Éva Thun: Gender Representations in Educational Materials in the Period of Transition in Hungary. In Beyond Civic Society: Education and Civic Culture in Post-Communist Countries. (eds.) Stephen Webber and Ilkka Liikanen, Houndsmills, UK: Pelgrave, 2001. pp. 124-141.
GENDER IN HUNGARIAN SOCIETY
When discussing the socio-cultural situation in Hungary, as is the case in the Central Eastern European region today, we find an extremely complex network of formative forces. Individuals are overwhelmed with various ideological and economic trends that consist of elements borrowed from historic Hungarian traditions, from the routines of the socialistcommunist past and from interaction with the Western part of the world. In the turmoil of economic and political changes an ethical, normative and cultural transformation is also taking place in Hungary, leaving many Hungarian citizens insecure, hesitant and doubting. They are searching for a new identity and they are desperately trying to rid themselves of the inherited social structure.
Unregulated ‘wild capitalism’ produces a series of unforeseen social problems. Those areas of the government budget which do not produce economic growth, e.g. healthcare and education, are not prioritised (Lévai & Tóth 1997: 68-83). The political-governmental treatment of women’s issues has become a ‘victim’ of opportunistic attitudes that seek short term solutions for long-term problems.
The position of Hungarian women is rapidly deteriorating. Many women are losing their jobs, the once elaborate social welfare system (including day care, maternity leave and other benefits) is falling apart. The significant cutbacks in education will have an impact on women’s advancement in the workplace by denying them access to the necessary job skills and training needed to maintain competence in the working environment. The absence of programmes on personal and social education and civic education leaves women with no opportunity to learn to identify their needs, to make informed choices, and to make their voice heard in the political arena - a place where it needs to be heard most.
The discussion of women’s issues in a systematic and responsible way has not yet begun. Government policies tend to treat women’s issues as something unpleasant but necessary in order to be able to meet the requirements of the EU law-harmonisation processes (Bollobás 1993: 201-6; Neményi 1996: 83-9).
The lack of a feminist construct in current Hungarian society is often justified with the ‘there is no need’ argument: feminism is not needed, because of the negative experience of the communist ‘solution to the woman question’ (the political-ideological term used to refer to women’s issues). The socialist-communist system discredited emancipation and the ‘woman question’ when, through the implementation of bureaucratic measures, they forced women into ‘equality’ against their own will thereby creating women-monsters, who want to dominate, who do not want to go back to where they belong, the home. This new mutant woman sabotages the so-called valid, historic social order. This approach successfully manipulates women’s awareness of their social status (which is defined in the confines of the male viewpoint of the world) (Gal 1996: 75-81).
It is also vitally important that we recognise that the communist system distorted and violated men’s lives as well. Men suffer just as much from the struggle for gaining back their identity and their self-importance. The problem is that in doing so, they often seem to accuse women for many of the wrong doings of a past system, thus blurring several issues in one big surrealistic picture, instead of analysing the different issues separately. We might categorise these issues as follows:
1. issues concerning the definition of an individual’s identity
2. issues concerning the definition of national identity
3. issues concerning the analysis of the impact of the communist system on men’s and women’s lives
4. issues concerning the position of women in present day society.
It is the belief of an emerging women’s movement, in Hungary, that women’s issues such as discrimination against women - especially in the crucial areas of employment and education, and women’s health issues - violence against women; and social welfare issues need to be identified and discussed as part of public socio-political discourse. Through raising the public awareness of these problems, through education, through the fostering of self-help groups and the networking among women, and through the initiation of an academic university programme for women, we might well be able to stem the tide of this unfavourable process and contribute to the emergence of a significantly healthier Hungarian society (Adamik 1993: 207-12; Einhorn 1993: 181-215).
THE EDUCATIONAL SCENE
Unchallenged Issues in the Educational Arena
Several aspects of the school structure and educational practices have remained intact and unchallenged, one of them being the representation and discussion of the two genders. Schools still reflect the patriarchal-traditional heritage of views and attitudes towards gender. Among the many illustrative examples are:
• Men are much more likely to be found in leading positions within the schools. The feminisation of the teaching profession, coupled with the low social status of teaching as a profession, and of knowledge/education as a whole is more apparent than ever.
• Most schools’ curricula are still result-oriented and tend to disregard the importance of the process of learning. Additionally, teachers are not aware of the different instructional and learning style needs of the different sexes.
• Apart from the work of a small number of experimental institutions, the majority of Hungarian schools do not question the validity of their teaching methods, or their relevance to the development of the individual students, the content of the schoolbooks. Although nearly all textbooks have been rewritten after 1989, they have been recast in such a way as to still concentrate on memorisation of data, rather than on the development of creative thinking and daily life skills, as well as issues of ethics, morality, and social sensitivity.
• Although teachers are encouraged to familiarise themselves with democratic, learnercentred teaching styles, they find it hard to abandon the less demanding and therefore more convenient authoritarian teaching style. Most of them are still convinced that the old style of teaching is more effective and more appreciated by parents and students alike. These teachers feel uncomfortable about those trends in education that foster the creativity and independence of the students. They deem it a waste of time and an ideological approach that gives way to individuality, diversity, and variety, and to chaos and disruptive behaviour. The newest trends in teacher education, teaching for learner autonomy, are still alien to Hungarian educational theory and practice.
• Current Hungarian educational theory literature does not discuss the gender aspects of education. Hungarian feminism is still in its infant stage of defining its personality and its role in both the Hungarian social climate and the global feminist climate. It is also trying to survive the myriad philosophical, ideological, and gender-based (read here, male) assaults of traditional thinkers in a generally old-fashioned and patriarchal society. As a consequence, it hasn’t got to the point of a finer delineation of the subtleties of its character, namely, what fields should be analysed from a feminist point of view.
ANALYSIS OF EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS
Three Readers
Very little is known about those processes through which the network of social institutions, and in particular, the educational institutions prescribe and shape male and female social roles and rules of behaviour and the ways in which gender identities and roles are acquired (Houston 1996: 51-63; Thun 1996: 404-16). Gender identity acquisition and gender role acquisition in the educational context appear to be extremely complex processes nestled in the social, psychological and cognitive development of children. The analysis of these processes is made even more difficult by the fact that many of the formative elements are not explicitly present in the educational curricula, rather they have the tendency to lurk in the ‘hidden curriculum’ of education.
We intend to examine one significant and influential element of this process of gender identity formation, namely how the network of society is described and social behaviour is prescribed in school readers for six year olds. We will analyse three textbooks that are the most widely used in the Hungarian elementary schools:
1. Romankovics, A., Romankovics, T. K. & Meixner, I. (1996). Olvasni tanulok. ÁBÉCÉSKÖNYV a szóképes elõprogramra épülõ elemzõ-összevetõ eljáráshoz. 20. Kiadás. Mogyoród.
2. Ivánné Sélley, E. (1995). Szótagoló ábécéskönyv. Budapest.
3. Esztergályosné Földesi, K. (1995). Az én ABC-m. Celldömölk.
The social institution of schools seems to be one of the most decisive formative influences aimed at the young in a society, second to the family environment. The intensity of this influence is often explained by the fact that schools represent a form of power over students in terms of power of knowledge, power of discipline, and the ethical power of deciding what is right or wrong (Ferge 1976: 54-65; Martin 1994: 133-53). The behavioural and life-style models conveyed by the educational materials and by the teachers’ attitudes and expectations are an imperative, they are extremely pervasive, and they are most often presented as unquestionable.
Textbooks as Autonomous Symbolic Systems
Textbooks could be interpreted similarly to a piece of art from the point of view of representation and expression. The moment the textbooks come out of the printing house they start to live their own lives as an organised set of representations, presentations and reflections of the culture and society they were created in. They do not necessarily convey the intended messages of the authors only, but by obeying the rules of their inner auto-organisational forces the textbooks create a symbolic system, which will become the vehicles of the ‘hidden curriculum’ (Szabó 1985: 25-34).
CONCLUSION
Gender stereotypes are forcefully represented in these textbooks. All the details in the readers attest to the fact that social values regarding gender and expectations towards the characters belonging to the two genders are duly reflected in the illustrations and images of the schoolbooks. The fact that the authors of the readers examined - with only one exception, A. Romankovics - are women does not seem to affect this gendered view. It has become apparent, that although the number of women in the population of the nation is more than 50 per cent, their representation in the schoolbooks is less than this ratio. Women are depicted in a very restricted range of professions, slightly more often in household activities. In real life the ratio of working women is radically different from the schoolbooks’ data. We may conclude that the schoolbooks create a world of their own, which differs significantly from the actual social world. This schoolbook world and their characters and activities follow the values and expectations of a traditional patriarchal society, in which women’s positions are not regarded to be as significant as men’s positions. Women’s world is severely restricted in space and scope of activities. From an early age children are required to engage in gender specific activities, their choice of these gendered activities reinforced by the images of schoolbooks. Boys learn early on that their personalities are more important, they are carefully attended to, while girls get less attention from adults. Perhaps the most striking phenomenon in these schoolbook worlds is that fathers do not take part in any way in the household activities and they do not interact with their daughters at all. All the imagery of these schoolbooks maintain and further reinforce the gender division. There is a likelihood that women’s lower social value and position will be taken for granted both by girls and boys who study from these educational materials.
The fact that the readers do not follow real life patterns and the real life environment - e.g. computers and mobile phones are not present in the imagery of the schoolbooks – also supports our belief that these materials are designed to convey ideals and expectations rather than present and reflect reality. Another explanation for the choices of the authors may be that the values and events of the real life are so diverse, varied and fast-changing that it is impossible to picture it. The general social attitude of reviving traditional Hungarian values is in support of the first interpretation. The reality of the Hungarian elementary schools, however, seems to serve as proof for the second explanation. Hungarian society is in flux; Hungarians are in search of their individual, social and national identities.
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