Searches for Liberatory Education: Village

Institutes and the Critical Pedagogy School

Nuran Aytemur Sağıroğlu*

Abstract: This study aims to examine the understanding of pedagogy, which was put
into practice in Village Institutes as an example of liberatory education, associating it
with the critical pedagogy. In the study, it is argued that these two approaches of
pedagogy show parallelism in terms of their emphasis on the unity of intellectual and
practical activities, their egalitarian and democratic approach, and the
“transformative” and “temporary” role attributed to the intellectual with the objective
of eliminating the distinction between the people and the intellectuals.
Keywords: Liberating education, village institutes, critical pedagogy.

Introduction
Talking about liberatory education is only possible by seeing education as a
field of conflict and contradiction, aside from its role in the reproduction of
social relations. This approach enables considering Village Institutes, which
were established in the 1930s with an aim to meet the needs1 of the Republican
regime, and which are argued to incorporate repressive elements of the one-
party regime in some aspect, as an example of liberatory education. The same
point is the main pivot of the Critical Pedagogy School2 , which is characterized
by the liberatory education approach. Thus, Freire and Macedo (1998: 83), who
are among the prominent names of the School, state that education reproduces
the dominant ideology, however, the role of education cannot be reduced to
social and ideological reproduction, and underline that education, while
reiterating the dominant ideology, at the same time offers the opportunity for
‘negating’ that ideology. McLaren (2003a: 85), one of the most important
representatives of the School, not only emphasizes the role of schools in the
reproduction of social relations, but also points out that schools refer to a
cultural field that encourages the authorization and self-transformation of
*
Assist. Prof.Dr., Abant İzzet Baysal University, 14280, Gölköy Kampüsü/Bolu/Turkey.
1
These can be summarized as follows: to solve the problem of education in rural areas, to improve and to
increase agricultural production, to modernize the village and villager, and thus, to achieve national
development, to train individuals, who will promote the Republican regime and its principles to people and
will ensure their adoption, and to contribute to the process of educating ‘modern’ and ‘secular’ citizens of
the newly established nation-state.
2
The point that should be emphasized here is that while critical theory that dates back to the Frankfurt
School–also constitutes the basis of critical pedagogy – focuses on repressive aspects of the political power,
the focal point of critical pedagogy is the productive/creative dimensions of the political power, such as
strengthening/authorization. At this point, critical theorists, who use Gramsci’s notion of ‘hegemony,’ point
out that hegemonic consent can never be fully established (Kincheloe, 2008: 54).

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82 TODAİE’s Review of Public Administration

students. For him, school is a field of struggle and conflict, and here, there
exists a relative autonomy that allows for the emergence of various forms of
resistance (McLaren, 2003a: 78). For this very reason, it is possible to describe
school both the space of ‘domination’ and ‘liberation’ (McLaren, 2003a: 85).
Likewise, Giroux (1981: 109) points out that reproduction “is a complex
phenomenon that not only serves the interests of domination, but also contains
the seeds of conflict and transformation.” In this framework, schools are seen as
sites of struggle developed for expanding human capacities in order to enable
people to intervene in the formation of their own subjectivities and to transform
material and ideological conditions of domination into social practices that will
promote “social empowerment” (Giroux - Simon, 1989: 237)
The liberatory education approach that starts from this point of view lays
emphasis on the concepts such as ‘personal autonomy’,’ self-knowledge’, ‘self-
realization’,’self-management and self-control’, and ‘multi-aspect self-
development’. In addition, besides for its economical aspect, work is attributed
importance for its social, cultural, and educational aspects as well, and emphasis
is placed on “values that glorify labor, and blesses work.” Besides, in a
liberatory approach, the structure, process and functions of education are
designed in such a way so as “to free the individual from the internalized
authority and ideological domination, to ensure his/her multi-aspect and
autonomous development, and to equip him/her with qualifications enabling
him/her to decide his/her destiny” (Özsoy, 2004: 9). These emphases are seen in
Village Institutes and Critical Pedagogy School, which are discussed as the
examples of liberatory education in this study.
This study, starting from this point, establishes a parallelism between the
understanding of pedagogy adopted in Village Institutes–İsmail Hakkı Tonguç’s
approach to pedagogy, who is recognized as the architect of Village Institutions
–and the notion of critical pedagogy inspired from Gramsci and Freire. The
emphasis of the said approaches on the unity/intermingling of intellectual and
practical activities–this approach grounds knowledge on daily practices, and
thus excludes it from the privilege of intellectuals, and ultimately, leads to the
characterization of the ‘transformative’ role attributed to the intellectual as
temporary. It is argued that the two above-mentioned approaches show
parallelism with regard to the facts that they both regulate the relationships
between learners and teachers in an equalizing and liberating manner rather than
being hierarchical; education develops a critical viewpoint in learners against
the reality, in which they exist, and by considering the process of learning that
enables taking action to transform this reality, they aim to turn learning into a
liberation tool. To this end, this study will discuss the said notions of pedagogy
in terms of unity/intermingling of intellectual and practical activities, egalitarian
 Searches for Liberatory Education: Village Institutes and the Critical Pedagogy School 83

and democratic approach and structuring, and the role they attribute to the
intellectual.
The Unity of Intellectual and Practical Activities
It was stated above that liberatory education approach, which emphasizes that
education/training should be associated with life, attributes importance to work
for its economic, social, cultural and educational aspects as well, and places
emphasis on ‘values that glorifies labor and blesses work.’ Accordingly,
liberatory approach rejects the hierarchical relationship between intellectual and
practical activities–the superiority of intellectual activities to practical activities.
While this becomes concrete in the notion of ‘education within work’ and the
method of ‘learning-by-doing’ in Village Institutes, it comes into being in the
concept of ‘praxis’ in critical pedagogy approach.3
When Village Institutes are at issue, the unity/intermingling of intellectual
and practical activities cannot be thought separate from the principle of
‘education within work.’ The underlying reasons behind the adoption of the
principle of ‘education within work’ in Village Institutes can be listed as
“improving and increasing agricultural production, developing villages, and
expecting from Village Institutes to be self-supporting institutions by creating
their own resources, thus would not place much burden on the state, as there
was not necessary time and financial resources for training teachers for
villages” (Öztürk, 1980: 88). However, the more important reason for the
adoption of the principle of ‘education within work’ was Tonguç’s belief that
the activity that creates the human is ‘work.’ Tonguç used the word ‘work’ so as
to involve mental activities, along with practical activities (Özsoy, 2004: 10).
Tonguç (1938: 90), who opposed to the distinction between vocational-
technical education and general education, placed emphasis on the need for
multi-aspect self-development4 of human. Türkoğlu (1980) points out that
Tonguç did not consider ‘work’ as ‘manual labor’; instead, he approached it as
an activity that also involves artistic activities along with agricultural and
technical work. Tonguç (1999: 93) believed that education should not be
separate from life. He criticized the education approach of the period based on

3
It is possible to find similar emphases in Tonguç’s understanding of pedagogy, albeit he did not give place
to the concept of praxis. Özsoy (2004: 9-10) argues that what underlies in ‘Tonguç’s understanding of
education and that of Village Institutes is a definition of human, whose roots date back to Marx’s theory of
the development of individual consciousness and alienation. ‘For him, “Tonguç’s notion of education is
based on the principles and methods of education that simultaneously improve action, knowledge, and
awareness, and which also links and directs knowledge to social problems and their solution. ‘This method
refers to, “knowledge must originate from praxis.”
4
To this end, artistic activities such as music, drama and folklore were carried out in the institutes, and thus,
students were given the opportunity to develop themselves in different fields (Türkoğlu, 1980: 57). It was
stated in the relevant Circular dated 4 December 1944 that as spacified in the curriculum, each student
should necessarily participate in cultural, agricultural and artistic activities (Tonguç, 1999: 78).
84 TODAİE’s Review of Public Administration

dry knowledge and rote learning, and stated that they aimed to train people, who
put what they learned into practice, in Village Institutes. This ‘new’ type of
person would be a person who “constructs buildings or makes goods according
to the basic laws of geometry and other sciences”, not a person, who
“memorizes the geometry problems, and then forgets after passing the exam.”
What is concerned here is the coinciding of the production process with
education, i.e. use of theoretical knowledge learned in a conscious manner in
the production process (Türkoğlu, 1980: 58). In Village Institutes, knowledge
“was provided in the field, in the garden, during construction works and trips
across the country, in front of historical buildings and artifacts, at power plants,
on animals, plants and engines, or via analyses and comparisons performed
through the review of books, journals and statistics about a subject” (Akçay,
1980: 74). The aim was learning while working and producing, and that was
why in Village Institutes, the method of ‘learning-by-doing’ was adopted and
put into practice. Tekben (1980: 35) points out that this method should be
distinguished from the method of learning-by-doing implemented in today’s
technical schools, and argues that this method called ‘learning-while-doing’
involved ‘creativity’, ‘productivity’, and ‘love of work’ as it was about meeting
a need. Thanks to this method, learning was freed from ‘the task of memory’,
i.e. rote.
It is possible to say that the rejection of the superiority of intellectual
activities over practical activities in Village Institutes became concrete in
administrators’ approach to educators and the participation of educators in
administration as well. Gedikoğlu (1971: 73) states that in the beginning, the
participation of educators in the Board of Teachers and their having voice in the
operation of the Institutes disturbed many teachers; however, rational, practical,
and effective ideas and suggestions of educators changed over time–even
though they did not know theoretical teaching methods. According to the writer,
this was the outcome of the emphasis placed on ‘learning-by-doing’ and the
principle of ‘learning-on-the-work.’ That is to say, work was given importance
as much as theoretical or abstract knowledge. For example, the Principal of
Village Institute of Trabzon-Beşikdüzü Arman (1980: 28) stated that he took
first fishing lessons from intern educator Adem Başkuş, and that they started
production based on his suggestions by conducting practices under his
leadership. M. Rauf İnan, one Village Institute Principals, in his letter to
Tonguç dated 12 March 1941, mentioned about master educator Sili of
Hungarian origin, who served in many Institutes, as a person, who should be
exemplified.
“Masters in the quality of Sili must be employed at the Institutes, and this new
generation should be educated in the hands of them by their approach to work and
their worldview. Otherwise, our man is both too lazy and spoilt; rather than
 Searches for Liberatory Education: Village Institutes and the Critical Pedagogy School 85

benefiting from them, we have to suffer from him. I feel this need more strongly
after seeing Sili on the job (Aydoğan, 2007: 89).”
The critical pedagogy approach than encourages learners to challenge and
transform the world aims to redefine and transform the nature of intellectual
work in schools so as to combine conception and execution (Aronowitz -
Giroux, 1985: 20). The emphasis here is placed on the concept of praxis that
refers to the unity/intermingling of conception and action (the combination of
theory and practice). Here, it is necessary to mention about Gramsci, who is
especially the source of inspiration of the notion of critical pedagogy. Gramsci
(1971) argues that every human activity contains intellectual participation as
well, and therefore, ‘man the creator’ (homo faber) cannot be separated from
‘wise man’ (homo sapiens), and opposes to the distinction between intellectual
and practical activities.5 Hence, Gramsci, by integrating intellectual space into
everyday life, moves away from the traditional approach that makes it specific
to intellectuals. Likewise, Freire thinks that everybody–woman or man–is
intellectual, as they continuously interpret and construe the world. To him,
human activity cannot be reduced to either ‘verbalism’ or ‘activism.’ Human
activity consists of action and reflection, and it is “praxis” (Freire, 2006: 103).
Freire (2006: 105-106) emphasizes that he does not consider praxis a two-stage
process as “reflection and a subsequent stage of action”, and points out that
action and reflection occur simultaneously. Here the point is the ‘synthesis’ of
reflection and action (Roberts, 2003: 176). Freire, by tying learning to will and
social action, and to life processes of the individual, aims to eliminate the
separation of thought and action (theory and practice) which, according to
Marx, was contributing to alienation (Spring, 1997: 47-51).
The concept of praxis also assumes importance by rejecting the hierarchical
distinction between intellectual and practical activities, and by laying emphasis
on the ‘transformation of world’, along with its highlighting of their
unification/inter-mingling. This point is one of the fundamental elements of the
notion of critical pedagogy. That is to say, there is a pedagogical mandate to
transform it with the goal of radically democratizing educational sites and
societies through a shared praxis. While understanding pedagogical and social
realities constitutes a dimension of critical pedagogy, its other dimension is the
transformation of these realities through a shared praxis (Fischman - McLaren,
2005: 425-426). Critical educators believe that a theory of education should be
‘partisan’, and argue that knowledge and actions must be directed at eliminating
oppression, inequality and exploitation, and at attaining social justice and
freedom (McLaren, 2003a: 70, 85). For example, Freire (2005) states that

5
However, even though he sees all people as intellectuals, for Gramsci (1971), this does not mean that
everyone can fulfill the role of intellectual.
86 TODAİE’s Review of Public Administration

comprehending the processes of oppression and domination is not enough for

praxis, and that this comprehension must be nourished from commitment to
struggle against injustice. Giroux (2007: 28-32), who points to the relationship
between pedagogy and politics, and emphasizes that pedagogy is a “political
practice”, which is directly related with social change, also maintains that
education is “the precondition of informed and critical citizens”, and therefore,
has a “guiding and interventionist view on the way to creating a democratic
society”. Education, from the critical pedagogic perspective, should ask the
questions of what and how can be done in the reconstruction of social
imagination based on freedom (Giroux - Simon, 1989: 239). Apple (1995)
points out that while doing it, it should be entered into the process of
‘repositioning’, and states that this means to see the world through the eyes of
the dispossessed and act against the ideological and institutional processes and
forms that reproduce oppressive conditions. That is to say, critical pedagogy,
whose basic function, among others, is to reveal the dynamics behind the
oppression and exploitation relations, and how educational policies and
practices are related to them, at the same time should point to the contradictions
and should direct to the spaces, where “counter-hegemonic actions” can be done
(Apple et al., 2009: 4). In that case, schools should also be transformed into
spaces, where critical knowledge and social-political action are produced
(McLaren, 2003b: 178).
Likewise, İsmail Hakkı Tonguç’s approach to pedagogy that rejects the
distinction between intellectual and practical activities, too, aims to transform
social reality, alongside its comprehension. Tonguç, who persistently
emphasizes the importance of teaching, reading and writing to Villagers, states
that the responsibility of students educated in Village Institutes is not limited to
it; they are expected to understand and to change the reality of village, i.e. and
‘to revive Village’.
The task of reviving Village is not an ordinary, customary issue of primary
education and primary school… Reviving Village by means of education and
training can be achieved by attributing modern, meaningful primary education to
Village. If health, modern techniques, various tools of these, modern culture and
economic knowledge are not taken to villages, which are underdeveloped in every
respect, and thus, are stuck in a different living order, through schools, villages
cannot be revived with a knowledge school that merely gives importance to literacy
(Tonguç, 1961: 105).
As can be seen, Tonguç does not reduce the issue of reviving villages to
teaching reading and writing, or to primary education. Reviving villages, at the
same time, involves raising the “awareness” of villagers. Timur (2001: 209-210)
points to the same point, and argues that Tonguç, who himself is also a villager,
is aware of the relations of exploitation in the rural area, and thus, he endeavors
 Searches for Liberatory Education: Village Institutes and the Critical Pedagogy School 87

to raise villagers’ awareness of this exploitation mechanism in Village

Institutes. Tonguç’s following words affirm this argument:
Village people should be revived and their awareness should be raised to the extent
that no force can exploit them ruthlessly solely on their own account; to the extent
that no one can treat them like slaves and servants of the inhabitants of villages; to
the extent that each of them does not turn into labor animals; to the extent that they
are able to gain their rights like any other citizen (Tonguç, 1961: 102).
According to Tonguç (1961: 88), this would be realized by the ‘Republic’,
which would put an end6 to the distinctions of “the oppressor versus the
oppressed, the exploiter classes versus the exploited classes” as well as the
distinction of intellectuals versus people. Primary education was the tool for
achieving it. In other words, Tonguç sees primary education as the tool for
“self-governance of people”, apart from a tool for modernizing and developing
villages and villagers. At this point, it is possible to speak about a similarity
between Tonguç’s and Freire’s approaches to the issue of literacy. Freire, just
like Tonguç, thinks that with the spread of literacy, the passivity of peasants or
of the poor in general will end, and political participation will increase. The
point that should be underlined is that whether literacy should be considered as
“cultural politics”, or practices that ‘empower’ or ‘disempower’ people, rather
than a technical skill, and thus, it should be analyzed according to whether it
serves to reproduce social formations, or serves for democratization and
emancipation (Freire - Macedo, 1998: 14). In this framework, Freire, for whom
literacy is essential to reshape the world, and who describes reading the printed
word and the world as “reading one’s own reality” and “reading one’s own life”
(Kincheloe, 2008: 74), sees literacy as practices that strengthen people and
serve democratization and liberation. In brief, both Tonguç and Freire focus on
villagers, who comprise the poorest segment of the society, and believing that
the spread of literacy particularly among villagers is essential for increasing
political participation, achieving democracy and eliminating the distinction
between intellectual and people, defend an egalitarian approach to education.
Such notion of education that aims individuals to develop a critical
consciousness and to take action to transform the society towards
democratization can only be brought to life within an egalitarian and democratic
structure and functioning.
Egalitarian and Democratic Approach and Structuring
Education/training can ensure the individual to realize himself or herself and to
develop a critical consciousness is only possible within a democratic structure

6
Eyüboğlu (2007: 156) defines Village Institutes as “the very…. hope for the elimination of shameful differ-
ence between the literate and villagers".
88 TODAİE’s Review of Public Administration

and functioning. This involves the regulation of relationships between students,

teachers, and administrators in an ‘egalitarian’ and ‘liberating’ manner as well
(Özsoy, 2004: 13). In this sense, it is possible to speak about a democratic
functioning in the educational and administrative processes in Village Institutes.
Cimi (2001: 148) argues that in the Institutes, participation in administration
aims at the ‘essence’ of democracy, and says, “students learn it by doing and
experiencing its awareness and responsibility within the process of work”, and
states that thus, they get free from the passivity observed in other education
institutions and reach an ‘active’ personality. Türkoğlu (1980: 58), too, points
out that the right to participation in administration is one of the essential
principles of the Institute program, and says that this principle cannot be
reduced to ‘participation in decision-making’ or to ‘gaining the right to speak’,
and that it refers to ensuring “good administration of the institution by directly
involving in the work and fulfilling the requirements through assuming the
administrative powers and responsibilities”. Accordingly, Tonguç (1999: 67) in
his letter7 of 13 December 1943, which he sent to the Principals of all Village
Institutes, after pointing out that the Institutes’ assignment of all their work to
students was one of the basic principles, associated this principle with the
principle of ‘self-governance’ and wrote that neither works could be handled,
nor ‘the right way’ could be found, unless these principles were implemented.
Tonguç (1999: 68-69) criticized that though not very often, some Institute
Principals were of the opinion that they could administer the institution by
assuming all the work and by solving every problem themselves, and underlined
that the Institutes should turn into “indestructible institutions, which were
common property of those living in, and thus, which they administered
collectively”, rather than being under the control of ‘a single person’. For him,
the former one is a ‘rootless’ and ‘flawed’ form of administration that “turned
all personnel into senseless, thoughtless puppets that acted without using their
intelligence,” and which was “doomed to collapse one day”. Who would suffer
the most from such form of administration would be students, who would be
‘leaders’ of villages. What should be done was to assign their roles and
responsibilities to everybody and to free the institution “from the administration
of a single and terrorizing authority” (Tonguç, 1999: 42).
The point that should be underlined here is this emphasis laid by Tonguç on
the principle of ‘self-governance’ was inherent to his approach to pedagogy and
was an indispensable component of his ideal model of society. It can be argued

7
In Village Institutes, exchanging letters was adopted as an essential method for education, training, and
management in Village Institutes (Aydoğan, 2007: 9). Tonguç regularly sent letters to teachers and
administrators of Village Institutes about the functioning of the Institutes, and rules and regulations that
should be complied with, and touched on how to administer these Institutes and how to overcome the
problems faced. In a sense, those letters indicate that Tonguç carefully followed whether the said regulations
and principles were brought to life.
 Searches for Liberatory Education: Village Institutes and the Critical Pedagogy School 89

that Tonguç, by putting into practice this principle in Village Institutes, took a
step towards achieving the aim for ‘self-governance of people.’
In the Institutes, we, by changing the motto ‘self-governance of people’, one of the
fundamental principles, which our State is founded on, into ‘self-governance of
students and teachers’, try to establish a form of administration based on this
principle. We, as the only and unique means of achieving it, recognize division of
labor, the participants’ voicing their views and opinions about the works done, well
treatment of everybody in the community to each other and their non-interference to
one another’s work. We do not take the way of creating God Principal, Assistant
Principal, Chief of Education, or teacher. Above all, we do not want to give place to
those, who beat, tyrannize, or those who are in the opinion of administering people
through contempt and fear, in these institutions (Tonguç, 1999: 90-91).
It should be noted that the democratic functioning8 in Village Institutes
cannot be thought independent from the principle of ‘education within work.’
That is to say, the participation of students in the production process allowed
them have a say in the operation of the Institutes; at the meetings held in the
weekends–at those meetings, the works done throughout the previous week and
the things to be done in the following week were discussed and decided (Akçay,
1980: 73)–brought about the right to criticize everybody including teachers and
administrators. Cimi (2001: 154) states that because of this environment of free
debate, students grew as ‘out-spoken’, ‘self-confident’, and ‘courageous’
people, who stood up for their rights. Akçay (1980: 75) pointed up that in
Village Institutes, the teacher-student relationships were based on the principles
of work and homework, and stated that here, there was no place for “an
understanding of discipline that clogs the thinking mind, whose rules only
consist of beating and fear, and prohibitions, that, by increasing the varieties of
punishment, manages the personality, people, who believe in the future, in
flocks and turns them into servants”. Tonguç acted in a sensitive manner in
order to prevent the establishment of such understanding of discipline in the
Institutes, and frequently touched on this subject in his letters to the Principals
of the Institutes. In those letters, he clearly stated that beating and insulting
students were ‘forbidden’ (Tonguç, 1999: 77), and said that in some Institutes,
some of the teachers beat students, and this was not prevented by
administrators; if this could not be mended, very strict measures would be taken
against offenders (Tonguç, 1999: 66).

8
It should be noted that their autonomous structure–here, there exists financial autonomy, as the duty of the
Office of Disbursing Officer (Disbursing Officer) was granted to the directors of institutes – and their
operation without any program and regulations (Güner, 1980: 22) played role in the democratic functioning
of Village Institutes (Güner, 1980: 22).Village Institutes operated in the absence of a program or regulations
sent by the Ministry for two or three years. It was stated in the Circulars sent by the Ministry and the
relevant Law, that half of the Curriculum would be allocated to cultural courses, and the other half to
technical and agricultural courses and activities, and in this framework, each Institute had prepared its own
Curriculum in line with its requirements (Türkoğlu, 2000: 209).
90 TODAİE’s Review of Public Administration

Another point that should be noted is that in the Institutes, rather than
encouraging students to take knowledge provided to them with rote learning in
a passive manner–to free learning from memorizing causes were focused on and
the subjects were attempted to be associated (Akçay, 1980: 74)–they were
heartened to participate in lessons, to discuss, to question and to criticize; that is
to say, they were seen as ‘subjects’, rather than ‘objects’. Tonguç (1961: 112-
113) describes a school where teachers, who are “enslaved by the articles of
regulations” always talk and give orders, whereas students were confined to the
classroom, were forced to continuously listen to teachers and to keep silence
before them, to submit to the orders, and cannot develop initiative as ‘old
school’. For him, this type of school makes students passive as its activities do
not go beyond teaching reading and writing, breaks them off from nature and
life, does not give place to activities that will make them ‘active’, cannot,
through arranging knowledge and skills to the level of children, “appropriate to
them”, does not instill to them ‘the pleasure of free reading’ and does not allow
them to have fun. In brief, according to Tonguç, old school is a school, “whose
students are afraid of school”, who “tear and throws out books after passing the
class or finishing the school”, which is “indifferent to the realities of the
environment and social events”, and where “air of freedom and joy do not
prevail.”
Tonguç’s conceptualization of ‘old school’ recalls Freire’s banking model of
education. Freire describes the banking education model, which traditional
education is built on, and where the learner is ‘object’, not a ‘subject’ as
follows:
The teacher teaches and the students are taught; the teacher knows everything and
the students know nothing; the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;
the teacher talks and the students listen—meekly; the teacher disciplines and the
students are disciplined; the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the
students comply; the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through
the action of the teacher; the teacher chooses the program content, and the students
(who were not consulted) adapt to it the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge
with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the
freedom of the students; the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the
pupils are mere objects (Freire, 2006: 50).
Liberatory education, contrary to banking education that inhibits creativity
and ‘domesticates’ students, sees students as “the subjects of the process of
learning reading and writing as the acts of knowing and creating” (Freire -
Macedo, 1998: 78). Here, the key concept is ‘dialogue’. According to Freire
(2006: 66), dialogue is ‘an existential necessity.’ We ‘humanize’ ourselves
through dialogue with others (Roberts, 2003: 176). Critical thinking is
indispensable for the transformation of dialogue into “a humanizing praxis.” For
 Searches for Liberatory Education: Village Institutes and the Critical Pedagogy School 91

Freire (2006: 66), dialogue is “the encounter, in which the united reflection and
action of the dialoguers are addressed to the world, which is to be transformed
and humanized”, and therefore, cannot be reduced to “the act of one person’s
‘depositing’ ideas in another”, nor can it become “a simple exchange of ideas to
be ‘consumed’ by the discussants.” Dialogue refers to “a dialectical change, in
which ideas take shape and change, as the learners think about their thinking
and interpret their interpretations” (Berthoff, 1998: 23).
This approach removes the terms, ‘teacher-of-the-students’ and ‘the
students-of-the-teacher’ leads to the emergence of a new term: teacher-student
with students-teachers. The teacher becomes no longer merely ‘the-one-who-
teaches’ and the student is no longer merely ‘the one-who-learns’, and
education turns into a process, in which teachers and students both teach and
learn (in a dialogue).9 In this process, students are no longer ‘docile listeners’;
they transform into now critical research co-investigators in dialogue with the
teacher. The teacher presents the material to the students for their consideration,
and re-considers his or her earlier considerations. In other words, he or she
“constantly re-forms his reflections in the reflection of the students” (Freire,
2006: 57-58).
Critical pedagogues, who are inspired by Freire, endeavour to bring to life
the above-mentioned conception of pedagogy in different places of world both
at class and school level.10 Here, it can be mentioned about ‘democratic schools’
, where “an education organized around democratic social and educational
principles” (Apple - Beane, 2011: 256) are attempted to be brought to life.
Democratic schools are characterized by a set of values, each of which is
broadly defined and put into practice in order “to enhance participation at the
grass roots, to empower individuals and groups who had been largely silenced
until now, to create new ways of linking the real world and real social problems
with the school so that the school is integrally connected to the experiences of
people in their daily lives” (Apple - Beane, 2011: 61). To this end, democratic
schools, starting from the assumption that everybody directly involved in the
school–not only professional educators, but also young people, their parents,
and other members of the school community–have to the right to participate in
the decision-making process, are prominent with widespread participation in
issues of governance and policy-making. In democratic schools, democratic
planning based on collaboration is made, and thus, decisions are reached by
observing ‘concerns’, ‘aspirations’, and ‘interests’ of both young people and

9
At this point, it should be noted that the student needs the teacher; but, this does not eliminate the creativity
of the student and “his/her responsibility to develop and read his/her own written language” (Freire -
Macedo, 1998: 78-79).
10
Here, the Citizen School experience in the city of Porto Alegre in Brazil can be given as an example. Even
though not explicitly stated, the said case bears the traces of Freire’s ideas (Gandin, 2009).
92 TODAİE’s Review of Public Administration

teachers (Apple - Beane, 2011: 38). In these schools, curriculum is based on the
belief that “rather than being lists of concepts, facts and skills that students
master for standardized achievement tests (and then go on to forget, by and
large), knowledge is that which is intimately connected to the communities and
biographies of real people”, and that only by this way, it begins to be
meaningful for students and teachers (Apple - Beane, 2011: 252-253). In this
framework, issues like justice, environmental politics, and the future of the
community and seeking solutions for social problems constitute major parts of
curriculum (Apple - Beane, 2011: 49). This is consistent with democratic
schools’ objective of change in schools and the society (Apple - Beane, 2011:
50).
Another important point about democratic schools that should be
emphasized that in these schools, there are not distinctions of intellectual and
practical work and academic and vocational/technical work. Here, The Rindge
School of Technical Arts in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which, in line of its
objectives “to counter the reduction of education to job training” and “to
broaden creative intellectual work for all students”, went beyond the said
distinction, and thus, put into practice a program that integrated academic and
vocational-technical knowledge, can be given as an example. Despite its
success, the program was criticized due to its integrating academic and
vocational-technical work; even there were attempts to end the program. For
example, speaking on behalf of a group of parents, one school board member
accused Rindge of ‘misdirecting’ working-class students by offering them
“liberal arts rather than the manual training that they need". Another example
for the said prejudice was that one critic, who believed that limited skills were
better for students from low-income families, stated that the Rindge was
training ‘Renaissance people, not plumbers’ (Rosenstock - Steinberg, 2011:
208-213). On the other hand, a 9th grade student in the Rindge voiced her anger
for such prejudices in the statement published in the high school newspaper as
follows:
Some people seem to have a problem with the Rindge School of Technical Arts.
They are always putting RSTA down and stereotyping us:. . . the students in RSTA
are dumb; they will not go to college; they are going to drop out. Well, I will not
take this anymore! . . . Being a freshman in RSTA, I am positive that I will go to
college, and a lot of my confidence has come from my teachers. RSTA students
have worked hard, demonstrated enthusiasm, and displayed some great exhibits. We
are smart, not only in mind, but also with our hands. We have, or will have shortly,
an advanced technological mind as well as an academic mind.... We give respect, so
we expect respect. Success demands it!" (Rosenstock - Steinberg, 2011: 191).
To sum up, both Tonguç’s conception of education that concretized in
Village Institutes and critical pedagogy approach, which is attempted to be
 Searches for Liberatory Education: Village Institutes and the Critical Pedagogy School 93

implemented at class or school level with the efforts of critical educators, reject
the distinction between mental and manual labor that involves a hierarchical
relationship between intellectual and practical work. Both approaches suggest
the regulation of relationships between students, teachers, and administrators
within a democratic structure and functioning in an ‘equalizing’ and ‘liberating’
manner, by emphasizing self-realization, personal autonomy and self-
governance, subjectify students, moving them from being merely objects. This
leads to redefining of the role attributed to teachers, and thus, teachers are
characterized as ‘intellectuals’ and an important role is ascribed to them in
transforming educational and social reality lived in.
The Role Attributed to the Intellectual
Another common point between the pedagogic approach adopted in Village
Institutes and critical pedagogy is their approach to the issue of the intellectual.
At this point, it should be noted that the role ascribed to intellectuals, is first of
all to understand the reality lived in. However, the role of the intellectual is not
limited to deciphering the reality. He is also expected to intervene in and change
this reality. The intellectual, while doing this, will be ‘intermingled with the
people’; he will not ‘dominate’ them; he will merely ‘guide’ them. It is clear
that such type of an intellectual does not match with the classical type of the
intellectual, who has devoted himself to search for ‘the abstract’, ‘the eternal’,
and ‘the universal’ in his ivory tower, detached from life and people.
Discussing critical pedagogy’s approach to the issue of intellectual requires
touching on firstly teachers and the role they will play in transforming
educational/social reality. At this point, what teachers, as ‘transformative
intellectuals’, have to do is to assume a critical attitude towards their own
practices and those of others, to raise questions about what they teach, how they
teach, and their larger goals. This means that they must take a more active role
in defining the nature of their work, as well as in shaping their working
conditions, curriculum and school policies (Aronowitz - Giroux, 1991; Giroux,
1993). Aronowitz and Giroux (1991: 109) emphasize that teachers must view
themselves as ‘public intellectuals’, who combine thinking and practice with a
political project grounded on the struggle for liberation and justice, and draw
attention to the importance of the category of ‘public intellectuals’ for analyzing
teachers’ particular practices. According to them, first, the notion of public
intellectual provides a reference point criticizing forms of pedagogy that see
knowledge as fixed and do not give students the opportunity to interrogate their
own voices and histories. Second, the concept provides a theoretical and
political basis for teachers to engage in a critical dialogue among themselves
and students to create necessary conditions to think, read, and share their work
with others in order to transform oppressive and discursive boundaries. Third,
94 TODAİE’s Review of Public Administration

the category signifies the need for teachers to redefine their role as ‘educational
leaders’, who will create programs that allow them and their students to develop
a critical language and to connect them to most urgent problems and
opportunities of their time. At the center of this leadership is the questioning of
the relationship between knowledge and power, learning and empowerment,
and authority and human dignity.
However, the role attributed to teachers as intellectuals is not limited to it.
Their role goes beyond questioning and understanding educational and social
reality, and gains importance at the point of transforming this reality through ‘a
common praxis.’ What is underlined here is not that intellectuals must develop
some sort of supranatural level of consciousness, avoiding or overcoming the
contradictory personal and social struggles present in everyday life (Fischman -
McLaren, 2005: 436). On the contrary, intellectuals are expected to engage in
progressive social movements in order to transform social reality. It is stated
that in the Gramscian sense, this implies becoming an ‘organic intellectual.’
More clearly, besides the participation of the intellectual in progressive social
movements by giving his knowledge and expertise, he has something to learn
from these movements (Apple et al., 2009: 5).
The “new intellectual”, who was aimed to be educated in Village Institutes
was also quite different from the ‘classical intellectual’, whose function is
reduced to ‘seeking reality’. Tonguç (1961: 89-90) criticized ‘semi intellectuals’
who were educated in city schools and ‘learned the life from books’, and who
close their eyes to the realities, that they, conceiving villages just like portrayed
in books, cannot comprehend the reality of village–the greatest reality the
intellectuals overlook is the necessity that “villages should be the basis for every
work” (Tonguç, 1961: 92)–, and aimed to create a type of intellectual in Village
Institutes, who was not detached from life and people, and who would
understand change and the reality of village, revive Village. This new type of
intellectual who would lead Village, Villager in every sense, would be educated
‘within works of real life’ and would be able to bring into life the things he
learned. The goal was “to create a new society from people, who were able to
do what they knew”, and to replace “those who could not do, who only
preached, by those capable of doing” (Tonguç, 1999: 93). He said as follows:
According to us, the good man is the one, who does work and accomplishes that
work. Neither we can define a man, who only talks or writes without doing a work,
as a good man, nor we believe that a person, who does not work, is honest and
smart. It has never been witnessed that such people guided a nation to a better way.
(…) Incompetent people say they love their country; but this is an empty and
baseless love. People who work, laborers do not like such people. For us, this is the
reason for the disagreement between villagers and non-working literates (Tonguç,
1961: 91).
 Searches for Liberatory Education: Village Institutes and the Critical Pedagogy School 95

Such type of an intellectual could not be educated through the forms and
methods of classical methods based merely on knowledge and rote learning.
This intellectual, who would change the face of village, would be molded with
the understanding that education should not be detached from life, and would be
educated within “works of real life” within the principle of ‘education within
work.’ The students of the Institutes endeavored to be “a man of life, who
surmounted the textbooks of the classical school, his face turned towards
Turkey’s reality of village, and who had quick hands as well as a quick mind”
(Apaydın, 1983: 102-103). However, this intellectual was also expected to
constantly develop himself. The necessity for the intellectual’s ‘self-
development through reading’ was one of the points em, phasized by Tonguç.
Accordingly, Tonguç (1999: 126) in his letter of 1945 published in the journal,
İlköğretim, describes the intellectual as a person, who continuously read,
worked by making studies and experiments, and constantly educated himself.
At this point, it should be noted that in Village Institutes, students were
encouraged to read extracurricular materials–mostly world’s classics–and to
write during ‘free reading hours.’ Tonguç said in the Circular in 4 December
1944, “whatever the conditions and season, students will be made free reading
everyday, and they will be absolutely equipped with reading habit.” According
to him, “a generation that reads a lot and thinks well, understanding what it
reads” should swiftly be raised (Tonguç, 1947: 643). This is “the prerequisite
for establishing a sound and deep-rooted Republic and developing and
maintaining democracy” (Tonguç, 1947: 644). Because of the importance
attached to reading that an Institute student was stipulated to read at lest 24
books a year, and besides, teachers graduated from the Institutes were given a
reading book containing 150 volumes of books so that they would not lose their
reading habit they acquired in the Institutes (Cimi, 2001: 165-166).
In Village Institutes, encouraging students to write, as well as reading and
discussing what they read, was one of the points underlined by the graduates of
the Institutes. As a result, Village Institutes produced many writers and poets,
who left their mark on the Turkish literature: their works played important role
in the comprehension of the reality of village and the direction of intellectuals to
villages and their problems. The result was the emergence of a village literature
that starkly portrays the reality of village (Gedikoğlu, 1971: 242). However,
here, it should be noted that those writers’ depiction of poor and
underdeveloped living conditions of villagers, who are the most oppressed
group of the society, in the most explicit and natural manner with the ‘language
of the villager’ led to the reaction of urban intellectuals. This was closely related
with the fact that urban intellectuals did not embrace the intellectuals of Village
Institute origin, who were educated with the principle of ‘education within
96 TODAİE’s Review of Public Administration

work’ and ‘learning-by-doing.’11 On the other hand, writers12 from Village

Institutes, who held urban intellectuals responsible both from the exclusion of
villages and villagers from literature and from the poverty, in which villagers
lived13, consider themselves from these intellectuals. They saw themselves
liable not only to portray the reality of the village, but also to seek a solution for
the problems of villages of the development of villages, and used novels as a
means to this end (Moran, 2002: 243).
Another point that differed the intellectuals from Village Institutes from
classical intellectuals was that these intellectuals, ‘who came from common
people’ and were ‘intermingled with the people’, aspired to eliminate the
distinction between intellectuals and people, which they considered as one of
the main problems. This (temporary nature of the role attributed to the
intellectual) is consistent with Tonguç’s aim to close the gap between
intellectuals and the people by educating own intellectuals of villagers that
constitute the poorest layer–and the majority–of the society. That is to say, there
will be no need for the leadership/guidance of intellectuals when everyone in
the society is educated to become capable of governing himself/herself. In other
words, ‘the Republic’ will put an end to the distinction between “the oppressor
and oppressed, exploiting and exploited classes”, and intellectuals and the
people, and thus, will make ‘the people’, ‘villagers’ participate in government
(Tonguç, 1961: 88).
In summary, the understanding of pedagogy adopted in Village Institutes and
the notion of critical pedagogy shows parallelism in terms of their perspective
of the intellectual and the role they attribute to the intellectual. Under both
approaches to pedagogy, the role attributed to the intellectual is not restricted to
understanding the reality lived in, and the intellectual is expected to intervene in
and change this reality. The intellectual, while doing this, will not be detached
from life; on the contrary, he will be ‘intermingled with the people’, and he will
guide them. When it is considered that both notions of pedagogy reject the
hierarchical distinction between intellectual and practical activities, they
associate learning with life, and thus, debar knowledge from being the privilege
of intellectuals and aim to eliminate the distinction between intellectuals and the
people, it becomes clear why the transformative role attributed to the
intellectual is of temporary nature, rather than creating a class of intellectuals.

11
In fact, the judgment that an ‘educated’ person does not work in jobs that require manual labor, and he or
she is solely engaged in intellectual activities can also be seen in the early years of students in the institutes.
Kirby (1962: 239) wrote that an institute principal complained of the students’ reluctance for doing work as
they regarded the scope of their responsibility limited to giving lecture in the classroom.
12
See: Apaydın, 1983: 98. Mahmut Makal (2001), one of the writers graduated from a Village Institute,
prefers to describe these intellectuals merely as ‘educated.’
13
See: Apaydın, 1983: 98. Mahmut Makal (2001), one of the writers graduated from a Village Institute,
prefers to describe these intellectuals merely as ‘educated.’
 Searches for Liberatory Education: Village Institutes and the Critical Pedagogy School 97

Conclusion
Given that liberatory education is a notion of education that contributes to
human enrichment and democratization by placing emphasis on the concepts
such as personal autonomy, self-knowledge, self-development, and self-
realization, it is possible to describe the understanding of pedagogy adopted in
Village Institutes as an example of liberatory education and it shows parallelism
with critical pedagogy with regard to basic points. That is to say, both
approaches to pedagogy reject the hierarchy between intellectual and practical
work, and emphasize their unity/intermingling; they associate
education/learning with life, and exclude knowledge from being the privilege of
intellectuals by grounding it on daily practices. This, consistent with the aim of
eliminating the distinction between intellectuals and the people, leads to
deeming the ‘transformative’ role attributed to intellectuals as transformative.
Besides, the said notions of pedagogy show parallelism in terms of the
following aspects: they both change students from being objects into subjects;
they both suggest the regulation of the relations between learners and teachers
in a egalitarian and liberating (democratic) manner rather than hierarchical;
aside from aspiring to develop in learners a critical viewpoint to the reality they
live in, they both see learning as a process that makes students to act for
transforming this reality, and aim to turn learning into a means of liberation.
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