The Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) and the People’s Committees started a campaign against AKP’s new school curriculum.
ICP, 11 August 2017
A petitioning campaign against AKP’s Islamist new school curriculum has been launched by TKP and the People’s Committees. According to soL International, the grass roots activity calling people to sign the petition and to participate in the struggle against the reactionary school curriculum received a significant support from the start.
The petition titled "'We will not let yield to sharia schools" underlines that “the new curriculum legitimizes the hatred against enlightenment, republic and scientific thought through the educational institutions." The petition states that every child has the right to access egalitarian and scientific education. "The AKP government has been usurping this right for years and it continues its attempts to destroy the education system", it adds.
It is stated that TKP along with the People’s Committees declared that will not allow the children to be raised under obscurantism, that it rejects this curriculum and calls the people to participate in this campaign and struggle against AKP’s reactionary policies. The People’s Committees had been organized in April 2017 to mobilize the people following the referendum where the AKP government of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan manipulated the election by means of oppression and fraud.
The new curriculum will be put into practice for the first, fifth, and ninth graders from this year on, and it will extend to other grades in the 2018-2019 education term. Accordingly, a total of 176 class curricula have been renewed. The final version of Turkey’s national education curriculum has left out the topic of "evolution" and added the concept of "jihad" in the text books.