The Pedagogical State ─ Education And the Politics of National Culture in Post-1980 Turkey

While by no means a unique case, the curricula of the Turkish educational system is a site of political contestation about fundamental questions of ethnic, economic, gender, cultural, and other issues of identity. These contestations, in turn, have a significant impact on the contexts within which individual students situate themselves within public discourses and conceptualize their own political identities. Kaplan (Middle East Studies, Ben-Gurion U. of the Negev, Israel) explores both of these phenomenon, investigating the ability of politically motivated groups to lobby the Turkish government for curricular changes and reporting on ethnographic research on student identity formation in a small southern town's elementary and middle schools between 1989 and 1991. Annotation c2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)