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Every Child According to Its Pace: School Maturity between Expertise, State Policies, and Parental Eigensinn in Socialist Hungary
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SYSNO ASEP 0582975 Document Type J - Journal Article R&D Document Type Journal Article Subsidiary J Ostatní články Title Every Child According to Its Pace: School Maturity between Expertise, State Policies, and Parental Eigensinn in Socialist Hungary Author(s) Gagyiova, Annina (HIU-Y) ORCID Source Title Hungarian historical review. - : Magyar Tudomanyos Akademia - ISSN 2063-8647
Roč. 12, č. 3 (2023), s. 461-492Number of pages 32 s. Publication form Online - E Language eng - English Country HU - Hungary Keywords state socialism ; socialist education ; school maturity ; remedial class ; equality Subject RIV AB - History OECD category History (history of science and technology to be 6.3, history of specific sciences to be under the respective headings) R&D Projects GX21-28766X GA ČR - Czech Science Foundation (CSF) Method of publishing Open access DOI 10.38145/2023.3.461 Annotation It is widely known that socialist states such as Hungary attempted to increase social mobility through a compulsory elementary school system. While the research on socialist education is vast, the relevance of school maturity to an egalitarian education system is still understudied. By the end of the 1950s, lack of preparedness for school among children had captured the attention of Hungarian experts in medicine, psychology, and pedagogy, who were hoping to ensure that first-year students would begin their schooling under roughly the same conditions. In response, in 1965, local initiatives started experimenting with corrective (remedial) classes. The aim of these initiatives was to overcome class differences by offering targeted support and helping children who were less prepared for institutional schooling catch up and transfer into the standard school system later. During the first half of the 1970s, the Hungarian Ministry of Education adopted this pedagogical experiment on a national level. In this article, I put two distinct methodological approaches into dialogue, the sociology of expertise on the one hand and Eigensinn on the other. By doing so, I shed light on the complex interplay of state policies, concepts of expertise, and parental agency. As I show, corrective classes reflected persisting social inequalities, thus children from the lower middle classes and the Roma minority were overrepresented in these classes. Ultimately, I explore how bottom-up initiatives had unintended consequences that were often disadvantageous for the children who were in principle the intended beneficiaries. These initiatives thus worked against rather than for the quest for social equality. In the discussion below, I show how pediatricians, psychologists, pedagogues, and parents shaped the school system, working within, taking advantage of, and thus limiting efforts for social transformation despite asymmetrical power relations. Workplace Institute of History Contact Kristina Rexová, rexova@hiu.cas.cz, Tel.: 225 443 239 Year of Publishing 2024 Electronic address https://hunghist.org/83-articles/872-2023-3-gagyiova
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