Két rendszerváltó nemzedék. A liberális oktatáspolitika néhány értelmezésérõl
Two SYSTEM-changing generations – ON SOME interpretations of the liberal educational policy

Summary/Abstract: In Hungary’s political history, an educational governance which perceived itself as a follower of liberal values got into power twice: first, after the 1867 Compromise under the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy; second after the 1989 transition from Communism to democracy. This study argues that the pursuits and ideological values of the second educational governance in the period of 1994–1998 and 2002–2006 was fundamentally different from the first educational governance in the post-1867 period, as well as, from the declarations made by the Liberal International in the past 50 years. Fundamentally, contemporary educational governance regarded public education as a matter pertaining to the teachers and professionals represented by the educational bureaucracy,thereby weakening the development of public education and culture which may have been a conduit to social equality. In public education, measures were brought aiming to reduce the role of the elected representative bodies, and increase that of the teachers. These measures illustrated the weakening of the education’s public content. Playing down the parents’ concerns by, among others, prohibiting the grading of students was also indicative of this policy direction. In educational management, the declarative-pedagogical style gained strength at the expense of legal-normative elements. In the ideology of education, the ‘child’ was represented as a defendable alternative in the malicious world of the ‘adult.’ Contemporary educational policy which set out to avoid the overloading of students and ban the failure of students in the class run contrary to the 19th Century cult of senses, rooting in the enlightenment period, and the competition and performanceoriented management of schools. The author pointed out that the second regime-changing educational- political generation was essentially anti-capitalist and socialistic, following plebian orientation which was opposite of what the first generation represented in the age of Dualism.

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