Ideology, Spatial Planning, and Rural Schools: From Interwar to Communist Hungary

Abstract

The author of this paper investigates the impact of political ideologies on spatial planning and the school network, especially small schools in small settlements, in twentieth century Hungary. After WWI and the resulting vast territorial losses, the interwar nationalist-conservative regime considered the country’s cultural advantage over its neighbors as a crucial prerequisite for territorial revision and launched large-scale school development projects. In the 1930s, these initiatives became increasingly exposed to political centralization and ethnopolitical attempts. The first years after WWII witnessed the restoration of war destruction and some institutional reforms, before the post-1948 Stalinist dictatorship targeted a radical demolition of small settlements and their schools now considered as “uneconomic.” Although succeeding non-Stalinist leaderships took a more tolerant stance, their attempts of limited decentralization led to regional administrative organs exploiting their own periphery, resulting in a mass closure of rural schools in the 1970s under the motto of “rationalization.”

The institutionalization of the geography of education: An international perspective

“…In continental Europe, renewed attention is being given to spatial inequalities in public school provision, with special attention attributed to school closure in rural areas. This is matched by concern, also shared in Anglophone research, with growing school segregation in urban areas (Jahnke, Kramer & Meusburger, 2019;Basu, 2007;Bajerski, 2015;Freytag & Jahnke, 2015b;Giband, 2019;Groos, 2015;Gyuris, 2019;Jahnke, 2019;Nast, 2015;Nieszery, 2015). In particular, attention has been given to the local and regional consequences of school marketization, including the formation of spatial and social differences under school competition and parental choice, in a landscape where educational quality is defined by the rating of school facilities and performance (Noreisch, 2007;Jahnke & Hoffmann, 2017).…”

“…Much of this research is centred on urban areas, but in Czechia there is also a tradition of research of rural schooling. Taken together, it is evident that the majority of current studies within geography of education in these countries are concerned with local administration and policy, and how it might shape human capital and regional development (Bajerski, 2015;Gyuris, 2019;Kučerová, Bláha & Pavlasová, 2015). Interestingly, although social inequalities that relate to spatial injustices in educational provision have been a key concern in the geo graphy of education elsewhere, in Eastern Europe these issues are mostly incorporated into sociology (Kovács, 2012;Nekorjak, Souralová & Vomastková, 2011).…”

Objectives of Spatial Planning in Selected Central and Eastern European Countries. Analysis of Selected Case Studies

“…Hungary has a hierarchical planning system with three or four levels of spatial plans (depending on the region) [14]. At the highest level is the National Spatial Plan [15], which contains a mixture of general guidelines, strategic plans, and small-scale spatial plans.…”

Az iskola táguló tere

“…Ezek a kisiskolák nemcsak megközelíthetők voltak a gyerekek számára, hanem légkörük, tanári-tanítói szerepvállalásuk miatt vonzók tudtak lenni a tanulóknak és a családoknak is. (Gyuris 2014(Gyuris , 2019 alaposan tekinti át az iskolatelepítés, majd a megszüntetésük társadalmi-gazdasági összefüggéseit. )…”