Evaluation of Children’s Literature Texts of Bulgarian Turks in terms of “Childhood Sociology”

Abstract

Today, the child is accepted as a “social subject” and analyzed with religious, cultural and economic references. The sociology of childhood, a young discipline, deals not only with the child as an individual, but also with the childhood period with a holistic understanding in the light of its social characteristics. Sociology of childhood, which has its own methodology, examines the “social codes” in the society in which the child lives and considers the child as an indispensable “social actor”. In this study, it is aimed to evaluate the children’s literature texts of Bulgarian Turks in terms of the sociology of childhood. Turkish population in Bulgaria has been struggling against cultural erosion and social assimilation for a long time. In the research; the children’s poems in the “Sample Texts from Bulgarian Turks Children’s Literature” prepared by Atıf Akgün were examined in detail in terms of “family, school and teacher, social environment, globalization tools and social media”, which are four important factors affecting the education of “disadvantaged children”. The research was done with document scanning technique in the light of descriptive method. At the end of the research, through the heroes/types and literary texts, the thesis was reached that Bulgarian Turks perceive the child not only as a passive individual who needs to be protected against various social and environmental threats, but also as an active individual who adds value to the society he/she lives in and ensures the continuity of the culture he/she feeds on.