goston Berecz

Central European University, Budapest/New Europe College, Bucharest

The Politics of Early Language Teaching:

Hungarian in the Primary Schools of the
Late Dual Monarchy

Mother-tongue groups in proportion to the whole population

Romanian

Hungarian

German

1880 census

53.0%

28.6%

10.5%

1910 census

53.2%

35.2%

9.5%

Self-declared monolinguals among the

native speakers in 1880

The attraction of the language in

1880

Romanian

92.7%

18.1%

Hungarian

77.9%

5.6%

Two Major Threads of Primary Education in

Dualist Hungary
Confessional schools

(+ Romanian border guard

schools)
Diverse languages of
instruction, depending on the
various (ethnic) churches
Romanian, Hungarian, German
etc. (the home language of
pupils)
1876: teaching of Hungarian as
a subject becomes mandatory
1907: new curriculum
(accompanying the so-called
Lex Apponyi) effectively turns
non-Hungarian primary

State-run schools
(+ communal schools)

Medium of instruction is
Hungarian
Begin mushrooming in
massively minority-majority
areas during the 1890s.
Still, only 28.8% of enrolled
Romanian pupils attend
Hungarian schools in the
school-year 1913/14.

Major Setbacks in Confessional Schools

(also apply to most state and communal
schools)

schooling poorly embedded in peasants value system

low expectations of mobility
six-year central curriculum vs. four years as the actual length of schooling
for many children, school-year lasts from November to March
the overwhelming majority of schools had one room and one teacher
teachers underpaid, lack prestige
unlicensed teachers
very high fluctuation of teachers

Direct Method in Romanian Confessional

Schools?

Methodological
Prerequisites

teachers either native or with

native-like fluency in the target
language, with great
improvising skills
frontal work, oral competencies
subsequent exposure to the
target language

Conditions on the
Ground

teachers mostly with poor

Hungarian, overburdened,
undertrained and underpaid
one-room-one-teacher schools, with
pupils divided into four groups
lack of motivation, little mobility

Thank you for your attention!