The model of understanding education and lifelong learning in Turkish modernization of Ahmet Midhat

Abstract

The literary works of Ahmet Midhat Efendi like novels, stories, drama, travel writings in addition to subjects over education, pedagogy, sociology, philosophy and other fields have taken a vital place in Turkish literature. While the first Turkish modernizers gave priority to take the country out of the hard situation by reforming military and political areas, Ahmet Midhat argued that the social change and transformation can be achieved by educating individuals. Ahmet Midhat who tried to improve his educational background by spending personal efforts, always attempted to make education a constant activity for himself and people around him even during the times he was outside Istanbul for journalism, writing, familial issues and other reasons.

The purpose of this paper is to show what kind of social benefit based theoretical methods were employed to concretize Ahmet Midhat’s educational view in his novels and stories by associating it with lifelong learning.

In this study, the aim is to show by which theoretical methods lifelong learning is concretized in Ahmet Midhat’s novels and stories that are based on social benefit, and to demonstrate its relationship with educational conception.

In the study, Ahmet Midhat’s novels which are especially handling directly family and education subjects like “Çingene”, “Felatun Bey ile Rakım Efendi”, “Diplomalı Kız” are taken as basis. To achieve this aim, a survey research has been made while scanning the works mentioned above. Moreover, the relationship between the given data and lifelong education has been tried to be put forward.

At the end of the paper, Ahmet Midhat Efendi’s novels have been examined and it’s been evident that his lifelong learning approach is enough for educational process. Ahmet Midhat who aimed to build his own audience and to educate them has achieved two things in his novels: Firstly, the idealized characters told in Midhat’s novels and stories, who tried improving degree of their knowledge and enriching their lives, reached the success in different fields were given in theoretical level.   This technique which is used by the author in his novels has an aesthetic basis as a social aspect of literature. Secondly, the author gives encyclopedic information to the audience by going out of the fictional text. Furthermore, since the author is using traditional storytelling as a way to establish a dialogue with the audience, it’s obvious that he views the reader as the subject of the lifelong learning. His style which is criticized to be a dry didacticism is mostly originates from his perception of authorship, which is regarded as a school.