Human rights education : a comparison of mother tongue textbooks in Turkey and France

Abstract

Textbooks are major instructional tools playing an important role in education at all grades. The purpose of this study is to compare the level of allocation of human rights issues – rights, freedom, democracy, justice, tolerance and peace – in mother tongue textbooks in Turkey and France. For this aim, ten mother tongue textbooks from both countries were examined. Content analysis method was used to analyse the textbooks. As a result, it was observed that human rights issues are included more in Turkish textbooks when compared to French textbooks. It was found that in the textbooks of both countries the ‘rights’ subcategory is included the most while the ‘justice’ subcategory is included the least. While the intensity scores of the ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ subcategories were listed toward the very end in the textbooks of both countries, the ‘democracy’ subcategory occupies more places in French textbooks whereas the ‘freedom’ subcategory occupies more places in Turkish textbooks. Besides, the intensity scores for the subcategories of ‘rights’, ‘peace’ and ‘tolerance’ hold the first three places in the mother tongue textbooks of both countries.