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Learning to FlexLabor: How Working-Class Youth Train for Flexible Labor Markets

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Abstract

The terms of the debate regarding vocational training in Turkey have been discussed in relation to the dichotomy between secularism and religion. This stems from the fact that Imam-Hatip schools2 belong to the category of vocational schools. In a country with such a tense secular-religious divide, the increasing interest of the business world in the field of education is ignored, along with its very political character. Efficiency discourse marginalizes the experience of vocational high school students. In this black-box model of schooling, “the concrete experience of children and teachers—is less important … than more global and macro-economic considerations of rate of return on investment, or more radically, the reproduction of the division of labor” (Apple 1990, 25).

This chapter is a shorter and modified version of an article published by the author in Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies (2010, vol. 8, no. 1), under the title of “Transformation of the Turkish Vocational Training System: Capitalization, Modularization and Learning unto Death.” It has been updated in terms of the legal transformations in relation to the broader system. The author would like to thank JCEPS for granting permission to use the article as the basis of this chapter.

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Kemal İnal Güliz Akkaymak

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© 2012 Kemal İnal and Güliz Akkaymak

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Bulut, E. (2012). Learning to FlexLabor: How Working-Class Youth Train for Flexible Labor Markets. In: İnal, K., Akkaymak, G. (eds) Neoliberal Transformation of Education in Turkey. Palgrave Macmillan’s Postcolonial Studies in Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137097811_6

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