Education, emotion, and social memory: student farewell texts in a Turkish school from the late Ottoman era to early Republican reforms

This study explores the role of education, emotion, and social memory in shaping student experiences during the transition from the late Ottoman Empire to the early Republican period in Turkey through the lens of farewell texts. Drawing on 12 + 105 farewell notes preserved in the archives of Hoca İlyas School in Bursa, dating from 1919–1921 (Late Ottoman Era) and 1928–1929 (Early Republican Era), the study employs qualitative document analysis and thematic interpretation to examine how students remembered their teachers, peers, and schooling. The analysis identifies five dominant themes in the Ottoman writings: gratitude to teachers, moral and religious formation, education as liberation from ignorance, patriotic loyalty, and nostalgic attachment, while the Republican-era texts reconfigured these sentiments around civic appreciation for teachers, schooling as preparation for future success, patriotic service, peer solidarity, and collective memory. These shifts reflect broader transformations in the aims of education: from cultivating morally upright and religiously grounded imperial subjects to producing secular, national, and modern citizens of the Republic. By treating farewell texts as “emotional archives”, the study highlights the interplay of pedagogy, affect, and ideology, demonstrating how schools not only transmitted knowledge but also inscribed state ideals into students’ emotional and cultural memories.