Elemér Kelemen : The Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the educational sciences in Hungary

This essay is a version of a lecture which was held on May, 6. in 1992 at the Departments of Philosophy and History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences as a part of a scientific session dealing with the relationship of the Academy of Sciences and social sciences between the two World Wars. The introductory deals with the preceding events of the life of the Academy of Sciences from the founding of it in 1825 till 1919. It can be stated that nearly all the representatives of Hungarian pedagogy and cultural policy were the members of the institute. Eötvös, József (who promoted public education and modern research policy) and his colleagues, then his followers took a prominent part in leading the Academy from the middle of the century. In this way the Hungarian Academy of Sciences had an enormous influence on the development of the national pedagogy and on the policy of education. After World War, I. there were fundamental changes. First of all the great generation of the previous age became old or they withdrew from academic life. Also the tendency which started at the beginning of the 1880s got stronger that more and more representatives of the Hungarian pedagogy got excluded from the Academy mostly because of reasons of origin and because of ideological and political reasons. In the 1920s and 1930s Finánczy, Ernő who was at the same time the representative of the official opinion about education and was a powerful Herbartian scientist of education then his successor Kornis, Gyula represented nearly exclusively the science of education. Opposing them – „outside the walls” – nearly a shadow Academy was formed by the opposing trends of the official science of education e. g. among them there were significant personalities from the followers of reform pedagogy. This discrimination and one-sidedness had very serious consequences severely affecting the development of the Hungarian science of pedagogy until nowadays. The horizons of the development narrowed and its conservative tendencies became stronger. It is true though that this conservativism preserved valuable traditions and it turned against the totalitarian ideological and political aspirations of the age. The concluding part discusses the accomplishment of this dubious state after World War, II. The result of it was that the science of pedagogy remained without high position, academical representation while its conservative and provincial characteristics are broadening.

MAGYAR PEDAGÓGIA 92. Number 2. 119-130. (1992)

Levelezési cím / Address for correspondence: Kelemen Elemér, Országos Pedagógiai Könyv¬tár és Múzeum, H–1055 Budapest, Honvéd utca 19

 
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