10. Today in 1920s Turkey: 12 August 1925 (The Glamorous Lives of Teachers)
Türkçe
Muallim Aranıyor!
Gazetelerden: Her taraftan muallim aranıyor. Bir çok vilayetler muallim bulmak için İstanbul’a müraacat etmiştir.
Karagöz: Haydi efendiler, beyler, hanımlar, içinizde yirmi otuz kağıt aylıkla kıt kanaat geçinecek, peynir ekmeğe diz çöküp şükredecek, etine, canına sağlam, gözünü budaktan sakınmaz, babayiğit kahraman fedayi varsa el kaldırsın muallim yazıyoruz.
English
Looking for Teachers!
From the Newspapers: Teachers are sought after everywhere. Many provinces are turning to Istanbul to find teachers.
Karagöz: Come on gentlemen, sirs, and ladies! All brave, self-sacrificing heroes healthy in body and spirit who can manage to live off of twenty, thirty papers (bucks, smackaroos) per month; who will kneel before cheese and bread and give thanks; and who welcome dangerous undertakings raise your hands, [because] we are recruiting teachers.
Comments:
Satire (in its many forms) is not always as straightforward as researchers would like it to be. Sometimes detecting and interpreting it can be a game of guessing or perhaps educated guessing… For humor to work it requires a receptive audience familiar with the contextual idiosyncrasies of an agreed-upon control (norm) upon which the absurd or incongruous premise can be built. Therefore, understanding and appreciating dated (i.e. historical) content suspected to include satire presents its own set of challenges. Case in point: is this “call for teachers” supposed to be serious or sardonic?
Karagöz’s content (e.g. cartoons, articles etc.) often encourages readers to commit to nationalism-inspired sacrifices and thankless dedication to the nation (millet) and state (devlet). As such, it is conceivable that this “announcement” is listing the hardships a teacher must endure in order to recognize and celebrate their altruistic behavior. However, the aggressively selfless qualities listed in the candidate’s description will surely deter teachers from applying, rather than persuading them.
Alternately, this blurb could be a tongue-in-cheek critique of the sub-standard lifestyle attainable by most teachers who are in reality never adequately compensated for their hard work considering the important role they play in educating their communities. If you add “relocation to a far-flung village in Anatolia” to the list of measly benefits a teacher of the 1920s is allotted, then you are left with a laughably ridiculous prospect for employment that no educated Istanbulite would ever find appealing or attractive.
To fast-forward to today, it is impressive how societies and governments have continued to pay lip-service to the importance of a good education while also continuing to nickel and dime their teachers and underfund their schools both in Turkey and in other “civilized” countries like the United States. Should it give us comfort to know that, after all these years, certain things never change?
Originally published at https://steemit.com on August 12, 2018.
