Eötvös Loránd University
Faculty of Education and Psychology Doctoral School of Education
(Supervised by Prof. Dr. Szabolcs Éva)
History of Education Program
(Supervised by Prof. Dr. Németh András )
Pirka Veronika
The Effect of Life Reform Movements on Pedagogical Publicity in Hungary in the 1920s and ’30s
Doctoral Dissertation Abstract
Supervised by
Prof. Dr. Németh András
Budapest
1. Topic, Objectives and Theoretical Background
The fundamental purpose of my dissertation is to explore and analyse the points of contact between life reform movements and pedagogical science. The issues of lifestyle regulation, including the implementation of life reform, are an outstandingly important part of human culture at all times. The idea of life reform generally crops up in cultures where the human individual has become a crucial concept, whereas it is largely unknown in highly homogeneous societies in which the range of individual choices is small to none. Life reform as a concept arises in tandem with the accelerated changes brought on by modernisation.
Involving a variety of choices, life reform is a complex social phenomenon of which the involved individuals may not be fully aware. Changes taking place in this field are often first indicated by works of art and literature, while interdisciplinary scientific treatises and analyses generally deal with the process through retrospective analysis of a longer, historical perspective.
Life reform movements always consist of particular alternatives or choices pertaining to one or more social problems. Some of these may offer a feasible solution to a given condition, others may be merely pseudo-solutions, while yet others may be a combination of both.
There is a particular ambivalence characteristic of the social role of life reform movements.
On the one hand such movements set up norms which the largest possible section of society is expected or urged to follow in order to ensure social stability and predictability. On the other hand, they often endeavour to resist and revolt against the presently existing norms of living, which are perceived to be ossified or empty and purposeless. Hence life reform movements may be approached as social formations consisting of complex components and working by the interaction of many and various factors, which react faster than usual to new social challenges, and are thus a key dynamising component in social life. As such, they are beyond doubt a worthy subject of study through pedagogical science.
2. Structure of the Dissertation, Theses and Premises
My dissertation focuses on the exploration and analysis of the following areas: the international background to the formation of life reform movements; childhood research and journalism research in Hungarian pedagogical history; reform processes in Hungarian society in the 1920’s and 1930’s; and particularly the appearance of life reform topics in the major pedagogical journals of the period.
My dissertation seeks answers to the following questions:
1. What components accessible to analysis and research can be found in life reform movements?
2. What were the forums of pedagogical publicity in early 20th-century Hungary?
3. How were these institutionalised and how were they linked to forums of public life?
4. What role do journals have in such analysis and what methodology can be used to derive relevant information from them?
5. Who controlled the image of the journals studied?
6. How did the child-image of Romanticism survive after the turn of the century?
7. How does the motif of rescue, one of the key motifs in life reform movements, appear in journals?
8. How is the rescue motif of life reform movements connected to the emergence of child studies at the turn of the century?
9. What relationship can be found between life reform motifs and the motif of disciplining as present in the world of schools?
3. Research Methodology
The methods applied were the following: analysis of primary sources: qualitative and quantitative data analysis; collection, comparison and analysis of data from secondary sources, exploration of similarities and differences, and investigation of the causal
4. Findings and Conclusions
The components of the German concept of life reform include the land reform movement, the body culture movement, homeland knowledge societies, the anti-alcohol movement, the dress reform movement, and the following of nudism, eugenics, naturopathy and natural nutrition. I have compiled a summary table of the content components of the German life reform movement. My dissertation demonstrates that the Hungarian life reform movement does not match the thematic multiplicity of its German counterpart.
In order to construct a set of categories for content analysis, it was necessary to embark on an overview of Hungarian childhood history research and thereby to delineate the notions of child perception, child image and child concept. For the same reason I have also summarised German and Hungarian pedagogical research pertaining to the content analysis of journals, and created an overview of the historical aspects of the 1920’s and 30’s as applicable to life reform.
In my earlier research I had formulated a set of 25 categories, which I now systematically arranged into three groups of categories for the present content analysis. These groups include factors that are 1. ecological respective socio-genetic; 2. individual-genetic; and 3.
supplementary to and supportive of the life reform movement.
The conceptual elaboration of life reform endeavours has shown that the life reform movement can be interpreted as a complex phenomenon that is a totality of holistic reform ideas which pervade the entirety of life in its various aspects and strive to transform the manner of its existence.
Components of life reform, particularly the construction process of the concept of “school child”, were present in the communication channels of various pedagogical associations and unions as well as in journals.
It is interesting to note that the three periodicals subjected to analysis were not dominated by educational policy makers, who only published an article occasionally.
In order for notions pertaining to life reform movements to gain legitimacy, they need vector persons who are significant personages in social publicity. A detailed list of such personages is presented in my dissertation, along with their relationships.
The key forums of pedagogical publicist were pedagogical journals, whose circulation
The journal Népművelés (Community Education) is particularly relevant to a study of life reform, as it regularly publicised the views of several different associations.
The images of the journals studied were primarily determined by their editors. A phenomenon unique to Hungary is, however, that medical doctors also frequently published in these journals, especially on topics pertaining to hygiene.
The impact of the concept of life reform was primarily the fact that it added numerous new, previously neglected topics to pedagogical discourse.
The elements of Romantic child anthropology surfaced primarily in the form of the concept of the child as originally good and pure in soul, and in theories directed at saving this child.
An exploration of the narrative of kindergarten and school children shows that issues of school and home furnishing, living conditions, physical education, child protection, anti- alcoholism, forest schooling, hygiene and disciplining were raised in journals. The increasingly highly-qualified community of lower elementary school teachers played a crucial role in this process.
The dissertation also includes a detailed discussion of the construction process of the
“suburban”, the “depraved”, the “discipline” and the “working” child.
My analyses demonstrate that beside the typical rhetorical elements of life reform movements, the child image of pedagogical journals is also influenced by the efforts of the discourse of hygiene, as well as by the achievements of experimental pedagogy and child studies.
In summary it can be concluded that the Hungarian life reform movement was unable to flourish in the inauspicious period between the two World Wars, yet its complex forms of appearance and its admonitions provided the seed for many subsequent initiatives, and its general dynamism was certainly a factor in the country’s ability to save itself.
