The Educational Analysis of Te'dib-name by Kesfi

Throughout the history of mankind, humans have always desired to share their experience and knowledge with the current and later generations, and also to guide them to goodness. Advices emerged from this desire, sometimes presented in a direct verbal form, and sometimes it took a literary form by being written in an artistic way. These works turned into one of the most common literary genres in Turkish literature, and were created in poetic, prosaic and poetic-prosaic forms. As the poem makes it easier to learn and memorize, the poetic form was used commonly. These works named as poetic nasihat-name aimed to educate the society in moral, religious and social matters. Authors benefited from the educational aspect of legends and stories in their works, and decorated them with the verses of Koran, the sayings of Prophet Mohammed, the apothegms, the proverbs, and the idioms. The poetic nasihat-names had significant educational value, containing advices on many subjects on pedagogy, character and religious education. Nasihat-names have been the common interests of literature and education disciplines. In this study, the educational analysis of Te'dib-name, which is a poetic nasihat-name, is presented. The author of the work is Kesfi, one of the 16th century poets. In this period, a few poets used the pen name of Kesfi. However, the author of Te'dib-name differs from the others as he had a son named Ata. Ata is the instrumental person in the emergence of Te'dib-name. Because it was written for Ata, as he requested his father to write a book containing advices from the age 10 to 100. This situation clearly shows that Te'dib-name is a work written by a father to educate his son. Therefore, Te'dib-name reveals educational and philosophical understanding of Kesfi. In this study analysing Te'dib-name in educational way, the author Kesfi's life, his literary character and his works are presented and Te'dib-name is introduced by its general characteristics. During the content analysis of the work, a master thesis named Kesfi Te'dib- name written by Sibel Ust at Ataturk University, Social Sciences Institute in 2006 was benefited from. The original copy of the work recorded by the number 271 ASL, in the Ataturk University Seyfettin Ozege Library, Agah Sirri Levend Collection, was consulted for some words difficult to pronounce. The study consists of three sections: the educational view of Kesfi, his language of education and the content of Te'dib-name. The educational view of the author is classified and discussed as Belief and Sense-Based Education, Need-Based Education and Lifelong Education. Kesfi's language of education is analysed in terms of his addressing style to his son, characteristics of his language and expression, and also educational elements in the content. The content of Te'dib-name covers a lifelong education, and advices are presented in periods of five or ten years. Thus, in accordance with the work, the relevant advices are categorized as Last Childhood, Puberty, First Adulthood, Middle Adulthood and Late Adulthood, and examined according to their developmental periods. Te'dib-name, conforming to Islamic educational view in both pedagogical and andragogical aspects, aims to educate members of the society in spite of addressing only the author's son. The work reveals many advices about religious life as well as familial and social life. While discussing the content, it has been realized that the educational matters of that period are similar to current ones. The advices in the work, as a guidebook making the individual happier both in this world and the hereafter, have the features illuminating the current educational understanding.