The Politics of Early Language Teaching: Hungarian in the Primary Schools of the Late Dual Monarchy

Disseminating knowledge of the state language to the non-Magyar half of the citizenry was a policy priority of the government of the Hungarian Kingdom between the 1870s and the First World War. Drawing on a wide array of sources, The Politics of Early Language Teaching provides an in-depth look at how Hungarian was taught to ethnic Romanian and German children in the south-eastern tracts of the Habsburg Empire. The monograph covers the ever-harshening legislation from the period, reconsidering the role of state supervision and exploring the contemporary methodological debates as well as taking a closer look at classroom practices. Not only does the book throw much light in comparative mode on one of Europe’s great early experiments in linguistic engineering; but it provides many new insights into Dualist Hungary’s competing national ideologies and the limits of their efficacy on the ground.