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http://www.observercyprus.com/observer/ ... px?id=3913

15.05.2009

Birikim Ozgur
The education related ideas brought up during the election propaganda by the UBP have been carefully included in the government programme.
Now the duty of the opposition is to convince the UBP on a few changes to the government programme and be the observers of the educational programme and its success of implementation.
Other than a few changes the UBP government seems to be in sync with the education reform initiated by the CTP.
This is one side of the coin …
On the other side are the history books, colleges, and now religion education.
These are the 3 issues that the UBP has different opinions than the CTP …
The sensitivity of the UBP supporters regarding the history books is well known. They say: “We should not forget our martyrs and not let them to be forgotten. Our children must know about the years of struggle.” These are worries on the content.
When we look at the aims of the educational programme we can see that these are topics far from neglect, denial or get forgotten. Our children should be educated about the past without harming the vision of a solution and the EU.
The topics should not be the ‘Injustices of the Greek Cypriots’ but the things our ‘Peace sided journalists had to go through’ should also be taught, because we need a culture of peace.
In case we have the culture of peace, the economy cannot develop and our people cannot dig into the land with their fingers and nails. We need to teach history within the norms of contemporary history education. We need to teach them social and economic aspects so they learn history not through memorisation but through thinking and evaluating the events and recreating the images in their heads to compare today and yesterday to understand better and make it their own.
Rather than teaching when and who the ‘savages’ killed, we should teach them under what circumstances and why our martyrs had to fight; the events that lead up to the incidents and what happened afterwards; what were the feelings and thoughts of family members; yes, we should know that Aunt Maria in the South also had to go through the same problems and that is why we learn that war is a bad thing.
We need to know the past and teach our children about it, not for enmity but for peace, brotherhood, cooperation and common benefit. These are all things that can be meaningful once responded by the South.
We should and will do what falls upon us. The target announced regarding the college issue is not very harmonious with our education system. A vertical transition exam in the middle of mandatory education is one of the obstacles that prevent us from achieving the general targets the UBP government announced.
Learning people and learning community or rationalist, creative, critical, participant, innovative, contemporary generations can only be possible through structured approaches in education.
The old college exams symbolise a behaviouralist approach aka the ‘memorisation’ method.
In order for UBP to prove that they are not using shop-worn phrases and are really aiming to make changes and provide a service they need to stay away from the old rote method.
In the Government programme the ‘middle schools’ of colleges is said to be re-opened
However they do not say that they “Would most certainly do the vertical transition exam” for this.
Here the most important thing is that they defined who administers education properly?
Will it be the Ministry of Education or Administrators of Private Schools?
Registering students from grade1 to 8 for mandatory education, while registering at school to complete comprehensive education could be a matter of debate.
Once the new educational system has been successfully implemented the educational quality in all schools will be close to each other therefore the issues of colleges will not be as important a problem as it is today, because in every modern country private schools are seen to be relieving the educational system and not a nuisance to the system.
Private schools should be supported. This way increasing the educational quality of government schools will be much easier. The important thing is to reach standards in both government and private schools. This can be achieved through embracing the reforms that begun during the CTP government and complete the missing parts in the new system. Going back to how it was before is not the solution.
When it comes to religious education the UBP is actually signalling at the mainland Turks living in Cyprus and the AKP government. The CTP government had tried to take controlled steps on the issue claiming that in case there is such a need verified. The world shattered all over me. The UBP is now openly talking about religious education.
It is curious what the attitude of Unionist be to the UBP who has presented them flowers of peace. Unions should be part of the opposition when there is corruption in Turkish Cypriots culture not in the stage of banning freedom, and modernisation will be achieved as much as opposition is achieved.
Public opposition, meaning CTP, DP, ORP, TDP and unions should initiate movement from these aspects.
We will have given the entire world a wonderful lesson of harmony if we can overcome our differences of opinion regarding history books, colleges, and religion education through public agreement rather than fights with the help of the Minister of Education.
Do you think we can?

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Aunt Maria in the South