overall student body and among teachers. One noteworthy trend is that while in the 1920's sex ratios varied between one-forth and one-third; in the 1990's there were 2 girls for every three boys and two female teachers for every two male teachers.

Taking the sex ratios in schools as a “measure of secularism” (laicite), it could safely be concluded that the Turkish Republic and society have definitely grown more secular in the last 70 years.

Fig III.2.l. PRIMARY EDUCATION IN Turkey

(Semi - Logarithmic)

Fig III.2.2. SECONDARY EDUCATION IN TURKEY

(Semi - Logarithmic Curves)

With in such a quantitative growth in meeting the challenge of big and growing numbers, schools, students and teachers multiplying at unprecedented rates, it was impossible to keep or maintain the quality of education. First, schools became more crowded than ever before. Then, two or three shifts -a- day schools came to being, reducing the school hours by half or two-thirds. This perhaps solved the problem of teaching space but then finding qualified teachers became a problem. In a development economy with inflation with which the country still struggles, the status of poorly-paid school teachers hit the bottom. Nearly anybody wishing to teach for the pay scale offered could teach. Building new schools with a limited or minimum budget left the old ones with for maintenance, repair and renovation. In classrooms designed for 30-40 students there were 80 or 90 students. Teaching aids and equipment were very scarce as were laboratories. More often than not school libraries, open for working hours alone, carried no more than a collection of books specified for the courses taught. School books written and printed every few years to satisfy the syllabi specified by the ministry -with a slim budget- were far from attractive. Hence school books became a big business of cheap quality. The inherent and structural problems of school could perhaps be compensated by the high quality of enthusiastic teachers. Subject to the law of supply and demand, good teachers moved from rural to urban, from small towns to cities, from the public to private schools, from the underprivileged to the affluent communities. Private tutoring houses, preparing students for high school or university entrance exams, became the generous employers of reputable teachers. Students attending public school, could hardly identify with a single teacher that he would like to be, or see as a mentor in life. Hence, the negative selection: bright students did not wish to become teachers. The lower fifth of the class would perhaps resolve to go to teaching if they couldn't qualify at all for any other vocation.

Politicians promising people and pressuring bureaucracy for new schools at all levels, the ministry officials opening new schools everywhere with the slogan “bir müdür bir mühür” (One teacher director/one official seal) considered, sufficient for the school. The public and media were aware that the overall quality of general education was rapidly falling. People remembered an old saying to the effect “Start early, the order of migration will improve on the road”, meaning that quality may wait or sought later. Standards kept falling, There was not much left for the education ministers to do other than make-believe, provide mere window dressing in changes to school regulations. That is exactly what they have done. They are expected to change some things -in the name of reform- and they kindly oblige by changing programs, courses, hours, years, evaluations, exam systems, books, uniforms, shirts or skirt lengths, anything they can. So that going through any school, regulations are likely to be changed at least several times. However Ministerial terms of office are not more stable or steady. Like the weather, everybody talks but nobody does anything about it.