The Idea of the Modern Individual and the Search for New Education in the Periodicals during the Second Constitutional Era

Abstract

This study intends to examine the educational understanding and designs of educators from the Second Constitutional Era, which forms the last link in the Ottoman modernization/renewal process, as well as what kinds of thoughts they had on the modern individual. Within the scope of the study, 1,360 articles, news segments, and writings were scanned in the journals Tedrisât-ı İbtidâiye [Primary reasons for education], Terbiye ve Oyun [Discipline and Play], Terbiye [Discipline], Millî Talim ve Terbiye Cemiyeti Mecmuası [Journal of National Education and Society of Discipline], Muallim [Teachers], and Mir’at-i Maarif [Mirror of Education], the leading periodicals of the period; articles that were determined to be related to the main topic of the study were subjected to content analysis. Themes were first created as a result of the research questions and preliminary examination of the articles, then the views mentioned around these themes in the examined articles were analyzed. Educators from the Second Constitutional Era, who debated education under two dimensions (i.e., instruction and discipline), defined the international methods and practices of education as talim [instruction] and terbiye [discipline], the parts of education that belong to societies’ own unique socio-cultural accumulations such as religion, language, art, and aesthetics. Educators had positioned schools and teachers centrally in the upbringing of new individuals, addressing these two through the aspects of both modern teaching methods and discipline. Educators, who discussed the modern individual under three dimensions (i.e., feelings, knowledge, and body), considered the child as the prototype of the society they attempted to form and women as the main element that would build this new society. One important aspect of debates from the Second Constitutional Era is the rich intellectual legacy that was left to the educational policies and practices of the Republican Era.