4+4+4: educational relegation or championship!

I know what 4+4+2 or 4+2+3+1 would mean in a soccer formation. However, with the entire disgraceful hassle in Parliament and with all the annoying fights on social media, I am clueless about what 4+4+4 is all about!

Nowadays, with the domination of a popular culture in which our kids learn the philosophy “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” from Kelly Clarkson rather than Albert Camus, education has become an important worldwide issue. However, in developing countries such as Turkey, education is even more crucial since it is an important method of challenging poverty and ongoing harmful traditions such as gender-based discrimination, violence… With all the discussions on 4+4+4, I wonder if the Turkish educational system has a good enough foundation to make this change and how it would affect gender equality in education.

“If you educate a man, you simply educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate an entire family,” Dr. Kwegyir Aggrey, a visionary Ghanaian educator, once said. Gender equality in education is a fundamental issue because providing education for girls is necessary in order to establish well-balanced communities and nations. However, in many parts of the world, girls’ education is neglected.

In 2000, at the United Nations’ Millennium Summit, world leaders set ambitious goals to be achieved by 2015. They aimed for universal primary education and to promote gender equality and empower women. I remember then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on businessmen to invest in the education of women.

Twelve years later, I witnessed current UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the World Economic Forum in Davos last January urge all businessmen to increase their investment in women’s education. Such déjà vu! It feels like there hasn’t been much progress in the last 12 years.

On March 5, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) produced a world atlas of gender equality in education. The UNESCO Atlas — with more than 120 maps, charts and tables — shows differences in education, such as access to, participation in and development of, between girls and boys. The atlas clearly shows that many countries are not even close to the numbers that were targeted for them at the 2000 UN Millennium Summit, especially South Africa and parts of Asia.

Turkey isn’t doing too badly when we compare it to other developing countries. Yet, when we consider the EU’s criteria, a lack of access to and the quality of education in Turkey comes out as an issue. On April 14, 2011, at the Commission on Population and Development meeting at the UN, Turkey’s Permanent Representative and Ambassador Ertuğrul Apakan, pointing out that Turkey is near to aligning with the European Union’s criteria, stated: “Turkey had embarked on a national education strategy that entailed investing in school infrastructure, training teachers, mainstreaming technology into school curricula and increasing gender equality, among other aspects. An especially important part of the strategy was eliminating the gender gap in primary schools.” He added, “Turkey had launched a campaign to reduce by 15 percent the number of girls out of school.” I hope the new system is compatible with those developments.

A good soccer coach knows what his team’s strengths and weaknesses are before applying a new formation and then makes the necessary changes way before the season starts. If the team adapts to the new formation, they will win and become a championship team, and if not, they will lose and eventually may get relegated. It seems like Turkey will be discussing the pros and cons of 4+4+4 for awhile. For me, the most important part of 4+4+4 is how it will affect the education of girls because remember, if we educate them, we educate an entire family…. <Cihan/Arzu Kaya Uranli>

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