The Teaching of Chaotic Events in Social Studies Textbooks of Turkey and Germany: World War I

Abstract

With the point where knowledge and technological power has reached, the prediction of the control and monitoring power of human events has been eliminated since 1900s. In particular, the war, immigration, and revolution and so on… many social events and phenomena have caused consequences that people can’t cope with, and they have led to chaotic situations occurring in societies. Surely, the environment of this chaos did not affect every community in the same degree based on the conditions of the time. In this study, World War I, as an example to the handling of chaotic events in the textbooks taught in both Turkey and Germany, has been dealt with and has been subjected to a comparative analysis. The aim of this study is to explain how World War I which caused a chaotic environment on a large-scale holds a place in Social Studies textbooks in both Turkey and Germany. The reason as to why the researcher conduct the survey in Turkey and Germany is that they are the countries which experienced this war and the environment of chaos which this war caused most. In this study, the method of document review which is one of the qualitative research methods has been used. In this study, Social Studies textbooks in which the subject of “World War I” in Turkey and Germany is handled have been examined by comparing both countries’ textbooks.