Great interest in Kurdish mother tongue creche
DİYARBAKIR (DİHA) - While state schools are being boycotted this week in North Kurdistan in demand of education in the mother tongue, the Bahceye Zarokan creche of the municipality of the Diyarbakır (Amed) Metropolitan municipality giving education in Kurdish is receiving a large number of applications from parents.
The creche, opened in 2011, provides education in mother tongue and functions under the Social Services Unit of the municipality of the Amed Metropolitan Municipality. The creche received some 400 applications for the 2014-2015 school period, but could accept only 55 of those children due to its capacity. Bahceye Zarokan creche will provide education in both Kurmanci and Kırmançki dialects of Kurdish in 4 classes this school year, which started on 8 September and ends on 15 June. Following the opening of a creche that uses Kurdish by the Amed municipality, many othercreches in the city have also started education in Kurdish.
All those working in the Bahceye Zarokan crèche are women, including 9 educators and a specialist in child development. The creche also aims to give education within the Kurdish and Kurdistan culture. Due to that purpose, some special days are marked for celebration, like the day of Newroz, 1st of May, 8 March Women’s Day, 15 April Kurdish Language Day, 13 January as New Year’s Day, and 4 April, the Birthday of the Kurdish people’s leader Ocalan. Additionally tours are organised to historical and touristic places of Amed in order to raise awareness about the history and the city in children. There are also classes of theatre, music, arts, storytelling, sports, and crafts to improve finger muscles as well as to improve awareness of numbers and colours.
The executive of the Bahceye Zarokan creche, Evin Taşdemir, says the reason for the huge interest in the crèche is its giving education in Kurdish as many of the parents communicate with their children in Kurdish at home but then have to send them to the state schools where they cannot use any Kurdish and lose competence in their native language. Tasdemir says that the other reason is that the creche pays attention to the Kurdish and Kurdistan culture in its education program. Taşdemir further stresses that the parents’ preferring to send their children to the crèche is a protest at and rejection of the assimilation policies and a demand for education in the mother tongue which is spoken at home, adding that the parents prefer education in mother tongue not only in pre-school training but at all levels of education.
An educator in the Bahceye Zarokan crèche, Ebru Sanli, says the creche has not enough capacity to accept all the applications, adding that the Amed Metropolitan municipality is in preparation for the opening of new crèches in many of the neighbourhoods of the city. Sanli stresses that the opening of these kinds of crèches means superseding the assimilation policies. Emphasising that education in mother tongue is one of the most basic human rights, Sanli says she believes that people can take the initiative to enjoy this right without waiting for state institutions and recalls the Rojava experience as an example of this.
Sanli draws attention to the determination of people in their demand for education in mother tongue, adding that all the local organisations and institutions and the civil society organisations must pursue joint work to meet the demand and can succeed when they create local dynamics for that purpose. Sanli also says that the proper buildings are not essential to organise education in mother tongue as she believes that it can be organised in tents that will be set up in the neighbourhoods for the time being. Sanli says the state buildings where the official education is carried out creates a psychological repression on Kurdish children with their colourless, cement and cold structure representing the state, adding that these state buildings were successful to some extent in imposing alienation on Kurdish students. Sanli says their aim now is to remove this alienation and the assimilation policies.
(nt)
