The militarization of Hungary
By the end of the school year of 2012/13 students will be able to choose “basic military science” as one of their subjects for the matriculation examination. Honestly, I had to read it twice in order to comprehend this latest “surprise” from the Orbán government.
Matriculating in basic military science in Hungarian gymnasiums is a historic first. Not even the Horthy regime came out with such an outlandish idea. They solved the problem of a forbidden standing army by establishing an extracurricular movement for boys where surreptitiously they were given basic military training. But the boys didn’t have to matriculate in the subject.
During the first years of the Rákosi period there was a brief experimentation with preparing us for some military attack by the imperialists, but the whole thing was scrapped in no time. I remember only a couple of lectures given on the subject by outsiders who were most likely members of the military.
After a little research I learned that basic military science is already taught in 27 schools in Hungary, but these are vocational schools (szakközépiskolák), not gymnasiums. If students can take basic military science as a matriculation subject, it means a change in the curriculum. All schools with students interested in studying military science will have to offer a course in the subject, and there must be a member of the matriculation committee who is capable of judging the student’s preparedness.
This piece of news came on the heels of another announcement by the Ministry of Defense. Soon a military high school will open its doors in Debrecen. Military schools were numerous before 1948, but after the communist takeover only one such school remained in Budapest. Even that was closed after the Hungarian revolution. While military schools in the United States are known as “schools for troubled kids,” the Hungarian military schools in the past catered to the children of the upper middle class with political views that reflected the government’s official ideology.
Read more: Hungarian Spectrum.
In Boedapest 
No trackbacks yet.