Extended Summary

The history of vocational education in Turkey dates back to ancient times. However, its acceleration in the modern sense and attainment of its current quality are related to the effectiveness of the development paradigm. Therefore, it can be said that there is a close relationship between the path followed and the transformation undergone by vocational and technical education in the historical process and the country’s changing economic and political approach. This is because vocational and technical education was largely structured around education during the years when import substitution economic policies prevailed; it gradually evolved towards a work-centered structure in the 1980s and the reafter, when neoliberal policies began to prevail; and it has undergone a fundamental change to the present day.

In our country, there are two types of schools that educate students at the secondary level in the vocational and technical field: Vocationaland Technical Anatolian High Schools and Vocational Education Centers (MESEMs). Although the subject of this study is not vocational and technical education as a whole, it is necessary to follow the transformation processes undergone by the vocational education system in order to understand the paradigm on which MESEMs are based. Since there is a strong relationship between the transformation that has taken place in the vocational education system and the work-centered structure of MESEMs and the problem of child labor, thetraces of the transformation in the vocational and technical field are first traced; then the work-centered approach to structuring MESEMs is brought into the discussion, and the relationship between the issue of child labor and child worker deaths or ‘workplace fatalities’ is addressed and discussed through field work.

In order to increase the capacity of MESEMs, whose framework is defined by legislation, and make them more attractive to students, certain ‘improvements’ have been made during the process, in line with the demands of sector representatives. The workplace-based structure of MESEMs and the effective positioning of capital in this process are considered to be processes that spread child labor; there is intense criticism that child labor is legitimized under the name of apprenticeship.

With the development of capitalism, apprenticeship, which has been completely abolished in some countries and replaced by other institutions, has been transformed in other countries in to ‘formal institutions’ that train the laborforce necessary for industry/the market. Indeed, the apprenticeship system, widely used especially in countries with a high concentration of small-scale businesses that under went late industrialization, can be structured as “vocational training” to justify the acceptance of child labor; thus, child labor can be easily supplied to markets under the guise of“apprenticeship.”

For the field work, two Organized Industrial Zones (Ostim/MESEM and Özkan Erdek Şaşmaz/MESEM) located in or near MESEM in Ankara were selected. A total of 46 workplaces in two different are as were visited randomly, and all workplaces with MESEM students, except for one, responded positively to our request for an interview and provided us with a suitable environment for the interview.

For the field work, interviews were conducted with a total of thirteen MESEM students at twelve different workplaces. Therefore, only two children were found in the same workplace; all eleven remaining children worked in separate workplaces as ‘apprentices’. As understood from the interviews conducted, MESEM is predominantly seen as an ‘alternative to school’ in the world view of these children who have turned to MESEM and are working at a young age, and it evokes the working life more than school.

During fieldwork, it was observed that none of the apprentices interviewed had special clothing specific to the work they were doing. When asked, “Do you use protective equipment appropriate for the work you do?” to apprentices whose hands, faces, and everyday clothes were covered in oil, only a few apprentices stated that they used steel-toed boots to protect against falling hard objects and sometimes gloves. The other apprentices stated that they did not use any protective equipment while working.

Accordingly, approaches that emphasize apprenticeship or vocational training, in a manner inconsistent with the facts, refer to a ‘traditional vocational position’ that hardly exists today when explaining the concept of apprenticeship, thereby in correctly describing child labor as apprenticeship. Within the traditional definition, an apprentice is a craft student who has full control over the production tools they will use in the future; today, however, a child working as an apprentice is a worker who is merely an extension of the machine. Moreover, the apprenticeship period required to learn the job performed under the title of apprentice constitutes only a very small part of the total time worked. All the time outside the short period required for learning corresponds to time during which the apprentice is deprived of the wages paid to other workers doing the same job as him, in a sense being exploited more and deprived of various protection mechanisms.

Over the years, steps taken to increase school-industry cooperation have paved the way for child labor and, consequently, workplace fatalities. Some comprehensive projects and regulations, which began with small-scale initiatives and incorporated apprenticeships into a vocational training model, have been part of a capital-driven, planned process that has led to child labor.