The Achilles heel of Turkey,Education.

Submitted by Mozere (United Kingdom), Jan 23, 2013 at 05:03

Turkey's Achilles heel in its quest to become a ME leader is its education system. Erdogan's worst legacy will be his worsening of the already not so good Turkish education system.This system,if you can call it a system, is a hodge podge of medressa like imam hatips,lycees,science lycees etc, etc based on medieval rote learning,anachronistic high octane nationalism and religiosity,with the aim of raising a compliant and non questioning generation.With a very few exceptions higher learning establishments which proliferate are not worthy of the name university and churn out unemployable poorly educated graduates.

This may be sufficient for a low technology industry such as Turkey has now but to go one level up to South Korea's ,let alone Italy's level you need a highly educated ,innovative,thinking outside the box generation of work force.Therefore producing high technology innovations is and in the medium term will be beyond Turkey's capability,this can be alleviated by enticing skilled expat Turks back to Turkey.

Without the technological capabilities of an advanced economy,Turkey will not be a believable leader in the ME,this was and is being demonstrated in the current Syrian crisis. An educated work force cannot be produced by squandering tax payers money on the upkeep of 1000s of mosques whose expense is larger than the budget for the ministry of education.

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