Category: Orhan Tarhan

President Obama requested that we, the citizens, suggest ideas of change for him to consider. This is a response to that request.

Former president George W. Bush made many decisions based on religious considerations. His faith-based politics at home are a good example. These were perfectly unconstitutional decisions. His premise in foreign policy was the same. He said he invaded Iraq after consulting with God and he wanted to subdue a Middle Eastern group of countries with Turkey as a model. In this process, he wanted to convert Ataturk’s laic (Secular) Turkey to a mildly Islamic country. Arabs don’t like Turks and did not want to have any part of it. Besides they were not ready for democracy. But in Turkey he found an ally in Recep Tayyip Erdogan who under the guise of abiding by the laic laws, wanted to Islamize Turkey. Ataturk’ political philosophy in respect to religion was very close to that of our Thomas Jefferson [“Jefferson & Ataturk, Political Philosophies” G.W.Sheldon, 2000 Peter Lang Publishing] Ataturk had made a revolution, among other things, llto separate State from Islam because Islam had been part of the problem in the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Thus the U.S. was returning a westernized Turkey to where Ottoman Empire had failed. While we were fighting Islamic radicals in Afghanistan and elsewhere, it makes no sense to convert a state like us to an Islamic republic, mildly or not.

Former president Bush proved to be an irrational man. In stead of consulting with his father, his Secretary of State, with the Pentagon, and with the CIA, he decided to make war on Iraq just by himself, by appealing to a “higher Father” for strength [Bob Woodward in Washington Post, 1-18-09] We know the result. His plans for Turkey were similarly flawed, irrational decisions.

There were, and there still are, two possibilities of dealing with Turkey.

1) Support the “laic” republic founded by Ataturk, that aimed at converting Turks to Westerners, culturally, technologically, educationally, and every which way. Such a government has been a truly friendly ally, politically, and culturally, was reliable, and would cooperate in our fight in Afghanistan against the Taliban and other Islamic radicals. An Ataturkist regime would be perfectly democratic, since they have practiced it for the last 89 years.

2) Support the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that would Islamize Turkey to a weaker, unreliable, in-name only ally, that would be easier for the United States to manage as a “Puppet Regime” [Remember Brave New World!]. However, in time, it would slide to full Islamic policies, that would be anti-U.S., anti-Israel, pro-Russian, and pro-Iranian. This is now happening before our eyes. Mr. Erdogan is taking sides with Hamas in the Gaza conflict and alienating Turkey’s long time ally Israel. In his fury, he is now taking it from Turkish Jews. After his very public argument with President Perez at Davos, he said that he considers anti-Semitism a crime against humanity. Thus, Mr. Erdogan incriminated himself by what he is doing at home.

Which policies are more in the basic interests of the United States and of the world? Obviously, it is the first.

President Obama made a wise decision: The U.S. will not take sides in Turkish politics which also creates domestic unrest. I hope, this means, he will no longer push for a mildly Islamic Republic. But this would mean that he walked half-way in the right direction. In my opinion, real American interest would dictate that he should walk the whole way and help Turks getting rid of the dangerous anti-U.S. Islamic regime. The U.S. should not push Turkey into the laps of Putin and the Mullahs. We should instead help Turkey restore the modern Ataturkist principles and values..

I congratulate President Obama for his election with such a high percentage of the American vote and wish him much success in his programs, especially in straightening up our relations with Turkey.

R E A D ER’ S  C O M M E N T  O N     P U B L I C     E D U C A T I O N

Can Korman sent my article on Public Education to an American friend who stayed many years outside the U.S. Below is her comments. She seems to be happy with the Dewey system.

Hi Can,

…The education article is some thing I know a little more about and therefore have stronger opinion about. I thought grades1,2,6,and 7th grade history and geography. In summer sessions I thought grades 3 .and 4. I also was administrator of schools in Sofia, Yaounde, and Jakarta. From the teaching perspective I have been exposed to and practiced many techniques of teaching. My training/education was at UCLA and taught in Beverly Hills, CA. My own education, primary through university was in Los Angeles. Background. As an elementary school kid you might say I was exposed to the John Dewey System and for that I am so thankful! Why? I’ll give a little example. In grade 6 we studied Westward expansion. Our studies included building a log cabin furnished with stuff we made and items donated by our families who had relevant antiques at home. We also made a covered wagon, dressed in pioneer clothes, churned butter, made powder horns from horns obtained by our teacher from a slaughter house, trekked through some vacant land near our school. We studied routes followed by settlers and explorers, wars, treaties…. Now when I study history which I learned to love through that teaching method, I always want to know much more than a few memorized names and dates. I’m able to put myself in the shoes of people I can never know. We did memorize the multiplication tables and spelling words. We also enjoyed real music and art instruction…. The Ayn Rand admirers and other conservatives would have us “learn” a national set of “facts” and be tested on successful memorization at least once a year. Hello, No Child Left Behind in its present adaptation. Yes, learning is an individual mental process, but there are many techniques which are successful in teaching and not all of those techniques work for each individual child/person. There are many reasons for “failing” schools. Closing them does not cure them. Oh, Can, we/I could go on and on. Let’s talk about one day….But ,one more example of the fallacy, in my opinion, of Mr.Tarhan’s premise… . The state Department decided some years ago to adopt just one method of teaching foreign languages. That method was to listen and repeat. At least that’s what my Czech teacher said. I dropped the class after several weeks, because I cannot learn language that way. I must be able to see what is being said/taught. Same with Arabic. One size never fits all. Using some of the elements of the John Dewey system enable many of us to develop a life long love of learning and appreciation of the learning process.

An Anonymous Reader

W R I T E R’ S     R E S P O N S E

I thank the Anonymous lady for her comments.

It is obvious that what John Dewey called “class projects” such a Westward expansion is a lot of fun , both for people who teach it and those who learn it. A great deal of details is learned about a subject that covers at least several months time and the child misses to learn a systematic history of America during that time. In the boarding school in Istanbul (Galatasaray) a French physics teacher had led a project to build a glider. Participation was voluntary, and work was done evening. After two years he had tried to fly it. I did participate and we learned how to build structured wings, how to construct the whole thing as light as possible. But that was not done in stead of the physics courses, but in addition to. The regular physics course was still given. That school project was great fun too. Yes, learning must be fun, but the purpose of education does not consist of fun alone. There are so many things to learn and there is no question that our schools do not measure up to European and Japanese schools where kids are taught to think. In our schools still some one may ask “Does in your country the sun set from the East or from the West?”

I have no premise to learn foreign languages by hearing and repeating. I learned three foreign languages by immersing myself in environments where every one was speaking that language.

Ayn Rand is being misquoted. All she required was that kids learn by understanding. Once that happens there is no need to memorize. One remembers what one understands.

No Child Left Behind is a lousy program that would lower the knowledge level of the class to the level of the dumbest kid.

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Last articles on the cost of universities have generated considerable interest on elementary, middle, and high school education. I wrote four articles on this subject since the beginning of these LETTERS. I want to summarize them here for the benefit of new readers.

The aim of education in Turkey at the time of Ataturk was (a) to acquire modern knowledge, to learn to think analytically and (b) to acquire a modern conception of the world.( The problem with the Conception of the World will be discussed in an other article) According to the self-taught Eric Hoffer, the purpose should be to produce “learning” people, not “learned” people. As we will see, the U.S. does not achieve any of the two aims of the Ataturk era that were the same as European aims.

American public schools are the way they are because of the teaching method of John Dewey. Around

1900 large numbers of European peasants were immigrating to the U.S. Most of them were illiterate and did not speak English. It was a big task to train them and to convert them to useful citizens. The American Public Education System was “redesigned” for a specific purpose to meet this challenge. This job was given to the philosopher John Dewey (1850-1952) who became the most influential man in Public Education., in fact, he was called “The Father of American Education”. Dewey wanted to make education “child-centered”. In his book “The School and Society“ [The University of Chicago Press, Second Edition, 1915] he said, “The mere absorption of facts and truths is so exclusively individual an affair that it tends very naturally pass into selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere learning, there is no obvious social gain in success there at. Indeed almost the only measure for success is a competitive one, in the bad sense of the term….” He obviously did understand that learning is a purely individual mental process and there is no such thing as a collective learning. That apparently troubled him, because he believed in the supremacy of the society over the individual and all the other socialist failed ideas that eventually carried the socialist countries of the 20th century to destruction.

In practice, “Child-centered Education” meant that no theoretical (conceptual) knowledge was given to the child. He/she was taught practical (concrete) knowledge in form of so-called class projects, which would develop his/her “social spirit”. Thus, in stead of teaching systematically history, geography, physics, and chemistry, the teacher might, for example, talk about the preparation of woolen textiles, she can give children bits of information on the raising of sheep, the parts of the country, where sheep are raised, etc. The child sees and feels this material as part of his/her life. Hence the term, “child-centered”. Thus, the childen never get any comprehensive and systematic knowledge of history, geography, physics, chemistry, or what ever.

This system has very grave consequences. Ayn Rand, in her book “The new Left –The Anti-Industrial Revolution” [Signet books (1971) pp. 152-204] made an enlightening analysis of the Dewey System.. She said, “The perception of reality, the learning of facts, the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, are exclusively individual capacities; the mind is an exclusively individual “affair”; there is no such thing as a collective brain”. Sacrificing one’s knowledge and truth to any social pressure is what we call a lack of intellectual integrity. Thus, “the goal of the Dewey system is to stunt,, stifle, and destroy the child’s capacity to develop “intellectual integrity. Dewey encouraged learning by memorizing instead of learning by understanding.

Dewey’s system produced millions of Americans who have much practical knowledge, but are unable to think conceptually. The fact that “Johnnie can’t read” is a normal result of this system. After the Russians launched

the Sputnik, there was a revue of U.S. Education. In the 1980’s “The National Commission on Excellence in Education” was created. Their finding called “A Nation in Risk – An imperative in Education Reform” was published in 1983. It said “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well viewed it as an act of war.” Twenty six years passed since that report and nothing has changed. In competition with European and Japanese kids, ours can’t measure up. We cannot hope to stay as a superpower with an education like that. We should get rid of the Dewey system. Why isn’t anything ever done about it? It is inconceivable that a superpower that sends a man to the moon and back, may be unable to fix its own public education. It reminds me of “Brave New World”. (See Appendix) The governments under the influence of Business may not want a smart citizenry who would not swallow all the advertising garbage and would be easier buyers. Anyway, enough hard-minded kids will learn to think in spite of Dewey. Those are feeding the universities plus the foreign students who were taught to think. That deal was probably still adequate 26 years ago but it is no more valid. Business has changed. Things have gotten high-tech. Computers have invaded our country. Brave New World or not, the Dewey System must go!

To get rid of the Dewey system there are a number of things that must be done:

(1) A new curriculum must be written for the entire country for classes 1 – 12. that should be as strong as the French and Japanese curriculums that emphasize the teaching of thinking and philosophy in 12th grade.

(2) The influence of local ignorant school boards on this curriculum must be definitely prevented.

(3) The Department of Education must prepare yearly examination questions for all high schools and devise a cheat-proof way of using them that does not show the identity of the student to the grader of the paper.

(4) The schools must be judged by the percentage of successes and failures, and failing schools must be closed. Same, teachers must be judged by their success in educating their pupils.

If these things are done, U.S. Public schools can be brought to the level of European schools. Unfortunately,

to do the above four measures, one must act federally. But education is a job reserved to the states. Here, there are constitutional difficulties. These measures cannot be done without changing the constitution, and we know how difficult that is. If this nation does not want to keep on deteriorating under the stupid Dewey system and eventually crumble like the Ottoman Empire and the USSR, its Congress would find ways of fulfilling the above four conditions.

The new President-Elect Obama has campaigned on a platform of change. Education should be on top of his list, and here is a tough problem that requires his unusual authority and capabilities. I wish him much success.

A P P E N D I X

B R A V E N E W W O R L D

Aldous Huxley’s book “Brave New World” was a utopia first published in 1932. It described a society existing “700 years after Ford”, that produced its people, not by sex, but by mass incubation of human eggs (??). The society consisted of four working classes and a master class. Each class was prepared differently in the incubators., giving less intelligence to the working classes.

The TIME editor that prefaced the TIME edition of “Brave New World” in 1963 found that ”Life has imitated Huxley’s art” and many unusual ideas of the book have already been applied. Today we are going to add another one to that list.

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My last LETTER titled “Making American Universities Affordable” stirred a great deal of interest. I received four good comments. Because I want this subject better thought and researched, I decided to publish them in this issue, together with my responses.

Dear Orhan,

Sorry for the delay in responding to this important essay. The most hurtful aspect of what you write is that you are absolutely correct in your assessment but no hope for the solution you suggest.

Except for the middle class (not the middle earners that have been improperly identified as middle class) who understand the importance of schooling at all levels, our country is woefully deficient in educational issues. The day this country allowed REMEDIAL READNG at the college level (30 years ago) I understood that we had dangerously downsized educational standards to accommodate minorities. That did not help minorities who for the next thirty years failed by 50 % to take real advantage (or graduate) from institutions of higher learning.

Then there is the daily deluge of empty rhetoric sent over the TV airways and published in popular magazines: celebrity information that in no way fosters learning. Consumerism became the God of our country and now we are facing the consequences of second rate leadership, mindless greed and careless citizenry. Perhaps the new economic reality will force even the empty heads to take other paths than that of the department store, inane concerts posing as art and all the other endeavors they have substituted for living in purposeful life. Immediate gratification, day-to-day fulfillment like children in a candy store has exposed dire consequences at all levels, from those whose jobs are lost to the millionaires who thought Mr.Madoff was Jesus of Wall Street. Enough ranting. Thank you for writing. Merry Christmas and a Healthy New Year.

Joan Salemi

Good Morning Orhan,

Two thoughts as I read your letter, first, in my mind, the current problem in U.S. Education begins before high school. The education process seems to have degenerated into a “day care” system, with kids being put into ”Pre kindergarten” as soon as they are out of diapers. Young people are passed along grade to grade, and enter high school without being able to read adequately, have little or no math skills and virtually no knowledge of the country or the world they live in.

As you point out, the college/university system may be the make-up for high school today; I would submit that high school has become the make up for elementary school.

Second, as a product of the Depression, I always heard at home that not everyone was supposed to, nor necessarily entitled to, go to college. A lot had to do with money. Not everyone could afford to go. It was not a frivolous follow-on to high school but serious preparation for professional career fields

Colleges today are nothing to be admired, they are just another profit-making enterprise.

Robert Dickie.

Orhan bey;

Thank you. Excellent. This article reflects also many of my thoughts. I have found only very few books and articles on the subject, but not as powerful as yours. Unfortunately the government will continue to pride itself with improving the school buildings, student populations in classes, and all other peripheral issues, it will never address the main issue of course contents, claiming that it is a matter for the local education board and for teachers.

Universities also would refuse to change claiming that their last 200 years of experience proves that they are doing the right thing, like the auto industry. Success makes them arrogant to accept that there may be better methods of doing things, especially after 200 years.

Metin Camcigil.

You are making an assumption about professors and colleges. Professors seek positions in American universities to do research, not to teach. American universities hire and (more importantly) retain/promote professors who are able to bring in research grants or recognition to the university. Teaching is a wonderful

Side-benefit for those who are lucky to be able to afford tuitions to these schools.

Which brings me to sports. I’ll announce my bias up front. I am a big sports fan. College athletes are divided into three categories:

1. Men’s college football

2. Men’s college basketball

3. Everything else

#1 and #2 are massive revenue streams for universities. #3 is not. However, the number of scholarships awarded to athletes is something to also consider. In many cases the students receiving scholarships would never be able to otherwise afford tuition or have grades strong enough to earn academic scholarships.

K. Hayri Tarhan, Jr.

W R I T E R’ S R E S P O N S E S

I thank all my four readers for their comments. Joan Salemi’s complaints about the weakening educational level in this country are of course very true. They are a part of the greater picture in education. However, I had chosen a narrower subject :How to cut costs in higher education to make it affordable. From that narrower view point I did answer the question. I suggested several means of cutting costs that would actually make the colleges affordable. However, as Joan Salemi points out, I did not attempt to answer the “greater picture”.

Bob Dickie’s contention that the problem of Education starts before high school is absolutely correct. Bob

Turkey is a “laic” republic. Laic is not the same thing as “secular”. Turkey has no national religion. Its constitution does NOT say that “Turkey’s religion is Islam”, although 98 % of its people are Muslim. Religion and state affairs are sharply separated and religion has no place in the public realm. The Shariah part of the Koran discussing relations of people with other people, like polygamy, for example, is outlawed in Turkey and replaced by laws borrowed from European states. This is a situation that exists in no Islamic country. Therefore women are emancipated and have about equal rights with men, just like in the United States..

I have never heard in history that any state may want to change the constitution of its ally., because if it does that, it is no longer its ally. President Bush cooked a “Greater Middle East Project” (GMEP) to be applied to Turkey and to all Islamic countries. Turkey would be a model for them, but not the laic Turkey, but a mildly Islamic Turkey. The Islamic countries do not like Turkey and do not want to be like it. They do not want to get rid of the Shariah. So they did nothing.

In Turkey, after the voters fired in 2002 a coalition of incompetent and corrupt people, a religious party promised to abide by the laic constitution and was elected as the ruling party. They had some economic success. They eventually increased their votes to 46 %. Once they were entrenched, they began to Islamize the country. The Ataturk followers were alarmed.

Their prime minister Recep Tayiyp Erdogan likes the GMEP because he too would like to Islamize Turkey.. When he comes to Washington, he is all smiles, at home he does not do anything without asking Washington, so the U.S. considers him a “Puppet regime”. But at Home, he propagandize sharply against the U.S. and he is one of the reasons why pro-American vote in Turkey is still 12 %, the lowest in the World.

The Obama government must disown and abolish GMEP and reinstitute respect for the Turkish constitution. This would also pull the rug from under the feet of Mr. Erdogan.

I think right now the most important problem between U.S. and Turkey is the PKK problem. Obama would understand that it is unacceptable that an ally protects terrorists in areas it is domineering and allows them

to attack Turkish targets. This is clearly a casus-belli. These are one of President Bush’s deeds that disregards all laws of common decency, like breaking the Geneva Convention and the Westphalia Treaty and permitting torture.

The next U.S. Secretary of State, before starting her own program, will have to correct first President Bush’s misdeeds.

If the PKK problem is resolved, Turkey can be again a reliable, real ally.

R e n a i s s a n c e  o f  R e p u b I i c a n  P a r t y

George W. Bush let his party be hijacked by Evangelical Christians, in spite of the separation of Church and State in our Constitution. He made a lot of decisions on religious grounds. Evangelicals propagated some of their ideas as Republican ideas. He broke the Geneva Convention, the Westphalia Treaty and allowed torture. When he wanted to do anything, like listening to phones, he always stepped out of the legal area.

For the political process to work properly in the United States, we have now a large and strong Democratic Party. We must also have a strong Opposition party. If the Republican party got too small and too weak, it cannot be a good opposition. Therefore, the Republicans must shake themselves up, get rid of Bush’s illegal ballast, and then make their new program.

In the past the Republican party was known to be pro business. That is al right, if it does not also mean “against the people”. Exporting a computer trouble-shooter job to India may lower the computer cost a little bit, but messes up the life of a highly specialized and knowledgeable technical man. He may not be able to find another good job for a long time, or may accept a much lower salary. The party must adopt a new nick name such as “The People’s Party” and must try to live up to it.

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To Readers’ Attention: Any one who wishes to receive THE ORHAN TARHAN LETTER should sent an e-mail to [email protected] with his/her full name, e-mail address , and PLEASE phone number, in case there is an interruption caused by the server, or in case of e-mail address change. It is free. Comments are welcome. These LETTERs are also published in AmericanChronicle.com