Publicity meeting on the “Advanced Technology Schools” Project implemented in cooperation with TÜBİTAK Turkish Management Sciences Institute and Irfan Schools of İlim Yayma Foundation was held at the Sheraton Hotel with the participation of İsmet Yılmaz, Minister of National Education; Dr. Hasan Ali Çelik, the Deputy Minister of Science, Industry and Technology; İstanbul Governor Vasip Şahin and Prof. Hasan Mandal, President of TÜBİTAK.
“It is necessary for us to have scientists who transform qualified knowledge to qualified products”
National Education Minister İsmet Yılmaz said that the project will enable construction of robots with national and local facilities to be used in many fields from the industry to the health sector. İsmet Yılmaz also pointed at successful activities realized in many fields in Turkey, in which education is one of them. Having expressed that full independence is not possible without having qualified knowledge and qualified people, National Education Minister İsmet Yılmaz said that “The necessary condition of full independence is to have qualified knowledge. We need to have scientists who transform qualified knowledge to qualified products. For this reason, we remark that universities are important and hence, basic education is important for students who will study in universities.”
“Quality education based on equality of opportunity is our unchanging goal”
Speaking at the publicity meeting, Ismail Yilmaz, Minister of National Education, explained that or the development of a society there is a need for educated people and schools are the main instruments for this. The Minister İsmet Yılmaz, mentioning that the largest investment in Turkey during this period was made in human capital, also stated that Turkey is one of the few countries in the world that is successful in converting human capital to power. He then added: “Quality education based on equality of opportunity is our unchanging goal. Time varies but there are two things that do not change; equality of opportunity and quality education.”
“The future of the country is very bright”
Speaking at the meeting, the Deputy Minister of Science, Industry and Technology Hasan Ali Çelik said that Turkey is a producing and competent country but there are some subjects that need to be added to this competence. While expressing that, in this regard, they observe how to make products that are more efficient, deliberate upon which value can be added, Çelik also expressed that common effort has been made to transform knowledge and science into technology which increases quality of the products. After emphasizing that an individual, a person addresses the future of the country, Çelik continued his words as follows: “I see the blend of our future as blending education in an approach that emphasizes understanding, wisdom, merit and virtue in addition to advanced technology. We see robots, artificial intelligence, and similar applications in education.
The good practices of our children also show us that our country’s future is very bright.
We feel proud when one of our children who is studying in secondary school that was built in this brightness brings them to the application stage and when our teachers see them and try to take them to a better place.”
"This project will be a case study"
İstanbul Governer Vasip Şahin spoke as follows: “We hope that this pioneer project will be a case study for both Turkey and İstanbul where 3 million 100 thousand students are trained. We will benefit from it a lot. There is a very serious goal here in terms of raising curiosity for students and developing their curiosity. This corresponds to dealing with students one to one which in fact indicates that the method of individual education in our classical education system is back again. Here, knowledge and lore are combined with wisdom. I hope that wisdom and lore will contribute greatly to humanity, technology, science and the other sectors of this society.”
“The process starting with information superiority accelerates with cooperation, knowledge generation and digitalization followed by the knowledge generated”
President of TÜBİTAK, Prof. Hasan Mandal, emphasized the need for qualified person and qualified knowledge production and he pointed the leading role of TÜBİTAK in this regard. Expressing that high quality knowledge output in education should be taken to desired level and should be developed, the President of TÜBİTAK underlined that the size of the competition in the years of 2010s depends on how much cooperation and knowledge are produced as he was emphasizing the importance of basic education for the development of human resources producing qualified knowledge. Conveying that one more concept is expected to develop while going towards 2020s, Prof. Hasan Mandal also stressed that “Digitalization is a process accompanied with knowledge produced that aims at cooperation”.
“We need qualified person”
Emphasizing that they see that the production of information is much more valuable when it is regarded from a chain-form perspective, Prof. Hasan Mandal made comments as follows: “
Not to be in one dimension of the value chain, not just with the robot, but going through it both before and after. The production methods of information now change. Therefore, we need high quality knowledge, but the qualified person is the condition necessary to produce qualified information. Hence, we have come together here for an indispensable subject, an initiative for the development of qualified human resources for qualified information.
Yücel Çelikbilek, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of İlim Yayma Foundation; Bilal Erdoğan, Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees; Tezer Battal, the Head of TÜSSİDE; some mayors and other interested parties attended the publicity meeting. The meeting ended with a protocol signing ceremony that took place after the speeches.
10.05.2018