ERKEN CUMHURİYET DÖNEMİ’NDE TAHAYYÜL EDİLEN ÇOCUKLUĞUN POLİTİK YAPILANDIRILMASINA İLİŞKİN DEĞERLER AKTARIMI

There are very close relations between the notions of education, power and ideology. The governments preferred to use education as a tool in order to change the society in line with the values and norms they envision. For this reason, the importance given to education has increased, especially in the process of establishing nation-states. Because with the establishment of nation-states, societies have been exposed to new definitions and values. In this direction, education has been perceived as one of the means of constructing societies as nation-states. As a matter of fact, child education has become one of the main issues in the eyes of the states in this context. A similar situation arose for the founding cadres and intellectuals of the Republic in Turkey as well, and important attempts were made to build the imagined childhood. From this point of view, the education applied to children was evaluated as one of the effective stages in the national education policies and policies were followed in this direction. With the policies followed, effective, dominant and powerful missions have been imposed on schools and textbooks. The republican administrators did not consider this process only as a matter of getting a good education for the child, but also took a close interest in the image of women and motherhood, including various conceptions about the family. Thus, the image of family and woman, which was desired to be created in the society in the Early Republican Period, was evaluated as an inseparable part of education about children. In the end, the founding staff, who adopted the values, norms and characteristics of the Republican regime and was committed to their duties and responsibilities, tried to create a new understanding of childhood by using ideology through education and by changing and transforming the society. When the data obtained within the scope of the study are evaluated from a holistic point of view, it was seen that the traditional understanding of childhood was moved away from the political structuring process in the Early Republican Period, the child was described as an "independent" entity and a nationalist, patriotic and loyal individual to the Republican regime was idealized with a pragmatist approach.