Activities on Public Education of National Schools in Teaching New Letters to the Public in The Republic Period

Abstract

After the successful conclusion of the war of independence under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, studies on social, cultural and economic problems in the country were started. Being aware of the fact that the first thing to be done in this direction is to increase the education level of the people, the administrative staff changed the alphabet by making the letter revolution as the first thing. With the alphabet change, it was aimed to make the people literate. In addition, the difficulties in reading the Arabic alphabet and the reasons such as learning difficulties made it necessary to change the alphabet. The administrative staff in the Republican period were aware that these reforms had to be understood first in order to reduce the reforms to be made to the entire people. In this direction, it is aimed to increase the reading and writing rate of people and to reduce ignorance. Understanding the logic of the innovations to be made has undoubtedly been seen in direct proportion to the fact that people are enlightened. Latin letters were adopted on 1 November 1928. Teaching the new letters to the public, especially to citizens aged 16-45 outside the school age, has been of great importance. In order to disseminate the new letters among the public, trainings were given through courses in different institutions. After the acceptance of the new letters, a great education campaign was started. Mustafa Kemal insisted on the establishment of institutions that would directly reach all of the people, as well as state schools. For this purpose, the National Schools opened in 1929 started teaching new letters. In this study, information will be given about the operation of the courses opened during the teaching of the Latin letters to the citizens who are out of formal education and the activities they carried out in the period until their closure.