If you cannot tap the potential, someone else will. In the end, selected children of ours can have it made in the shade.

Here is one thought left from the year before: can you lecture in a class of 155,000 people? It appears that you can. Last year Harvard and MIT launched an online education platform, edX, to offer free online courses. For the first course on edX, 155,000 people enrolled all from around the world. Young people from Egypt to Mongolia enrolled to attend the lectures of Nobel laureate scientists. The world has been changing rapidly, and it appears that the change will accelerate. Universities have joined the trend. This is an initial trial. I was planning to talk about the online education issue. Then I learned that the programs of the Khan Academy, one of the pioneers of online education platforms, were available in Turkish at www.khanacademy.org.tr. The Khan Academy programs, launched by Bangladeshi Salman Khan, are now available in Turkish, with the sponsorship of the Turkish company STFA. On this occasion, I would like to congratulate STFA for expanding the horizon of Turkey’s youth. STFA was also the pioneer of education for gifted children. Today, let me tell you what I see and what conclusions I draw about Turkey. Salman Khan, the founder of the Khan Academy, studied at America’s top universities. He was tutoring his nephew in mathematics online using Google’s Doodle notepad when he came up with the idea of uploading the tutorials to YouTube. Seeing that his videos got hits, he launched the Khan Academy on this idea. We have an entrepreneur here. Today, the Khan Academy offers thousands of tutorials online and free of charge. It aims to remove the obstacles to education. Please note that the tutorials available in Turkey are in Turkish.

Now, some observations: First, if you cannot tap the talent set in your country, someone will come and take it from you. If you don’t do something, somebody else will. In today’s world, talent is one of the major natural resources a country has. From this perspective, each country can be seen as a pool of talents. Developments about online education imply a hunt in this pool. This quest used to be harder. Of course, it would be perfect if Turkey itself paved the way for its young population. It is evident that it has not, right? In Turkey, 70% of the children cannot surpass their parents. Yes, the figure in the US is 80%. In Turkey, however, 90% of the parents have education levels at or below primary school while in the US 90% percent have high school degrees or more. The current attainment level of parents determines the future of their children. As the current situation is already bad in Turkey and similar countries, they fail to enhance their pools of talent. This is the second point to stress.

And the third one: In today’s world, a talented individual is the most important. Steve Jobs’ father was Syrian, right? Jobs had a good education. He had an idea and he founded the Apple Company. We know that today’s Steve Jobs are not necessarily going to be from America. What matters is to identify them and pave the way for them, to establish an ecosystem that will unveil their creative energy. There is a social interest for the entire world in this. If you cannot tap the potential, someone else will. In the end, selected children of ours can have it made in the shade. Their inventions can gain a value, not in the periphery, but in the core. I don’t see a need to restate that the new draft bill on the Higher Education Board does not make any reference to this issue.

It's karma, right? That’s what our grandchildren will say to us.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 26.02.2013