The teachers of the republic: mediating between state and students

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine how primary school teachers mediate the republican ideology. It aims to analyze how the teachers both contribute to there production and reinforcement of the official ideology, and on the other hand, to what extent they develop opposition, resistance and transgressions. Through considering schools as "contested domains" in which neither total domination nortotal emancipation takes place, this study analyzes the dialectical relations between the structures of the education system and the agencies of the teachers. By focusing on in-depth interviews with primary school teachers, firstly I analyze the teachers' perceptions of the Republican Days and their interpretations of republican values. Secondly, I examine teachers' conceptual perplexity in defining democracy and their discontents about the functioning of democracy in daily school life. Thirdly, I focus on teachers' conceptions of cultural differences in Turkey and explore how working experiences in the regions populated by culturally different people affect the inculcation of Kemalist ideology. Hence, by taking teachers' perceptions, interpretations and experiences as the basis of this research, I aim to analyze the contradictions between what is officially stated and what is actually lived in daily school life. Moreover, I dwell on how those contradictions lead to transformations in the boundaries of Kemalism and bring about refractions in the inculcation of official ideology.