Introduction
Hungarian secondary education is a constant focus of public attention, and there are several reasons for this. On the one hand, different and often conflicting interests of all parts of society – teachers, students, parents of different occupations – converge in this field. That is, public education is deeply embedded in society. On the other hand, all actors in society have been or are currently involved in education in some way, and thus everyone feels as if they were experts in their own point of view.
Even today, one of the basic elements of education is the coursebook, which – unlike a lesson – can be measured and judged relatively objectively, considering that verba volant, scripta manent [speech is ephemeral, writing
1 This paper was prepared by correcting, transforming and shortening a text that had already been published twice. Previous publications: Illik 2017 and 2019. In this study, I have omitted the footnotes on the historiography of textbook research for reasons of brevity, as they were included in two previous texts.
remains]. This is exactly why coursebooks are the focus of this paper. They can be assessed on the basis of various, complex pedagogical criteria. However, there are also examples of comparative and thematic coursebook analyses, with the latter meaning that a topic is analysed in one or more publications. This study examines how the Horthy era (the period from the entry of Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya into Budapest until the appointment of Ferenc Szálasi) is presented and evaluated in post-1945 Hungarian secondary school coursebooks up to 2005.2 The coursebooks are analysed in chronological order, but specific topics already discussed in different articles are not covered in this study.
Obviously, there are several turning points for post-1945 coursebooks.
Firstly, the transition in 1989, considering that the change of attitude about the Horthy era began in the 1980s. “Horthy’s counter-revolutionary regime” was necessarily denigrated in the obviously politicised coursebooks of the socialist era. After the change in the political system, this did not shift in the opposite direction, i.e. towards a clearly positive assessment. Methodologically, instead of politicised coursebooks, those without a clear opinion became common, where value judgment can only be read between the lines: from source texts, images, questions included, and the available facts selected in the main text, i.e.
which ones are used and which are not when describing the era. So what does the coursebook suggest?
The two-level final examination in the subject of history introduced in 2005 constitutes another significant turning point for this study. Organising entrance exams is no longer the responsibility of the universities, and additionally the intermediate and advanced level final examinations were separated, where, unlike before, the written test also became a part of the exams. At the intermediate level, the scores were up to 90 points in the written test and 60 points in the oral part. (With the latest changes, this was modified up to 100 points and 50 points in 2016.) There are essay questions in the written
2 I did not examine the educational-political environment of textbooks, i.e. the education laws or other circumstances of the Kádár era, which influenced the textbooks written up to 1989, as this was undertaken by Albert (2004). In addition, the book Képek és arcképek presents an overview of the history textbooks of the Kádár era.
examination, both at the intermediate and advanced levels, where students are expected to write problem-oriented, source-analysing, explanatory texts (i.e. answering the question “why?”). It is very important that the explanation here means that a statement should be made for each response element, which should not “hang in the air”, i.e. it should be accompanied by an explanation or a conclusion drawn from it (with the changes that came into effect in the summer of 2016, the final examinations also includes a complex cross-period source analysis and an essay writing task). Thus, by analysing the coursebooks, this paper also raises the question of the extent to which the author considers these coursebooks to be suitable for final examinations, including the preparation for writing essays, and of the extent to which the main text of these books enters into explanations.3 Set as a basic requirement, the coursebook alone should be suitable for this without the teacher’s explanations. This methodological question is strongly justified because the Horthy era is one of the periods which gives rise to the most concerns and varied interpretations in Hungarian history and, moreover, it is still relevant today as it is linked closely to political thought and public opinion, and thus triggers intense emotional reactions. Furthermore, this issue is still very much a part of everyday political and ideological currents.
Based on the historical literature and the final examination topics, what are the problem areas, questions, evaluations I had anticipated, or at least expected and could expect to be raised in connection with the Horthy era? (1) Who was Miklós Horthy and how did he become the Regent of Hungary? (2) What was the White Terror, how can it be assessed, to what extent was it related to Horthy or the government? (3) What exactly does a “kingdom without a king” mean, what kind of form of government is it (dictatorial, democratic or other) and how unique is it in the world? (4) Why did anti-Semitism exist in the era, what were its origins and characteristics, and later, how did Horthy, the politics and society relate to this and the Holocaust? (5) How successful was the Bethlen Consolidation? (6) How can revision be evaluated, what role did it play in the
3 This is obviously a reasonable criterion for textbooks published after 2005. However, an analysis of earlier textbooks is also indispensable, as they form an “integral part” of the current ones.
process of drifting into the war, how can the behaviour of Hungarian troops be evaluated during the annexation? (7) Why did Hungary “drift” towards German politics from the second half of the 1930s, what pressures and coercions did it face? (8) How did Pál Teleki die? (9) Who bombed Kassa (today: Košice, Slovakia) and to what extent was it just used as a pretext to enter the war? (10) How can Hungary’s participation in the war be assessed, and how significant was the catastrophe at the Don River? (11) Why did the attempt to withdraw Hungary from the war fail? To what extent is Miklós Horthy responsible for this and for Szálasi’s appointment?
There are many questions that cannot necessarily be answered, but can be raised, considered, explained and evaluated. These issues are, of course, addressed in the literature, and thus it is also possible to receive an implicit answer to the question of the extent to which academic knowledge and various professional debates flow into the coursebooks.