Beyond the Pedagogical Illusion? Historical-Comparative Reflections on the Impact History of Moral Education of Children and Adolescents

This article can be broken down into two parts, perhaps somewhat unequally as far as its orientation is concerned. In the first part, the author takes the reader on a kind of exploration of the history of moral education, a subject which, at first glance and from the perspective of the years he spent studying educational historiography, appears to be rather undeveloped terrain. Since the piece is related to the awarding of the Comenius Medal, Comenius himself already provides a good starting point for this round of studies. As in the case of Herbart, another classic within the canon of educational history, Comenius held the opinion that morality plays a key role in upbringing of young people, which became increasingly scintillating in appearance from the Enlightenment onwards. For in a well-regulated society, it was by means of upbringing and education that individual freedom could be created. However, in the course of the 20th century and to the shame of humanity, people were forced to witness how the idea that people and society could be shaped by social engineering could equally give rise to a lack of freedom, as the aberrations of Nazism, fascism and ultimately Marxism-Leninism unequivocally demonstrated. So can such “reversals” of modern-day thought ultimately teach us any overall lessons about the content, manner and results with which moral curricula are imposed? Or must we first set out to identify the “abnormal” cases that society first branded as such and only subsequently extract those lessons? In other words, can extraordinary situations and events teach us something about the everyday reality of moral education as manifested in the so-called “civilising offensive” that took place from the end of the 18th century onwards? As far as the Low Countries are concerned, the author is, for that matter, setting foot on familiar ground. By utilising previous research on Belgium, Flanders and the (Belgian) Congo, the second part of the article wastes no time in examining what moral education meant in more specific terms in the 20th century. In that regard, the focus not only lies on contextualising the insights and questions raised by the first part, as a “tour d’horizon”, but equally on analysing them in greater depth. After all, the author’s years of research already provide three interesting points of reference: 1) the strong continuity of the patronising perspective; 2) the problematic nature of thinking about educational innovations and didactic innovations in binary terms, such as “old” and “new”, and 3) the lack of a straightforward link between parenting and educational goals on the one hand and their results and effects (including and especially in the long term) on the other. Which leads inevitably to the conclusion that education, important as it is, must not be overestimated. Nor should history for that matter. Perhaps both are nothing more than an opportunity to partake of a meaningful encounter that may be effective, but whose outcome one can never be sure of. Which in turn does not take away from the fact that we must still place our hopes on it. For hope is probably the most positive thing that human beings carry within them, just as Comenius himself proved in his lifetime, by the way

Manipulation of Time Continuity in Shared Narratives. On the Construction of Collective “Truths” and Its Ambivalent Function in the Social World and in Education

This article discusses the topic of politically motivated manipulation of time continuity in shared narratives. It examines the consequences of the irrational fusion of fragments of the stories of different protagonists who live in different historical periods, sometimes separated by centuries. The integration of bits and pieces of the myths borrowed from the past into the narratives of the present can take on psychotic proportions. It can seriously damage the living tissue of personal and collective memory. The story of the past, told in a certain way, can influence the self-perception of people, making them feel partly like heroes with a special mission, as well as victims, threatened by a hostile world, isolated, acting in response to the past, and therefore out of touch with reality. The result is the impossibility of distinguishing current events as a set of specific political and psychological forces that require a specific response to an urgent situation (Kalinowska, 2012). Current threats are thus perceived not only in their specificity, but in constant vigilance in the light of past traumas and illogical linking of the past, present, and future. The goal of this article is the understanding of this process with the help of Vamik Volkan’s psychoanalytic concept of “time collapse” (Volkan & Javakhishvili, 2022), and Michael Rothberg’s theory of the “implicated subject” (2019). When we talk about the transition to democracy and solidarity in education, we must understand the way of thinking that deviates from them

Looking for the Personal and Professional-pedagogical Identification of Middle School Teachers during the Communist Period (1949–1989) in Hungary

The aim of this thesis is to show how identity and professional-pedagogical identification in pedagogy were transformed in the second half of the 20th century under the totalitarian communist dictatorship in Hungary. He gives examples and wants to demonstrate that memory (remembering) not only makes the present but also reveals the experience of the past and transfers it in its personal character into the present. Memory (the practical past) makes possible what is lost through the repeated experience of life. Furthermore, she uses the personal life histories of secondary school teachers to demonstrate that remembering has a significant impact on the production of (new) historical knowledge at both individual and group levels (Gyáni, 2020, p. 354)