Éva Már­kus: Minor­i­ty Edu­ca­tion – Ger­mans liv­ing in Hun­ga­ry – Fórum Társadalomtudományi Szemle
Thursday, April 25, 2024
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Éva Már­kus: Minor­i­ty Edu­ca­tion – Ger­mans liv­ing in Hun­ga­ry

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Right for minor­i­ty edu­ca­tion is one of the most impor­tant part of cul­tur­al auton­o­my per­tain­ing to minori­ties. Pre­serv­ing self-­i­den­ti­ty – lan­guage, tra­di­tions and other cul­tur­al val­ues of a given com­mu­ni­ty – is one of the basic pre­con­di­tions of real­iz­ing minor­i­ty edu­ca­tion­pre­serv­ing self-­i­den­ti­ty. The role of the edu­ca­tion is of key impor­tance, because a child liv­ing in a less assim­i­lat­ed com­mu­ni­ty is not able to suc­ceed only with the archa­ic moth­er lan­guage „brought from home“ spo­ken in the fam­i­ly: acquir­ing lan­guage skills that fit for mo­dern and Euroepan require­ments and gen­er­al­ly suit­able for the mo­dern soci­e­ty can be ensured only through school sys­tem train­ing. The Ger­man lan­guage from 1945 exists prac­ti­cal­ly exclu­sive­ly as a school lan­guage, and/or a lan­guage of the older gen­er­a­tion. The Ger­mans in Hun­ga­ry – often despite the good Ger­man skills – speak with each other in for­mal and infor­mal sit­u­a­tion Hun­gar­i­an. It is a ques­tion if the school can take over the role of fam­i­lies in lan­guage sociali­a­tion. The Ger­man teach­ers in Hun­ga­ry gen­er­al­ly dur­ing the teach­ing breaks speak Hun­gar­i­an with their stu­dents. From the intro­duced data and made exam­i­na­tions it is evi­dent that in Hun­ga­ry the chil­dren of the Ger­man minor­i­ty can receive no edu­ca­tion in their moth­er lan­guage, although the leg­isla­tive body cre­at­ed pos­si­bil­i­ties for this basic right. From the bilin­gual schools the minori­ties can choose from a very few num­ber, but the vast major­i­ty of edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions still offers the form of lan­guage teach­ing that is unac­cept­able from the point of view of achieved lan­guage skill­s. The widen­ing of the pal­lette of bilin­gual edu­ca­tion would be desired, and the grad­ual trans­fer to a one-lan­guage, Ger­man moth­er lan­guage edu­ca­tion that could strength­en iden­ti­ty of the Ger­man minor­i­ty.

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