The reality of growing up in Hungary

The first Hungarian child report about children’s rights has recently been published – more than 5,000 children were asked about their future concerns, how safe they feel, and what kind of education they would like to have.

The report itself has been initiated by the Hintalovon Gyermekjogi Alapítvány (a foundation for children’s rights) and student volunteers, writes 24.hu. 5,300 children participated in the survey of the research, and 70% of them were aged between 15-17 years. 29% of them were 10-14-year-old teenagers, and 1% was at the age of 9 or younger. 

Out of three children, two say that what they learn in school is useless.

Every fifth child cannot do sports or play music because they do not have enough time for that besides their studies. From the report, we can see clearly what they find to be the most important thing: education. They think that the state could help them the most by providing quality education for good job opportunities in the future – this is what they are concerned about the most.

The survey reveals that in those schools where children feel safe and teachers treat them with respect, they find the learning material more useful than elsewhere. The quality of the school is determined by the utility of the learning material. 63% of participants think that the majority of the learning material is not useful at all. 

70% of high school students think that they have to learn a lot of unnecessary things. 

“The number of lessons is brutally high, so any extracurricular activity results in complete exhaustion. The expectations remain the same, but our performance is getting worse. Not by accident. We do not have enough time to pay attention to our mental and physical health, and this reduces our brainpower. I am sure that there is a solution for not seeing dog-tired children all day,” 

said one of the high school students. 

The atmosphere in which they learn is also a problem. There is a lot of exclusion, harassment, and bullying. Every third child does not have the opportunity to do any regular activities outside of school – mainly because they do not have enough time. 8% do not do any sports or play music because their parents cannot afford it, or there is no opportunity for that in their residential areas. These problems mainly affect students of vocational schools and those who live in villages in the countryside. You can read about the tendency of school choices here.

The other serious problem is that children do not feel that their opinions about the future of the country matter – only a fourth of them do. There have been student demonstrations before, but only 17% of them think that they were useful in any way – many of them are also afraid of the consequences. You can read about the latest student demonstration here.