Analysis of an Ottoman Book “First Lessons to The Kids” From The Perspective of Early Childhood Education

Prior to the declaration of the republic, it is likely to encounter books regarding the education of children and policies concerning their education in the Ottoman Empire. While the books related to child education in the original Ottoman language are not commonly found, it is observed that there are more books translated into Ottoman Turkish from other languages. Translated into Ottoman Turkish in 1890 by Ali Nazima with the approval of the Ministry of Education; one of these books is “？ocuklara Malumat-？ Evveliye”, meaning “First Lessons to the Kids”. The aim of this study is to analyze the book “？ocuklara Malumat-？ Evveliye” from the perspective of early childhood education. Early childhood is defined as the period from birth to eight years old. It is a critical stage of development that forms the foundation for children’s future well-being and learning. Thus educational experiences in early years have important role in children’s life. Analysis show that first lessons given to children primarily contain religious information. Children in early childhood period can solve problems that apply concrete events or objects. Therefore, they are not able to understand abstract concepts such as religious and thus they can experience negative attitude to the education. Besides religious information, science, mathematics and geography are the other subjects in the book that show indications of modernization. Although ？ocuklara Malumat-？ Evveliye is not appropriate for the young children, it can be counted as a big step on developing early childhood education in those years