From Empire to Nation State: The Mutation of Educational Interaction Rituals in Turkey

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine how the educational rituals changed over the time from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey. This study confines Turkish educational rituals to the rituals Goffman (1967) conceptualized as interaction rituals. Interaction rituals are micro daily events and behaviours, including gestures and facial expressions, clothes and symbols, that safeguard the definition and the holiness of the authority, and therefore act as the differentiator. This paper reveals that as education was modernized and institutionalized in Turkey, the relationship between the student and the teacher became more distant. The hierarchical gap between the student and the teacher became more visible through educational interaction rituals, and the role of the teacher changed within the Republic, from religious authority to soldier citizen.