Peter Tibor Nagy
nagy.peter.tibor@gmail.com
International patterns in the history of Hungarian
educational administration
Historical Research
(Supported by CEU, RSS - project)
I. Redescribing of pre-modern
period
The author - without finding new sources but reinterpreting facts of the positivist books and studies - tries to form a new vision of the international patterns and home alternatives of the premodern period.
In the middle age the Hungarian schooling followed the "Caroling-model": we describe the role of the Hungarian state, the monasteries and the bishops if we follow the methods and findings of the famous book of Southern.
It is necessary to redescribe the period which started in the 16th century. The traditional factology (which was the main methodological viewpoint of the history of education in the last one hundred years) was not able to describe and interpret some very strange elements in the history of Hungarian education.
How could we explain then a country in which the civil society, the process
of enbourgoisement is weaker than in the German territories became an arena of
an expansion of education, and an expansion of religious revolution - the
centre of a lot of Protestant denominations?
If we expect the traditional weberian or marxist interpretations about the "natural" places of the birth and expanding of Calvinism and Lutheranism we could not explain: why and how Debrecen became a "Calvinist Rome". Archer's interpretation - the competition of denominations mirrored the competition of different type social elites and it generates an expansion - is false: in Hungary you can not find that kind of "Bürgerschaft" which could be the basis of a "competition".
In the project we tried to explain it from the international situation: the country was on the border of the Turkish and the Hapsburg empire and Protestantism was the "best" and "most adequate" denomination for the Turkish control territories, and the Catholicism for the Hapsburg controlled territories.
The eastern part - Transsylvania - became half independent from the Turkish empire, with strong connections to the western Protestant powers and Hapsburgs too, so in this territory every denomination could follow its activity, could start a competition for students and believers in its school-system.
So the Hungarian elite started to built two independent educational system. In the western territories the Jesuits built up their system, controlling not only the public education but the university level too, in the Central part the Calvinist church, and some local community built out its own network. The western system integrated to the educational system of international Jesuit system, the Central and Eastern system which sent students an mass to the German and Holland Protestant universities integrated to this international network.
The other question: why was the educational policy much more important in the competition of denominations than in the other part of Europe? The balance of Protestants and Catholic powers in Europe, nearby the Turkish empire, hindered the using of judges and army as tools against the Protestants, as common in Spain for example. So the school-system became the most important tool of the Hapsburg absolutism and the Protestant autonomists too. So both partners were interested in financing these "overbuilt" educational systems.
How did this "overbuilt" system remain so nonmodern and traditionalist in the 18th-19th century? In the century of the enlightenment and industrial revolution the denominational competition remained the main function of the educational system. This fact legitimised the most traditional groups in controlling the education - the "enemy picture" was so strong that nor the lay leaders of Protestants nor the Catholic aristocracy of western territories could "puss down" the conservatives.
This overbuilt, very ideological and extremely heterogeneous school
system was very different not only from the French or the English systems, but
from the Prussian or Austrian systems too. So the absolute power policy toward
education met an absolutely different school-system type then the other part of
the Western world.
The story in the 18th century became a double-story:
1. The competition of modern and non modern forces
2. The competition of denominations
The questions which were debated in the framework of these two cleavages:
1. Society-conform or internationally conform schooling (following the norms of local nobility or following the norms of international patterns)
2. Latin, German or Magyar as the language of the instruction in Hungarian denominational schools?
3. The new international pattern: Prussia: General law of Hungarian Education (Ratio Educationis in 1777) as the starter of new competition.
4. The steps of court generalised an inner conflict in the Protestant church between the modern lay noblemen and the leaders of the church. The modern wing suggested the acceptance of the Ratio, but the clergy-leaders of the Church declared that every element of the teaching belongs to the autonomy , so the Protestant theology is a determining factor in any subject.
5. The enlightened emperor's Joseph II's language order in 1784: demolishing of Latin as integration in the German Austrian patterns and culture.
6. The universal assembly of Lutherans accepted these tendencies in the spirit of the international neo-humanism.
7. Latin had gradually became an obstacle to the most important Hungarian Protestant tradition of education, studying abroad, because the language of introduction in the most popular German universities became German, and the Hungarian students understand only their own traditional Latin.
8. From the 1830s the leaders of reform movement showed the practical orientation of developed foreign nations, as a pattern and reference, characterized the supporters of Latin as creators of a "holy language" which could preserve the required social gap between them and the lower social strata.
The fact that modernization of education was a competitional and not an ideological one can be illustrated by the fact that the Protestant modernists won in their circles only after the victory of modernist forces in the state-controlled Catholic sphere.
II. The balance-principle in elementary schooling
Despite the traditional interpretation - "educational policy of dualism - modernisation from the centrum, following a Prussian model" - the study describes the Hungarian system as a system which was influenced by the English pattern.
- The essay describes how the Hungarian experts - not only the university professors - but teachers and bureaucrats, financed by scholarships of government - studied and interpreted the British model.
- A lot of elements - especially in the state-church relation, the preconditions of the state support to the church owned schools - seem to be a typical British solution.
- The strong power of the county and the municipality in the educational administration is an important element in the description.
- We have to stress then when the municipal and country level became weaker in the 1890-s - it is not a simple concentration of power into the hand of the government or the local representatives of the state government. From that time the role of the Administrative Court has a very significant role in the educational policy. (The role of courts - a model-relevant element in the Anglo-American educational policies, contra Continental ones.)
- The local (municipal level, elected school boards) is a very significant element of this educational policy too. The study describes that when the teachers fought against the nonprofessional control - they formed a coalition with the authoritative forces of the administration.
- We have to stress, that the election of the Catholic school board was the most democratic element of the very nondemocratic life of Catholicism of Hungary. This acts and ministerial orders guaranteed the right of Catholic citizens - in the situation when the Catholic church did not want to expect the lay control in any question.
- The main goals of the members of the educational administration, the guaranties for professionalisation - they use the French pattern.
- The most "nonconform" part of the study attacks the traditional interpretation of the question of educational policy towards national minorities. One of the "nonconform" argumentation stress: From a liberal-individual viewpoint, from the viewpoint of the Individual Romanian, Serbian etc. the expansion of the state school at the turn of the century brought better chances to educated men, to the social mobility
- The other nonconform argumentation stresses from a historical viewpoint:
The greatest part of Hungarian historians said as evidence, that the minorities
and the Hungarian government conflicted in 1907 over the controlling of
orthodox church - schools and this was only a tool in the hand of the
government minority policy. Contrasting them the author stresses that there are
other reasons of this conflict: a kind of kulturkampf between the very
conservative, feudal type orthodox church and the liberal (post-liberal) state.
This conflict happened in very similar forms in 1895-
- The interpretations up to now describe the industrial apprentice schools as the basic level of the vocational education, the training of workers, and handy craftsman. The author interprets this process as the part of elementary schooling. In Hungary - similarly to "Factory Acts" of England - it forced the employers to send the worker-children to the schools. The typical conflict in the boards of industrial apprentice school is similar to the state-parents conflicts around the compulsory school attendance and less to the typical conflicts of vocational schools.
III. The secondary school
The commonplace about German pattern is much closer to the real historical situation of secondary schools.
The new organisation of Hungarian secondary schools was defined for the entire Austrian empire by the Entwurf of 1849. The author of this plan was the famous Austrian school organiser Exner and the great Prussian philologist Bonitz, so this plan represented a compromise between the modernist technocrats and the absolutism.
In 1867 new responsible ministry started to govern the country. The first plan about a much more modern and much less selective 9 year long secondary schooling followed the pattern of French lycee system. The ministry of culture sent experts not only to Prussia and Austria, but to other parts of the German empire, Switzerland or Italy too.
But the whole reconstruction of the school system remained an illusion: the system created by the entwurf was adequate for the need of middle class, 1. if the questions of denominational differences and the 2, needs of modern forces will be accepted.
The act of 1883 determined a very special situation in the school maintaining. The very different rights of state in the Catholic, the Royal Catholic and the Non-Catholic schools, coloured with the cleavage of the language of schools so special that in the question of political power the Hungarian model was far enough from the Prussian one.
In the second half of 1880s the Hungarian experts followed the European debate of the classical studies. The groups and suggestions about the role of Latin and Greek was similar to the Prussian - for the first look. But for the second look, the difference of the Hungarian and Prussian situation is more significant.
- The starting point of the concentration of the Hungarian curriculum was the Hungarian History and Literature and not the Antiquity, as in Germany.
- The role and legitimation of Latin and Greek were very similar in Germany - and very different in Hungary. In Hungary the Latin lobby was supported not only by the Humanist, and by the Catholic Church (as in Germany) but by the political ideologists, because Latin was the language of the legal heritage of Hungarian nobility.
- In Hungary a divorce of work existed between the modern Bourgoise and the Nobility - the first dominated among the industrial, commercial and free intellectual positions and the second one dominated in the public sphere. The existing of Realschool and Gymnasium mirrored this fact and not only a modernisational debate - as in Germany.
- The administration of secondary schools in Germany took place together with the political administration - in Hungary the Secondary school district was much bigger then a county, and they were independent.
- After Trianon the experts followed the debates of the Educational Policy of Germany and Austria - but the educational policy and act preparing could not use the German-Austrian pattern, because the changes in the German - speaking countries in the twenties brought a social-democrat, less selective, more modern secondary school policy.
- The act of 1934 did not follow the new German policy too: the real reorganisation of the school system in Germany happened in 1938.
The schools which wanted to emigrate from the status of "elementary level", from the laic control, from the power of elementary school superintendent wanted to become secondary schools. In the late thirties these schools were integrated into the school system, the Burgerschule, the teacher training college and the vocational schools created a complete second alternative of school system, "a second class" secondary school system.
IV. United system
The expansion in the number of students age group 10-14 and growing in 14-18 was an international and social demand in Hungary. The expansion of the role of the state created new situation for the other owners of the schools the churches and municipalities. Up to then a separated "elementary school policy" and a "secondary school policy" "vocational school policy" existed - the new situation demanded a united "policy of education".
The author described the process, how the educational administration reform
happened in
The integration of school types happened in 1945, when the new government forced the secondary schools, the burgerschools and the elementary schools to create a general school. In its original form the general school was a kind of comprehensive school. Later after 1947 it became a unified school.
The integration of the school-maintenance, the nationalisation of the church schools was a real demand of the educational administration since 1945. The author stresses: not only the communist policy, but the inner logic of the educational administration and the creating of general schools lead to the nationalisation - the Communists only gave a "permission" in 1948.
Publications relevant to RSS
project
Nagy Péter Tibor: "Oktatásállamosítás" a harmincas években. In: Világosság, 1993. 6. sz. 26-36.p. (The nationalisation of schools in the thirties")
Nagy Péter Tibor: Nemzetiség és oktatás a dualizmuskori Magyarországon. In:
Educatio, 2. évf. 1993. 2. sz. 253-269.p. (Minority
and education in the period of 1867-
Nagy Péter Tibor: The outlines of Hungarian Education 1500-1945. Bp., Educatio, 1993 19 p.
NAGY Péter Tibor: Egyházi és állami oktatás a két világháború között in: Hiány 1993/2 (State and church education in the midwar period)
NAGY Péter Tibor: Az igazgatói szakma kialakulása. In: Educatio 1994/3 (The birth of the profession of school-managers)
NAGY Péter Tibor: Centralizációs és decentralizációs tendenciák a magyar oktatás történetében In: Educatio 1995/1 (Centralisation and decentralisation in the History of Hungarian education)
NAGY Péter Tibor: A félfelsőfokú szakoktatás történetéhez. Szakképzési Szemle, 1995. 2. sz. 103-111.p. (To the history of postsecondary vocational education)
NAGY Péter Tibor: Az 1941-es tanügyigazgatási törvény. Magyar Pedagógia, 1995. 1-2. sz. 59-76.p. (The act of 1941 about the administration of education)
NAGY Péter Tibor: Az iskolaszék - pedagógus - igazgató erőviszonyrendszer történeti alakulása. Iskolaszékek Hírlevele, 1995. 4. sz. 9-12.p. (The schoolboard - teacher manager relation in historical context)
NAGY Péter Tibor: Az iskolaszék jelensége a magyar oktatás történetében. 1. r. Iskolaszékek hírlevele, 1995. 3. sz. 7-9.p. (The fenomen of school board in the history of Hungarian Education)
NAGY Péter Tibor: Az iskolaszékek demokratizáló szerepe a felekezeti oktatásban. Iskolaszékek hírlevele, 1995. 5. sz. 5-7.p. (The role of the school boards in the democratisation of the church education)
NAGY Péter Tibor: Szakoktatás és politika. Bp.: Oktatáskutató Intézet, 1994 [1995]. 87 p. (Kutatás közben ; 207.) (Vocational education and the politics)
Budapest, 31.10.1995