The Angry Birds era asks for quality, not quantity. Finland, the country of the creators of Angry Birds, performs well in OECD’s PISA tests. Coincidence?

The structure of the entertainment industry has been changing. Have you noticed? I have just noticed it. Now I also understood why all of the young people in entrepreneurship accelerator programs are going into game development. I missed the change because I wasn’t looking around myself. The annual turnover of the videogames industry has reached around 70 percent that of the movie industry. And considering that the latest movies look more and more like videogames, we might assume that they have taken over movies, too. The most-watched five movies in the world feature digitally strengthened visual effects. World War Z, Avatar, and Star Wars look more like videogames to me. Indeed, after the movies are shown, their video games are released immediately. The Lara Croft series was adapted from a videogame. The morale of the story is that since Angry Birds, the Rita Hayworth era is long gone and the Angelina Jolie era has faded away. The entertainment industry will now be dominated by videogames. If this is it good or bad, I don’t know. But that’s the reality.

Do you understand the meaning of the game world, which is a gift from the ICTs to us, for the education system and labor markets? The new industry requires graphic designers, computer programmers, and mathematicians. It looks for people with better analytical skills. Let me make an even bigger deal out of this: My nephew, Sarp, is nine, and my niece, Ela, is seven. When they are 25, the majority of today's conventional professions most probably will be long forgotten. Not just the entertainment industry. The entire economy will have changed. This is the first point to keep in mind, actually.

What to do, then? First, the schooling system, which is an integral part of the education system, must be revised thoroughly. I think that in the world of Angry Birds, creative and courageous approaches will win. For this, Turkey does not need a new curriculum, but a new framework on how to treat students in the classroom. Students must be taught how not to be afraid of making mistakes, and how to and learn from mistakes; not how not to make mistakes. For this purpose, classrooms must be freed of the uniformist command of the Board of Education and Discipline. Turkey is one rank above the last place amongst the OECD countries in school autonomy. I have claimed before that the Higher Education Board, YÖK, is a lost cause. Both of these agencies look the same to me.

The second point I want to stress is directly related to this. Turkey has to raise individuals who are able to adapt themselves to new needs and have basic generic skills such as analytical and critical thinking and problem solving. Since we don’t know yet what skills the new world will demand, young people must be furnished with a broad set of skills and the ability to adapt themselves to changing conditions. They should at least be proficient in English, mathematics, physics, and chemistry. They should have a higher than average education level. The rest would come with adaptation.

Third, in this new period, early childhood education will be of critical importance, I guess. Experts emphasize that the non-routine skills that are essential for analytical thinking are developed in early childhood. The Angry Birds era will require a more skilled labor force. The World Bank says that the demand for better skills has increased two times more in Turkey than in Poland. It is a tall order.

Was the last decade completely wasted? To be honest, I am not sure. The other day I argued that Turkey had changed five education ministers in a decade because it did not know what to do. Let me add another observation: comparing people in my age group with people who have just entered working life, we have to admit that progress has been made. Turkey’s population is not made up of seventh-grade dropouts. The story is different when you consider different age groups – which you should do. The mean values are dry and misleading, as my professors told me back at school.

Let me conclude on a positive note. In my age group, that is, those who were born in the early 1960s, 80 percent have an educational attainment of eight years or less. The rate of tertiary level education is only 8.5 percent. Among those who were born in the early 1990s, however, the share of the former is less than 60 percent and latter is two times higher. The average level of educational attainment has been increasing and this trend will go on. When it does, we will talk about the reasons. But let me tell you one thing in advance: the main reason will be the extension of compulsory education. Are things going well in that regard? Definitely not. Turkey’s education system has improved only in terms of quantity. The performance is still week concerning quality. Why is quantity not enough alone? The other day Hans Roslling asked on the BBC what the literacy rate for adults in the world was a whole today. What do you think, 40%, 50%, 60%? Later, he said that 80% of the world’s 7 billion people are literate. That’s no longer acceptable, however. The Angry Birds era asks for analytical thinking skills. It asks for quality, not quantity. Finland, the country of the creators of Angry Birds, performs well in OECD’s PISA tests. Coincidence? I don’t think so. We have to come to our senses. We have to stop the preoccupation with nineteenth-century issues and start considering our children’s future right away.

Our time is running out; there is still a lot to do.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 12.11.2013