The paper presents a big efforts for education Slovenes in mother tongues in region at the crossroads of the Germanic, Romanic and Slavic worlds between the Northern Adriatic and the Eastern Alps. Although the experience of childhood is influenced by family circumstances, diversities in Slovene children childhood before 1918 were influenced by characteristics of administrative division of Habsburg monarchy, where there were only six Austrian regions with Slovene inhabitants. Only central Slovene region of Carniola was majority Slovene, others were in linguistic sense German-Slovene or Slovene-Italian. Efforts for elementary school education of Slovene pupils in their mother tongue were carried into effect with oppositions from the state and resistance of nationalistic movements.

Besides linguistic diversities, which influenced educational linguistic politics, special regional school legislations were likewise important, since they were conditioned by different economic circumstances. Childhood of Slovene children in Hungarian part of the monarchy had its own specialities. Diversities among  slovene speaking villages, rural centres and (also bilingual) towns played an important part.  Childhood in multilinguistic city Trieste had the characteristics of metropolitan port.  Childhood of an individual was influenced by social and consequent economic status and then also language  of families, where children were growing up, and limited options of further education.

                In the twentieth century the childhood of almost third of Slovene children was influenced by denationalization (italianization, germanization and hungarization as result of living of Slovenes in diferent national state:  Italy, Austria and Hungary); in Slovene part of Yugoslavia the influence of Serbo-Croatian language and the Yugoslav national idea played an important role after 1918. The development after 1918 brought in slovenian part of new in slovenian part of new Yugoslav state the Slovenization of the primary and secondary education and the establishment of the University of Ljubljana. These changes also influenced the experience of childhood as the time of compulsory attendance of elementary school with ever bigger number of children. Differences were large: some children attended elementary school for a shorter period of time until the age of six, others for six or even eight years. Only few of them continued schooling in bigger cities during their adolescence. An important impact on the experience of schooling part of the childhood had teachers and from the end of the century more and more often female teachers. The records of schooling years are recorded by memories, often published; usually these are the notes of adults or elderly people, who account their childhood memories. Rear immediate testimonies on the endeavour of right to use mother tongue in education are therefore even more valuable.

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