Constructing a “Scientific Manpower Crisis”: Science Education and the Ford Foundation in Cold War Turkey


Yalçınkaya M. A.

History of Education, vol.53, no.5, pp.855-875, 2024 (SSCI) identifier

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 53 Issue: 5
  • Publication Date: 2024
  • Doi Number: 10.1080/0046760x.2024.2357631
  • Journal Name: History of Education
  • Journal Indexes: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, Academic Search Premier, IBZ Online, International Bibliography of Social Sciences, Periodicals Index Online, American History and Life, EBSCO Education Source, Education Abstracts, Educational research abstracts (ERA), ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Gender Studies Database, Historical Abstracts, Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts, MLA - Modern Language Association Database, Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
  • Page Numbers: pp.855-875
  • Keywords: education, Ford Foundation, manpower, science, Turkey
  • TED University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

In the early 1960s, the Ford Foundation funded numerous projects in Turkey, primarily concerning science education and science policy. Related to the post-Sputnik debates on “scientific manpower needs,” and modernisation theory’s emphasis on “industrialising elites” in the developing world, these projects were the products of an intellectual bandwagon comprising scientists and experts commonly working with transnational organisations like the OECD and UNESCO. Characterising the need in terms influenced by this trend, the Ford Foundation’s representative in Turkey proposed establishing a special high school for students gifted in the sciences. Analysing the process of the establishment of this school, this article explores how Turkish scientists connected to the same networks participated in the Foundation’s initiatives to advance their status, and examines the broad political and economic factors that the Foundation’s “non-ideological” interest in education for scientific manpower overlooked, leading to the mixed results of the project.