Turkish schools to stop teaching evolution, official says

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wautd
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Turkish schools to stop teaching evolution, official says

Post by wautd »

Guardian
Board of education chairman says subject is debatable, controversial and too complicated for students

Evolution will no longer be taught in Turkish schools, a senior education official has said, in a move likely to raise the ire of the country’s secular opposition.

Alpaslan Durmuş, who chairs the board of education, said evolution was debatable, controversial and too complicated for students.

“We believe that these subjects are beyond their [students] comprehension,” said Durmuş in a video published on the education ministry’s website.

Durmuş said a chapter on evolution was being removed from ninth grade biology course books, and the subject postponed to the undergraduate period. Another change to the curriculum may reduce the amount of time that students spend studying the legacy of secularism.

Critics of the government believe public life is being increasingly stripped of the secular traditions instilled by the nation’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

The secular opposition has long argued that the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is pursuing a covert Islamist agenda contrary to the republic’s founding values. Education is a particularly contentious avenue, because of its potential in shaping future generations. Small-scale protests by parents in local schools have opposed the way religion is taught.

There is little acceptance of evolution as a concept among mainstream Muslim clerics in the Middle East, who believe it contradicts the story of creation in scripture, in which God breathed life into the first man, Adam, after shaping him from clay. Still, evolution is briefly taught in many high school biology courses in the region.

The final changes to the curriculum are likely to be announced next week after the Muslim Eid or Bayram festival at the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. The draft changes had been put forth for public consultation at the beginning of the year.

The subject of evolution in particular stirred debate earlier this year after Numan Kurtulmuş, the deputy prime minister, described the process as a theory that was both archaic and lacking sufficient evidence.

Reports in Turkish media in recent weeks, based on apparent leaks of school board meetings, have also predicted a diminished role in the curriculum for the study of Atatürk, and an increase in the hours devoted to studying religion. Durmuş said that a greater emphasis would be placed on the contributions of Muslim and Turkish scientists and history classes would move away from a “Euro-centric” approach.

The changes were based on a broad public consultation in which parents and the public played a key role, he said.

The Islamist-secularist debate is just one of a series of divides in a country that two months ago narrowly approved a referendum granting President Erdoğan broad new powers.

Many in the religiously conservative element of the president’s support base admire his piety and see his ascension as a defeat of the elite “White Turks” – a westernised elite that used to dominate the upper echelons of society and was accused of looking down with disdain on poorer, more religiously inclined citizens.

The secular opposition worries that the president and his party are reshaping Turkish society and clinging to neo-Ottoman ideals that see Turkey as the vanguard of a greater Islamic nation.
And the once beautiful nation continues to slide into a theocratic shithole :banghead:
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ray245
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Re: Turkish schools to stop teaching evolution, official says

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While being cheered on by the masses. It's always quite clear that the notion of trusting democracy is not going to work when the populace pretty much doesn't care about it as long as they get enough money.
Humans are such funny creatures. We are selfish about selflessness, yet we can love something so much that we can hate something.
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Re: Turkish schools to stop teaching evolution, official says

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I think the lesson to learn from Turkey, specifically, is less that and more 'don't expect a highly religious, highly monarchical multi-ethnic empire to transition to a secular democratic nation-state via a couple of dictatorial regimes and a lot of coups without there being problems.' A century ago, quite literally, the majority of Turks Ottoman subjects would have said they didn't want anything to do with democracy. Probably that stayed true for decades after, just with 'perpetual Ataturk leadership' instead of 'sultanate' as the preferred form of government.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. If the majority of the population wants a dictatorial Islamist in power, then... well, that's where we're at, pretty much.
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The Romulan Republic
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Re: Turkish schools to stop teaching evolution, official says

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Rather than just tut-tutting at those backwards Turks, we might also consider the role that Erdogan's active suppression of the opposition over a long period of time has played in this.

I'm sure there are many in Turkey who like what he's doing- no leader can accomplish much if the public sentiment is entirely against them. But let's not pretend that the public is all behind Erodgan either. I mean, just last year there was a coup attempt that had to be violently put down.
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Re: Turkish schools to stop teaching evolution, official says

Post by Simon_Jester »

Yeah.

Basically, if you let anyone autocratically consolidate power in a democratic country for a decade, the results are going to be nasty at best and horrific at worst.

One of the keys to the stability of democracy is for the public to understand that letting anyone consolidate power by attacking the underlying structures of the democratic state is wrong in and of itself. That "obsolete" checks and balances on the power of whichever party they're backing are an excellent example of Chesterton's Fence: A thing that was put in place in the past for good reasons, and that should not be removed or bypassed by someone who does not fully understand the nature of the thing they are modifying.

A public that ceases to believe this, and which ceases to believe that checks and balances are part of the state, a thing which are at least as much deserving of their patriotic loyalty as any individual or institution within the state... A public like that is going to need a lot of luck to keep their democracy intact.
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