Monograf Journal Edebiyat ve İktidar (2014 / 1) | Page 106

ODAK

106 • Benjamin C. Fortna
to understand what was happening more broadly in the society with this change to increased literacy, increased readership.
That was the idea. It still remained difficult to find out what happens when people learn to read. As I say in the book, reading is
something we all know is important for our society. It changes
the way you think if you read something, or it can. But for historians there is a difficulty; we don’t have the ability to see the
results of that change. I mean, if you read a book, it has maybe
a big impact on you but there is no evidence unless you write
something down. Most people read but they don’t write. So, the
chance to find the trace, what’s left behind is difficult. I tried by
using some different materials--privately published magazines,
things designed for children and memoires. That was the idea.

Your source documents are course books, magazines

and memories, and they are completely different from each
other. For instance, memories depend on the personal memories of the people. However, it is controversial that course
books are independent from the control of the state and its
institutions.

Yes. That’s a good question. The textbooks were produced
for the state but not always by the state. So, one interesting development, one thing I was interested in looking at in this book
was the relationship between what we would call today the private sector and the public sector. In other words, because of the
huge expansion of the education and schools, there was created

From Elifba to Alphabet: The History of Learning to Read • 107

a market for textbooks and for teachers. And people began to
produce books for those readers and the state had some control over that process but in many cases the books used for the
schools were published or printed by private publishing houses
and written by private authors. So there was a kind of arrangement between the state and the private sector. You could not say
that the state completely controlled everything. It was sometimes quite loose and the authors probably knew what the state
wanted and what the state did not want. They self-censored.
They censored themselves. And in some cases they produced
some materials that were probably very different from what the
state wanted. So you have some 100 per cent state materials,
some kind of half-half and some private, especially things for
private consumption. For examples, textbooks, of course, were
used in the schools but the magazines were not.

Maybe the socio-economic background of the families

is influential on the practice of reading in the terms of its
popularity and exclusiveness. The practice of reading is a
personal journey of the reader and it is direct H