Denominational schools during the communist periode in Hungary

Author(s):

Ágnes Inántsy Pap(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

17. Histories of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

17 SES 13, Cultures of Education

Paper Session

Time:

2016-08-26

13:30-15:00

Room:

OB-H2.40

Chair:

Helena Ribeiro de Castro

Contribution

The situation of denominational schools in today’s Hungary cannot be understood without looking at the roles churches played in education in the past. There are two periods to be distinguished in this respect. Up to the 18^th century churches had a monopoly on education. After that, however, the state appeared as a new actor there. As regards the role of the state in education, we can distinguish two periods again: (1) the era of absolutism and bourgeois states (1740-1945), when, although the state made increasing efforts to control and supervise education, no serious political force questioned the justification of denominational education and educational pluralism; (2) the period between 1945 and 1989, when the totalitarian rule of the communist party, which rose into power in a few years, completely transformed the character of the Hungarian state as well as the structure of the school system, trying to exclude churches from education and youth work. Our study focuses on a so far undisclosed episode of this era, which is still very relevant with respect to the social responsibility of churches. Our research is significant for two reasons. Firstly, we have discovered original sources on the underground educational activity of a denomination that was completely deprived of its right to run schools.

Secondly, we want to highlight that this particular activity was the education of Gypsy children, who were absolutely marginalised and deprived of all opportunities of institutional education during the communist era, which otherwise proclaimed social equality and justice.

My lecture consists of three chapters. The first one presents the communist regime’s policy on church-run education and the reaction of the denominations. The second chapter discusses the situation of the Greek Catholic Church during the communist dictatorship as well as the geographical and socio-economic background of the Greek Catholic community. The third chapter focuses on how the Greek Catholic Church was engaged in education alongside its missionary work in the most peripheral Gypsy communities in spite of its exclusion from school education. The sources used in our research were documents from the Episcopal Archive of Nyíregyháza, original letters, lectures, sermons published in the seminary newspaper at that time, photos depicting the life of the Gypsy community in Hodász, as well as interviews with priests and members of the Gypsy parish. In addition, we drew on an interview with the bishop’s secretary and a contemporary radio interview.

The question to be answered now was what happens when families’ culture is very far from the values and norms necessary for doing well at school and from the values of the church such as future-oriented behaviour and making daily sacrifices for the sake of learning.

Our most important finding was the discovery of a so-called underground school that had operated at a Roma village in spite of the fact that no Greek Catholic schools were allowed to exist during the communist regime. The school was very successful in educating the highly marginalised Roma community, which lived under substandard conditions. The methodology of the school, fitted out in a chapel, foreshadowed what we call culturally responsive teaching today.

Method

It is justified to ask (1) whether the Greek Catholic Church’s education activity was really suspended under the communist regime, and (2) what kind of pedagogical experience there is behind the church’s apparent mission in the 2010s to undertake the task of running schools in settlements with a Gypsy majority. My lecture presents the first results of a research project which intends to prove that in spite of the ban the Hungarian Greek Catholic Church attempted to continue its educational activity during the totalitarian era. Written sources and oral history have revealed, however, that this was not done within the traditional institutional framework, but by creating an idiosyncratic type of “institution”, using sacred spaces as spaces for education. In the first phase we searched for written sources, but as it is characteristic of a dictatorship to examine or annihilate all clerical documents, there were only very few original sources at our disposal. The primary sources used in our research were remaining relevant documents from the Episcopal Archive of Nyíregyháza, Miklós Sója’s original letters, lectures and sermons, and photos depicting the life of the Roma community in Hodász, as well as interviews with Gypsy parish members, priests serving in the locality and the one-time bishop’s secretary. We also analysed a radio interview from that time, given by Miklós Sója to the official Hungarian state radio. Having concluded that the Greek Catholic Church continued its educational activity after church-run schools were closed down and having found evidence of the existence of the school chapel, we moved on to our second research question. We made an in-depth analysis of our written and oral sources to find out about the methods of the work done in the Roma community. at the meeting point of different cultures.The activity had to be concealed from the regime’s state security bodies, since the Hungarian Communist Party, referring to the principle of workers’ unity, used all possible means to prevent the dissemination of clerical behaviour patterns. The answer to our first research question, i.e. whether the Greek Catholic Church’s education activity was really suspended under the communist regime is definitely negative. The case revealed in our research leads us to the conclusion that there must have been further hidden schools operating. Trying to establish the answer to our second research question, we reconstructed the pedagogical attitude that characterised the work done in the Greek Catholic school chapel in Hungary

Expected Outcomes

Our first research question was whether the churches that were deprived of all their education institutions gave up their educational activity entirely. Our first results showed that it was not given up but continued underground. The Greek Catholic Church is concentrated in the most disadvantaged regions of Hungary, was engaged in the education of Gypsy/Roma people in one of the villages. Having been shown behaviour patterns that promote school career, those who were marginalised from the mainstream of society and left out of the official school system were given the chance to experience successful learning. Our second research question was what methods the underground school applied to work successfully among Roma groups whose integration into school and society is still unresolved in the most disadvantaged regions of the country. We undertook the reconstruction of this pedagogical approach with the help of archive documents, memoirs and oral history resources. We pointed out that the educational concept and working methods implemented in the Gypsy settlement between 1941 and 1981 displayed features of what was later defined as culturally responsive teaching. We identified five main dimensions of culturally responsive teaching during the study of priest and teacher Miklós Sója’s school chapel. The strength of the concept lay in its emerging from the triangle of Gypsy/Roma identity, the educational principles of the Greek Catholic Church and those of school education. The regime, which showed no mercy when it came to punishing priests who organised small youth communities, tolerated Miklós Sója’s work with Gypsies living under substandard conditions, because it found it hopeless to integrate them from their segregation and deep poverty into society, and had long since given up on this group. Research on the history of education cannot ignore this phenomenon, the hypocrisy of the education system of the party state.

References

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Author Information

Ágnes Inántsy Pap (presenting / submitting)

Szent Atanáz Görögkatolikus Hittudományi Főiskola

Education

Nyíregyháza

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