The Ideas of the Students of Education Faculty about the European Union Education and Youth Programs

The most important issue that Turkey has been dealing with since the beginning of 2000s is the entrance to the European Union and the preparatory activities for this period. No what how it is evaluated, as an opportunity or a threat to which will break us off our cultural values, EU is a reality that our country faces. The programs such as FORCE, PETRA, COMETT and EUROTECHNET are the first programs which are implemented by the European Union at the beginning of 1980s. As the results were positive, European Union decided that the programs should go on and they decided that they should be brought together under the programs of "Socrates and Leonardo da Vinci". The first implementations of these programs were carried out between 1995 and 1999 and they are being currently implemented. In this study which is called "The Ideas of the Students of Education Faculty about the European Union Education and Youth Programs", the ideas of the students about these programs were searched for and their knowledge about these programs were uncovered. Scanning model was used in this study. Two question were asked to the students and they are: "What do you think about the entrance of Turkey to the European Union?" and "What do you know about European Union Education and Youth Programs?". 36,7% of the students mentioned that they are skeptical about entering the European Union and 34,2% said that they did not approve of Turkey's entering the European Union. Among the reasons of disapproval of entrance to the Union are the ideas that our cultural values will be degenerated, that the solitary state of our country will be damaged, that European Union is biased against our country and that the period of entrance to the union is ambiguous and too long. It has been found out the students of Kastamonu University are negative against entering the European Union. 48,3% of the students at Kastamonu University and 42,9% of the students at Gazi University mentioned that they did not know anything about the Education Programs. It has been seen that the female students are more knowledgeable about the programs than the male students. The students of the third year grade were found out to be more knowledgeable about the programs.