New history books feature Hun approach instead of Finno-Ugric one
The new National Core Curriculum was accepted in January, and the materials were rewritten and changed accordingly within months. Now fifth and ninth graders are learning from new history books, or at least the demo version of them.
There has been an intense debate about the new history textbooks and their content, and that might be one of the reasons why the new books are only available in a demo version to teachers exclusively, reported Index.
Nóra Berend, who is a professor at the University of Cambridge, has reviewed one of the textbooks in an article on the Society of History Teachers’ website, in which she says, that the book is “not to teach, but to ideologically form in a direction that is opposite of both democracy and healthy intellectual development.”
Berend points out that the textbook, which was written by Péter Gróf and György Szabados,
- attaches greater importance to the Hungarians and their fictional ancestors than in reality,
- praises them for imaginary achievements, although period Western yearbooks make it clear that the “ancestors” of Hungarians were robber mercenaries, who would make a contract with anyone for the right amount of money,
- portrays monopoly as a better political system than democracy,
- emphasises the truth and realness of Christianity.
According to Telex, those are not the only reasons why the new textbooks are criticising. They are also under fire for presenting the Finno-Ugric language kinship as only one of the theories, and for accepting the idea of Hun-Hungarian continuity and the theory of double conquest.
The Association of History Teachers held a conference because of the tensions regarding the new textbooks. Still, only György Szabados accepted his invite, and as one of the authors of the book, he kept defending his work. “The Hungarian prehistory of the past decades has been dominated by Finno-Ugric theory, from which the field must be liberated,” said the employee of the Hungarian Research Institute.
The Hungarian Research Institute was established in the spirit of Minister Miklós Kásler, who is personally obsessed with Hungary’s prehistory and Hun origins, and the textbooks clearly reflect these views. Telex has reported in detail about the conference, where the atmosphere was very tense, and the topic at hand was said to be highly politicised.
Source: index.hu