Ágoston BereczCentral European University, Budapest/New Europe College, Bucharest

The Politics of Early Language Teaching: Hungarian in the Primary Schools of the Late Dual Monarchy

Romanian Hungarian German

1880 census 53.0% 28.6% 10.5%

1910 census 53.2% 35.2% 9.5%

Mother-tongue groups in proportion to the whole population

Self-declared monolinguals among the native speakers in

1880

The attraction of the language in 1880

Romanian 92.7% 18.1%

Hungarian 77.9% 5.6%

Confessional schools (+ Romanian border

guard schools) Diverse languages of instruction,

depending on the various (ethnic) churches – Romanian, Hungarian, German etc. (the home language of pupils)

1876: teaching of Hungarian as a subject becomes mandatory

1907: new curriculum (accompanying the so-called Lex Apponyi) effectively turns non-Hungarian primary schools into bilingual

Two Major Threads of Primary Education in Dualist Hungary

State-run schools(+ communal schools)

Medium of instruction is Hungarian

Begin mushrooming in massively minority-majority areas during the 1890s.

Still, only 28.8% of enrolled Romanian pupils attend Hungarian schools in the school-year 1913/14.

schooling poorly embedded in peasants’ value system low expectations of mobility six-year central curriculum vs. four years as the actual length of

schooling for many children, school-year lasts from November to March the overwhelming majority of schools had one room and one

teacher teachers underpaid, lack prestige unlicensed teachers very high fluctuation of teachers

Major Setbacks in Confessional Schools

(also apply to most state and communal schools)

Conditions on the Ground

teachers mostly with poor Hungarian, overburdened, undertrained and underpaid

one-room-one-teacher schools, with pupils divided into four groups

lack of motivation, little mobility

Direct Method in Romanian Confessional Schools?

Methodological Prerequisites

teachers either native or with native-like fluency in the target language, with great improvising skills

frontal work, oral competencies

subsequent exposure to the target language

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