Inquiry into the nationalism of national education system

The purpose of this research is to put forward whether the characteristics of the essential features of the Republic are achieved in the Secondary Education level of the Turkish National Education System. The research was conducted on the senior students of the State, Private and Vocational Religious High Schools bound by Istanbul Province National Education Directorate. This is a descriptive research based on comparison scanning model of the relational scanning model. In the research, `Educational Values Scale? which was improved by Kemalettin Parlak ( Parlak, 2000 ) was used. Evaluation was based on being Democratic, Nationalism, Statism and Populism, Secularism and Republicanism, the 5 sub-dimensions determined according to the `Educational Values Scale?.In the research, Principal Component Analysis, Varimax with Kaiser Normalization technique, parametric independent group t-test and single-sided variance analysis ( ANOVA), post-hoc LSD test and Pearson Multiplication Momentum Correlation analysis were used, and expressiveness levels were tested in the 0,5 level.When we analyse the average points, secondary schools are generally successful in bringing in the characteristics of the essential features of the Republic, however, Secularism and being Democratic need to be improved. Generally, there is also differentiation between school types, socio-economic status and gender. Findings show that private schools could achieve to bring in the characteristics of Statism and Populism, Nationalism, and Republicanism less than the Vocational Religious High Schools and the State High Schools. It seems possible to argue that State High Schools could achieve to bring in the characteristics of being Democratic more than the other two types of schools. When we evaluate the average points generally, the more economical status goes down the less importance is given to being Democratic. In the evaluation, it is seen that students of the Vocational Religious High Schools give low marks to the values of Secularism. When we consider the socio-economical status , the more economical status goes up, the higher points are seen in the evaluation of Secularism.Key Words: Nationalism, Education, Teaching, the Essential Features of the Republic