Mick Hartley

Unsurprising news from Turkey:

İsmet Yılmaz, the Minister of National Education in Turkey on Friday announced the new curriculum draft for school. After the draft is finalized, textbooks will be published based on the new draft to be used starting from 2017-2018 academic year.

The new curriculum draft brings some radical changes:

– The failed coup attempt will be included in Social Studies courses starting from the 6th grade.

–  The overall academic difficulty is reduced.

–  Evolution Theory is excluded from Biology courses. The related unit named “The Origins of Life and the Evolution” is replaced with “Living Beings and Environment”.

That's not all:

–  Information about Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, is being reduced in the first grade.

On January 5, pro-AKP teachers’ union Eğitim-Bir-Sen has suggested that courses related to Atatürk should be removed from school curriculums.

It's all in keeping with the ruling AKP's Islamist agenda. Ataturk, of course, was a secularist:

“I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea. He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him against the liberty of his fellow-men.” 

Erdogan isn't.