Many Events

Dearest Dosts,
I would like to start my blog today with an unlucky event from Icelend. As you have already known all Europe and partly Asia have been suffering from the cloud coming from Icelend. It affected all the international flights. A massive cloud of volcanic dust has covered vast areas of northern Europe after the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano erupted in Iceland on 14 April. See below link for details on the extent of the dust cloud and for projections of its future spread. The cloud appears on the satellite images (left) as black, pink and then red as sporadic eruptions launch ash into the atmosphere where it mixes with different thicknesses of ice clouds. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8625813.stm (Source: BBC News)
Our dearest Dost, the president of Human dignity and Humiliation Studies Network_Evelin Lindner also has been stranded in Schiphol on her way to Istanbul. We have been looking forward to meeting her for two days and she is still in Amsterdam. Some instructors of students of Bogazici University are blocked in Amsterdam as well. Human beings cannot still find way outs before the natural disasters. Whenever we will learn how to think scientifically and start finding rpoactive measures; only after that humanity will find sllepping himself/herself safe.
Dearest Dosts, the month April is full of activities:
On 9th April, we hosted the introductory seminar of Dr.Katrin Rabanus from Germany. With 180 teachers from different parts of Istanbul, we witnessed a new methodology of teaching how to read and write for difficult learners. It was interesting!
Yesterday (17th April) was the 70th Anniversary of the foundation of deucational miracle_Village Institutions. Within ten years more than 17,000 village children had been trained as teachers and a huge step was taken in bringing villages into modern levels, however, they were closed by some political reasons. Thus, a huge wall had blocked the improvement of village children. Those institutes were the schools of Enlightenment Period of Turkey. Atatürk had guided tham in 1935 just before his death. I would like to include an article of a village instutute graduate_author Mr. Gursen Kafkas_ below. you will like reading it. He was also one of the panelists yesterday which I chaired.
This week we are going to host Dr. Jagdish Gandhi for a Child-Law Meeting at a Turkish university. A disabled students team with their teachers are also from CMS in ıstanbul to participate in 4th Smiling Child Festival, held by the Society of the Spinal Cord Paralytics_ www.tofd.org.tr_.
On 28-30 April, I am hosting the "15th Annual Conference of Human DHS" along with Peace Center of Bogazici university. I hope that bust month will be beneficial for all participants and humanity as well.
Lots of love from a rainy Istanbul day.
Hayal Koksal

Village Institutions as a Sample Case
Dr. Köksal’s one of the main interests has also been “Village Institutions“for years due to their quality-based essence. She had graduated from Izmir Teachers’ Training Institution in 1976 and she was trained mostly by the graduates of Village Institutions throughout her education. She was aware of the great value of those teachers.
Village Institutions were the schools opened under the guidance of great leader Atatürk. She believes that the main functions of Village Institutions were to train contemporary villagers (TQPs) and to take the torch of Ataturk’s reforms to small towns and even very small villages. However, those quality philosophy focused institutions did not live long and they were closed due to some political reasons.
Dr.Köksal always believed that it was one of the biggest mistakes within the educational history. For, during her first years of teaching professionly, she had worked in the north-east corner of Türkiye (1978-1981) at a very small town and she had seen the social and educational needs and expectations of the people living there and felt sorry for them. The interesting side was that village institutions were opened in late 1930s and closed in late 1940s. If they had still been living in 1970s, Türkiye would have been in a totally different position among the world's countries.
After so many years, Dr. Köksal has been working at the educational faculties of different universities and training teacher trainees. Her courses are TQE-focused and all the mid-terms and final exam projects are designed in SQC/İmece Circles form. Thus, teacher candidates learn about the quality applications during the pre-service education.
For 3 years, she has been also conducting a project concerning “Village Institutions“. Teacher trainees focus on one of the most important characteristics of “Village Institutions.“ After reading books and watching videos about them, they study in circles, list the present problems of schools and based upon the village institution understanding they try to bring solutions to those problem areas. Then, they present their projects via technology. There have been 18 village institution projects up to now, and when they total 21, she will collect all of them in a book.
Some Final Words and...
Village Institutions trained nearly 17,000 teachers in a limited time. Most of them became very famous authors, educators and politicians. Their second and third generations are still very contemporary and productive. After that point, a Village Institution graduate teacher and author Mr. Gürşen Kafkas’s article will be placed to the Conclusion part of the paper. He is one of the well-known authors of Village Institutioners. He is very productive, with 36 books.
THE MIRACLE OF VILLAGE INSTITUTIONS by Gürşen KAFKAS
Village Institutions were an unforgettable miracle of our educational history. With the light there, human beings were gaining a secular viewpoint based upon logic and science. The system was teaching the young village children how to be productive through personal efforts and social team work (called İmece). The main aim of the Turkish Republic and the reforms of Atatürk were in fact to create the enlightenment period in education. The only way of realizing this was to reach at the small towns and villages. Villagers had been seen and accepted as tax payers and volunteer soldiers for ages. Whereas, with the Village Institution Project, the village people and the government would have been hugged. Of course, it was a long and difficult job. So, Mr. Ismail Hakki Tonguç, who was one of the architectures of this project, used to whisper the following lines continuously with a great joy: “I try the steep roads and I overcome each obstacle....”
He was very happy to be training young, bright and professional village people whose efforts and productivity would have returned back to their villages again. The system of training “Village teacher“ program of Mustafa Necati had been transferred to multi-functional, full-equipped “Village Institutions“. That change in education was behind some new developments. A great amount of population of Türkiye had been living in villages and the aim was to turn their lives to a modern, productive and rich way. In other words, to improve the way of thinking and living of all those villagers who had been slaves of the Sultans and Aghas for centuries was the target of Atatürk and his Ministers. Thus, slavery would leave its place to free and scientific thinking.
Through their training, social development and personal improvement would have been realized. That project would also stop the immigration of villagers to cities. We would never witness the suburb area problems and all the villages would now have been modern and cultivated lands to be visited by the city people. On the other hand, there was a great need for some leaders who are good at healthcare, technical issues, environmental consciousness and ethical values. As a result of the hard work of Hasan Âli Yücel and Ismail Hakki Tonguç, the “Village Institutions Law” was prepared. While preparing that law, they made use of the systems and success stories of the various developed countries.
They believed that the students of those institutions must have come from the villages and they must have had a villager’s agricultural knowledge, understanding rural area habits and health. Within the foundation philosophy of Village Institutions; respect, love, collaboration and tolerance were the main ingredients. After the difficult battles and the Victory after a great Independence War, it was the time of being a social state. For a better and productive, modern life, they must have been trained and enlightened. It was a great need to send all kind of services to villages and also to train such teachers who would take that spirit to the villages in Anatolia. That was the reality and essence of “Village Institutions!”. They had formed such a system that in which all the villagers would grow whatever they needed and it would have been based upon working and laboring, and within the educational system everyone would learn by doing.
In that system, theory and practice would go hand in hand. As a result of those efforts, all the empty, neglected fields turned green. Wheat and oats covered all the land. Mr. Tonguç was sending trained teachers to villages by saying: “You are our hope for the future”. All the village teachers were solving all the problems of the village people one by one, teaching them the virtues of ethical values, women rights, social responsibilities and rules of citizenship.
Cultural training was being realized through practical applications and scientific research was the essence of all solutions. Through the productive training, all the young people were gaining self-respect and courage for problem solving. Twenty-one different village institutions had become the source of hope and achievement for many young village children. Our folklore which had been covered for years had started to shine again. Every corner of Türkiye has been changing with the Aegean children’s “Zeybek”, and Black sea region children’s “Horon”. All the Turkish people from East to the West corner were hugging each other and their values had been mingling with each other on the way of attaining the same goal. The culture of Anatolia had been appearing with the poetry, songs and cultural dances of the children. That was not enough for the village institutions. Students were also learning the values and products of international cultures. The Classical books of the Western Renaissance were being read by the village people and thus the curtain over their eyes had been opened, and they had tasted the enlightenment.
The following lines were one of the most popular rhymes on their lips:

On the same route, the same effort
The same wish in all the hearts
To see the villagers ahead
To improve the villages...

Village Institutions would be the hope of our future, all the future would have been founded by them. The form of the new state was Republic, the throne of it was Democracy and the light of it was education. Within that educational system, the only honorable and prideful source was the village institutions. The children of ignorant villagers were running to institutions and then to their own villages as they trained human resources. That system was such a system that it was student-centered, far from memorization, leading and preparing the youngsters to the problem-solving futures.
Village institution students were those who were not affected by hunger or bad living conditions such as hard beds; they were strong and full of hope and motivation. Only through that system villagers would read, learn and improve. For their hygiene, their nurses and healthcare personnel would have run to villages. They would do their agriculture through scientific methods, take care of their cattle through modern systems and share their folklore with joy and fun. Things and/or people taken from villages would go back to villages again as stars and lights. They would enlighten the darkness.
Villagers would have been conscious about the values and responsibilities of citizenship, would have spoken a better Turkish, would have gained national values and would love their nation and land in a different way. They would carry their flag, Independence Rhyme and Atatürk as national symbols in their hearts. For, village institutions were giving the feeling of being a nation to all minds and hearts.
Dark hands and cruel tongues resisted the improvement of the villages. Some evil people related to the Business world, politics and religious order collaborated with those who were against the development of Türkiye. They closed those schools and they re-powered the darkness again. What a pity that; since 1923, we have been struggling with huge educational problems without making use of that excellent educational system we once had. The fate of those schools started with Ataturk’s Enlightenment Period; however, the light of that torch had been turned off. What a big loss for Turkish people!