Village Institutes were established in 1940 to raise pioneers with highly civilized abilities. These teachers would provide village children with a vocational education that would be useful in life, along with classical education, and prepare the basis for all vocational education that one could consider ideal for village children. Those who came aimed to teach in a comfortable environment in the city. Even if these graduates went to the villages, they could not adapt to the village and were looking for a way to return to the city as soon as possible. Newly established teacher training schools had to be established near villages, far from the cities, because large fields and agricultural lands were required since agricultural activities were production-oriented. Village Institutes were the secondary education part of the village education system. Their aim was only to train teachers. Village Institutes, which initially trained only teachers, started to train healthcare professionals three years later. The aim was to train “useful personnel for the village”.
If the relations between the land and people, citizens and business, wealth and citizens are not established in a harmonious manner, all channels leading to the flow of general life are doomed to remain blocked... What can we gain from accepting these problems as they are and only educating the villagers. - İsmail Hakkı Tonguç
Friends, what we are doing with this law is not a copy. We have done this by complying with the existing reality and social phenomenon of our own country. This is ours; we did not take it from anyone. Let others take it from us. - Hasan Ali Yücel
We did not call these institutions village teachers' schools. Because there were institutions with this name before. We did not want to associate them with it. These are brand-new things. We took the word institute as the foreigners pronounced it and got used to it. We did not take the village institute only as an institution in which theoretical education was given. We did not call it a school because it included some practical activities such as agricultural arts, blacksmithing, and simple carpentry, but we deemed it appropriate to call it an institute. - Hasan Ali Yücel
Globalization contains multifaceted challenges to education in general and academic research in particular. Some of these obstacles are new; others are not. The latter feature certain obstructions such as cross-cultural exchange of ideas, the underrepresentation of marginalized groups, embracing diversity, and the importance and value of indigenous knowledge systems respecting local customs, traditions, and beliefs. These are indeed high hurdles to overcome. To prepare a blueprint to cope with such topics, it is imperative to investigate and understand previous schemes, such as the Village Institutes in Turkey, which successfully managed to overcome some of these difficulties and established a radical educational system that was keeping up-to-date with current developments and contemporary global challenges.
During the formative years of the young Turkish Republic, Village Institutes were institutions established to train teachers in rural villages. The teachers were trained and raised to adapt to the village, not try to migrate to the city from the village and make themselves accepted by the villagers. The central thought behind its establishment was acknowledging that until then, the state had always sent urban youth to the villages that had trained in teacher training schools established in the big cities.
This chapter will address village institutes' founding philosophy, innovative pedagogical methods, and the following determinations about their place and importance regarding the challenges of globalization and inclusivity in teaching and research.
The establishment of Village Institutes, which was established on April 17, 1940, with law no. 3803 aimed to raise pioneers with highly civilized abilities (Demirci, Tekin & Çavdar, 2021). These teachers would provide village children with a vocational education that would be useful in life, along with classical education, and they would prepare the basis for all vocational education considered ideal for village children. Complying with the objectives set at the Higher Village Institute, it attempted to become a center for village research throughout the country with an established academic journal.
Village Institutes differed from other institutions and were opened as multi-purpose educational institutions. They aimed to train the necessary personnel for the village. What is understood from the expression “necessary personnel for the village” is that the student should be trained not only as a teacher who teaches at the blackboard but also as a good healthcare professional, a good agriculturalist, and someone who can lead the village with the characteristics of a cooperative (Karaömerlioglu, 1998). In this respect, Hasan Ali Yücel, the Education Minister, stated that it was the duty of schools to provide moral education to students.