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Add to favouritesEconomical and working world-related education > Economical and working world-related education in in Turkey
Household and consumption as a topic of teaching in Turkey
1. The relevance of economic and labour-related education for Turkish adolescents
In a highly integrated global economy, understanding the basic facts in economics and the labour world while young may later improve a pupil's competitiveness and create future opportunities for enhancing the quality and standard of life. Pupils well informed about economic facts and institutions make better work-related decisions, and these in turn improve a market's resource allocation and contribute to efficient productivity. Furthermore, pupils' knowledge of economics will help them to identify their career opportunities. Those who have learned both the basic principles and the processes of the economic, business and labour world will be able to show sustainable attitudes towards the economy of Turkey, the EU and the world as well. Thus their chance of success will be increased and they will more easily integrated into a global world featuring an entrepreneurial spirit.
2. Economic and labour world-related education in the education system of Turkey
In Turkey an eight-year compulsory primary education is followed by a four-year secondary education. Secondary educational institutions have either a general or a vocational and technical character. Secondary education aims to give pupils a basic general knowledge (sometimes called the three R's: reading, (w)riting, and (a)rithmetic), to familiarize them with the problems, and possible solutions, of the individual in society, to instill in them the awareness that contributes to the socio-economic and cultural development of the country and to prepare them for higher education or a profession in line with their interests and aptitudes.
In Turkey, the secondary educational institutions enroll more than 3 million students and employ 170,000 teachers. In this educational system, the education related to economics and working life is provided in two distinct dimensions, if provided is a word that can be used in this context. The first dimension, the Vocational School for Commerce, has a curriculum focused chiefly on economics and business-related education. The proportion of the pupils enrolled in these vocational high schools in relation to the total amount of pupils in secondary education is only 5%. Even given this distinction, the education here directly related to economics and business life is tiny and consists of only one two-credit module in the 10th class called "Economics".
The second dimension is constituted by the other types of high schools: General High Schools, Anatolia High Schools, Science High Schools, Sports High Schools, and Fine Arts High Schools. In most of these high schools, only one elective "Entrepreneurship" course is offered for credit. But starting in the winter semester 2005-2006 in the 11th and 12th classes of the Social Sciences High Schools-devised as the result of the new policies initiated by the Ministry of National Education in the year 2005-the courses of "Management" and "Economics" were added to the curricula. However, the ratio of these schools to the total is only 2%.
It is obvious even from the brief outline of the Turkish National Education Law offered here that economics as a school subject is woefully underrepresented in Turkish schools. Now no one denies that this subject is crucial for the current developing needs of the labour markets and the economy. Correspondingly, it is essential that all pupils in the secondary educational level in Turkey should learn basic economics and the principles of the business world and know something about the fundamental economic institutions and processes. However, as the figures above show, the basic education in economics and the business world is virtually ignored.
3. The relevance of project ECOLAB for the Turkish education system
In order to redress this deplorable imbalance we recommend that a course on economics and the labour world be immediately introduced into the secondary educational curriculum. Its purpose would be, at the very least, to introduce entrepreneurship and market behaviour to the pupils at the early stages of their schooling. ECOLAB proposes a program that will enable pupils to complete secondary education with a sufficient understanding of economics to make well-informed choices as consumers, producers, workers, and citizens. The ultimate goal should be to develop sound economic and personal financial decision-making skills as a component of the pre-university education of all Turkish pupils. The major aims of this proposed project are as follows:
- To create a widespread individual and collective awareness of the basic notions of consumer finance and consumer economics related to savings, personal assets and liability management, productivity and efficient resource use;
- To enhance the willingness and capability of pupils to utilize their entrepreneurial potential, thus paving the way for a highly active small-and-medium-scale business environment;
- To enable students to develop their own life-plan and labour market related self-image.