One of the most important functions of the education system in the 19th century was to promote nation-building by developing and disseminating national culture and identity (Westberg et al., 2019). This tendency also applied to teacher education and the textbooks used in it.

The development of educational history writing gained momentum in the first half of the 19th century. Its development was closely linked to the development of teacher training, and textbooks for use at different levels of education played an important role in the formation of the discipline. Research (Tröhler, 2004, 2006) points out that the content and narrative of these textbooks are strongly linked to national (and imperial) frameworks.

Hungary was in a unique position in terms of both its educational system and nation-building. The development of its culture and educational system was strongly influenced by transnational trends (Mayer, 2019). In this regard, the role of German culture should be emphasized. One of the main goals of Hungarian textbooks on the history of education was to place the history of Hungarian education in a European framework.

At the end of the 19th century, Hungary was a multinational, multi-religious, socially fragmented, agrarian-industrial country (Romsics, 2010). When writing a national history of education, the authors should (have) taken into account not only the European framework, but also this diversity.

In my research, I investigated whether, and if so, to what extent, the above-mentioned diversity is reflected in Hungarian history of education textbooks published in the second half of the 19th century. I understood diversity from different perspectives (gender, religion, sex, special needs).

My research questions were:

How is the diversity of European culture represented and what is the role of Hungarian culture in it?

Does the textbook include nationalities other than the majority nationality?

Is the religious diversity of the country represented?

Does it reflect the ethnic and religious tensions that existed at the time?

How is women's education represented in the textbooks?

Are children with special educational needs represented in the textbooks?

For most of the period under study, the training of primary and secondary school teachers was clearly separated. In my research, I examined textbooks on the history of education published between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, which were used at different levels of teacher training in Hungary, using the method of historical source analysis.

The research has shown that the exclusiveness of the nation as an interpretive framework did not characterize Hungarian textbooks on the history of education in this period, but that they included events and classics of foreign educational history. Of course, this does not mean that the authors were characterized by any kind of inter- or transnational approach. It simply shows that the educational history of a small nation cannot be written as a "world history" and that there is always a balancing act between national and international frameworks. The multi-ethnic and religious diversity of the country is hardly reflected in the textbooks. The differences between the various religions are mostly implied. Religious and ethnic tensions appear in one case. The textbook by Ágost Lubrich, a professor at the University of Budapest, contains several anti-Semitic passages. The history of women's education is sketched in the textbooks, and in some cases the biographies of women teachers are included. However, this has not changed the male-dominated tone of the textbooks. Several textbooks presented the modern history of special education in some detail as part of the history of the 'normal' education system. Overall, it can be concluded that while the authors reflected the diversity of the world around them, the unifying tendencies were more prevalent in the desire to create a unified canon of educational history.

Mayer, C. (2019). The Transnational and Transcultural: Approaches to Studying the Circulation and Transfer of Educational Knowledge. In E. Fuchs & E. Roldán Vera (Eds.), The Transnational in the History of Education: Concepts and Perspectives (pp. 49–68). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17168-1_2 Romsics, I. (2010). Hungary in the twentieth century. Corvina, Osiris; /z-wcorg/. Tröhler, D. (2004). The Establishment Of The Standard History Of Philosophy of Education and Suppressed Traditions of Education. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 23(5–6), 367–391. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-004-4450-3 Tröhler, D. (2006). History and Historiography of Education: Some remarks on the utility of historical knowledge in the age of efficiency. Encounters/Encuentros/Rencontres on Education. https://doi.org/10.15572/ENCO2006.01 Westberg, J., Boser, L., & Brühwiler, I. (Eds.). (2019). School Acts and the Rise of Mass Schooling: Education Policy in the Long Nineteenth Century. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13570-6