Monograf Journal Edebiyat ve İktidar (2014 / 1) | Page 108

ODAK

108 • Benjamin C. Fortna
thing I found in this research was that the state in both the Ottoman period and in the Republican period was very worried
about these influences; the local and family influences. Because
they wanted to control reading and the writing. They wanted to
control the milieu, the environment in which reading happened.
But they could not. They could not completely because people
don’t live in school for 24 hours a day. They live with their
family. They are influenced by their sisters, their uncles, their
fathers, their mothers, their grandparents. Those influences are
very strong. We find examples where the state wishes that those
influences did not exist and tries to suggest that family influences are bad and need to be removed. But of course they cannot.
That was their wish. So the state officials established a kind
of contrast between the home environment and school environment because in the school, at least they thought, they could
control everything. They could hire the teacher, they could build
the building, they could establish the curriculum and the textbook. Of course the teachers have had an important role and one
of the problems in educational reform was that it takes time to
produce a new teacher. So there is a lag; there is a time gap between what the state can do and when it becomes implemented
in reality. It takes maybe 10-15 years to create or produce a new
teacher. So there is a kind of time delay. But it is interesting that
in many of the textbooks the state tries to show that the school
has the progressive, new, good environment and the family has

From Elifba to Alphabet: The History of Learning to Read • 109

something not very trustworthy. They worried about the home
and neighbourhood influences because they could not control
them.

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 directly related to socio-economic background of his/ her. The practice
of reading regarded as a popular and select activity sometimes. What can you say about the effect of the family and
the neighbourhood on the reading and writing practices?

Good. Thank you. My sense from the materials I looked
at was that you have a kind of ideal reading material from the
part of the state. The State wants the children to be reading these
materials. Lets say over a year they should read X materials. But
the market is not concerned so much with what the state wants.
It concerns with popularity, making money, selling. So we have
two different interest and we have a tension between the two.
They don’t always align. They are not always the same.

The market is effective on the reading practice, however, I think it is not only related to materialistic field. Can
we talk about a political care?

Maybe. People with very different views were writing,

participating in the market. Some will be with the state as you

monograf 2014/1