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As a hungarian, I'm pretty surprised by this article, since the quality of hungarian education is getting worse and worse, thanks to the "reforms", which basica

As a hungarian, I'm pretty surprised by this article, since the quality of hungarian education is getting worse and worse, thanks to the "reforms", which basically means they are spending less and less on education on all level. And however in the past, math education was world class, now the "old school" teachers are retiring and other than a handful of elite schools (Fazekas, Eötvös, Radnóti etc) most of the schools are way below the european average. (source: https://www.compareyourcountry.org/pisa/country/hun https://www.compareyourcountry.org/pisa/country/hun ) Also usually only one or two hungarian university manage to get to any of the "best 500 universities in the world" list.

kvch_ 9y ago
I would not say that they are doing it on all levels on purpose. (They are just not involving people who actually know how education works.) But it is visible that they are preferring skilled workers to satisfy the requirements of EU by providing cheap workforce who can work in factories or doing other manual works. Don't misunderstand me, I deeply oppose the current education politics. I am just saying that I think I understand why they do it and why they might think that Hungary can profit from it.
baxtr 9y ago
> since the quality of hungarian education is getting worse and worse, thanks to the "reforms", which basically means they are spending less and less on education on all level I always wondered what good metrics are to measure the quality of education. Since you say “worse and worse” can you share any insight to that? I mean you could potentially refer to the OECD world rankings but somehow I don’t trust those lists, since they “feel” quite mechanistic.
- kbart 9y ago
  I'm not the OP, but I'm from another Eastern Europe country where education level falls fast and dramatically. Few key indicators of that: 0. I was attending an elite gymnasium and we deliberately used old "hard science" (math, physics, chemistry) textbooks from 70'-80', because they were much more advance level than modern ones. Most of math/physics taught during first/second year at university now, was taught in 11-12th grade back then. 1. Anecdotally, but all teachers complain that every year students are getting less motivated, performing poorer, having shorter attention spans. With local "no children left behind" equivalent it's enough just to attend some percentage of classes to get passable grades. 2. Every few years some kind of "reform" is performed to reduce the difficulty of final exams to maintain failure rates at bay and keep statistics nice. 3. Combined points 1 with 2 this leads to universities full of students that have neither motivation nor skills to perform there. Since such students make up majority in most less popular programs, the difficulty level is also reduced to adapt. 4. Degrading higher level education quality reflects on its prestige as potential employees no longer trust universities to produce prospective candidates. This closes the loop back to point 1 as current pupils deem education "worthless". 5. Fun fact: entrance exams to non-prestigious universities from 70'-80' were (maybe still are) widely used as assignments in national level competitions when I was at school (late nineties to early 00'). To paraphrase that -- a skill level that once was expected from anybody who wanted to be accepted in university now puts you at the very top.
  - fogetti 9y ago
    > Most of math/physics taught during first/second year at university now, was taught in 11-12th grade back then. (Foreword: Hungarian here) I didn't know that this happened in other Easter European countries as well. We used to have the same thing, that people in 11-12th grade learned (around 70'-80') the first-second year university curriculum. But by the time I got into secondary and university education the system had changed and we adopted our system to the crappy Western-European credit and whatnot system (Bologna process anybody?). This had the obvious drawback that the first semester of university still assumed the same knowledge in 11-12th grade from me, which I completely lacked by the time I arrived to starting my undergraduate years. In turn the first 1-2 years sucked big time in uni (for me at least). I guess this also answers the previous commenter's question how did it get worse and worse.
    - riffraff 9y ago
      I don't believe the Bologna process has any impact on degrading education, at best it's a chance for people who want to cut on education, but it doesn't imply it.
  - dalbasal 9y ago
    Curious. Instinctively, I tend to factor in a certains bias for "kids these days." Seems a lot of us have a tendency to think educational standards and/or kids' level of knowledge is poorer than before. That said, in the 80s/90s I had a lot of Russian school friends in my neighborhood. Even for primary school age, they had special "russian math" classes taught by a neighborhood parent in the afternoons. They basically followed the old 70s-80s curriculum that you guys are talking about. So basically, I'm convinced it's not just the codger instinct. They were 3-4 years ahead of the 3rd & 4th graders. These days, I have a few eastern european (polish, slovak & lithuanian) friends with schoolkids of their own. They had the same view of the modern/western curriculum as my childhood friends' parents had. It's substandard. Two years ago one couple moved back to lithuania. She reckons the modern standard for math is as bad as it is here, these days. To hazard a guess, I think that the old/soviet-ish system was very rigorous but not very enjoyable for the kids, especially below average kids. For example, it was very sequential and intolerant of a bad week. But, it probably produced a much better educated top half. Also, I think the old educational systems of the later soviet era got a lot of criticism for being too focused on math & science, with not enough creativity, humanities and such. Soviet era "liberal arts" were ideologically impacted, and I think people developed a tendency to just stay away. But much of Eastern Europe has a strong tradition of arts and humanities, and a cultural tendency to promote it. From a purely traditional-cultural perspective, many Lithuanians would like as much art and philosophy in their kids education as French parents, the European high watermark for teenage philosophy classes. I think there was pressure to get these subjects into the system, with due respect. Anyway, there's plenty of proofs-of-concept that math & science education could be a lot better. We're nowhere near the ideal pedagogical system.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- xab9 9y ago
  Most of the articles I would be able to dig up are in Hungarian. Like the thread op said, PISA scores are generally used around here and they are not nice. Like he or she said, education affairs are "not great" nowdays. The government increases centralisation, forcefully decreases teacher authority and freedom, the wages are still very low (even though multiple raises had been promised), the things you need to learn are way too much and not particularly useful et cetera.
  - roel_v 9y ago
    "The government increases centralisation" "forcefully decreases teacher authority and freedom" "the wages are still very low (even though multiple raises had been promised)" Just curious (I don't know anything about actually living in Communist times/system) - isn't that what it was like under Soviet [rule|influence]? What's different this time?
    - xab9 9y ago
      Many of my friends, especially the older ones say that it's pretty similar to the socialist era around here :D I don't know myself, been a kid around the shift of the regimes.
- ots 9y ago
  Another Eastern European here. Unfortunately, the same trend of degrading education is happening in my country of origin, Bulgaria. Another metric, particularly for math education is the representation of the country at International Mathematical Olympiad. Bulgaria used to score almost always in top 10, even being number 1 in 2003, beating China, USA and Russia, until the beginning of the new Millennium. Now can barely make it in the top 20. https://www.imo-official.org/results.aspx https://www.imo-official.org/results.aspx
- zoltaan 9y ago
  A further example is the case of the earlier mentioned KöMaL. It faced closure this year after the government reformed the funding of journals targeting exceptional students. In the new system it was destined to receive only 1/3 of its operational budget from the government: only 16K EUR instead the necessary 48K EUR / year. Possibly it was an oversight. After public outcry and some donation from common people to keep the journal running eventually the agency in charge promised to provide dedicated funds for the 124 year old journal. Probably this case is more indicative of the Hungarian Approach today than the one in the article. The KöMaL helped countless talents throughout the modern history of Hungary (excluding wartime but including the communist block years) to learn and master mathematics. It is the benchmark of the best high school students. Yet it almost got sacked just over ca. 32k EUR / year (while money flows almost freely in certain non-educational directions). This is more indicative of the Newest Hungarian Approach where continuous structural reforms, forced and urged changes in teaching methods (many times just months before exams), increased bureaucracy and cutting down of even elementary independency and financial self control - with retorsion in sight for "renegades" - of the teachers makes the moral very low in the education system and the outcome unreliable, unsustainable.

kvch_ 9y ago

I would not say that they are doing it on all levels on purpose. (They are just not involving people who actually know how education works.) But it is visible that they are preferring skilled workers to satisfy the requirements of EU by providing cheap workforce who can work in factories or doing other manual works. Don't misunderstand me, I deeply oppose the current education politics. I am just saying that I think I understand why they do it and why they might think that Hungary can profit from it.

baxtr 9y ago

> since the quality of hungarian education is getting worse and worse, thanks to the "reforms", which basically means they are spending less and less on education on all level I always wondered what good metrics are to measure the quality of education. Since you say “worse and worse” can you share any insight to that? I mean you could potentially refer to the OECD world rankings but somehow I don’t trust those lists, since they “feel” quite mechanistic.

kbart 9y ago
I'm not the OP, but I'm from another Eastern Europe country where education level falls fast and dramatically. Few key indicators of that: 0. I was attending an elite gymnasium and we deliberately used old "hard science" (math, physics, chemistry) textbooks from 70'-80', because they were much more advance level than modern ones. Most of math/physics taught during first/second year at university now, was taught in 11-12th grade back then. 1. Anecdotally, but all teachers complain that every year students are getting less motivated, performing poorer, having shorter attention spans. With local "no children left behind" equivalent it's enough just to attend some percentage of classes to get passable grades. 2. Every few years some kind of "reform" is performed to reduce the difficulty of final exams to maintain failure rates at bay and keep statistics nice. 3. Combined points 1 with 2 this leads to universities full of students that have neither motivation nor skills to perform there. Since such students make up majority in most less popular programs, the difficulty level is also reduced to adapt. 4. Degrading higher level education quality reflects on its prestige as potential employees no longer trust universities to produce prospective candidates. This closes the loop back to point 1 as current pupils deem education "worthless". 5. Fun fact: entrance exams to non-prestigious universities from 70'-80' were (maybe still are) widely used as assignments in national level competitions when I was at school (late nineties to early 00'). To paraphrase that -- a skill level that once was expected from anybody who wanted to be accepted in university now puts you at the very top.
- fogetti 9y ago
  > Most of math/physics taught during first/second year at university now, was taught in 11-12th grade back then. (Foreword: Hungarian here) I didn't know that this happened in other Easter European countries as well. We used to have the same thing, that people in 11-12th grade learned (around 70'-80') the first-second year university curriculum. But by the time I got into secondary and university education the system had changed and we adopted our system to the crappy Western-European credit and whatnot system (Bologna process anybody?). This had the obvious drawback that the first semester of university still assumed the same knowledge in 11-12th grade from me, which I completely lacked by the time I arrived to starting my undergraduate years. In turn the first 1-2 years sucked big time in uni (for me at least). I guess this also answers the previous commenter's question how did it get worse and worse.
  - riffraff 9y ago
    I don't believe the Bologna process has any impact on degrading education, at best it's a chance for people who want to cut on education, but it doesn't imply it.
- dalbasal 9y ago
  Curious. Instinctively, I tend to factor in a certains bias for "kids these days." Seems a lot of us have a tendency to think educational standards and/or kids' level of knowledge is poorer than before. That said, in the 80s/90s I had a lot of Russian school friends in my neighborhood. Even for primary school age, they had special "russian math" classes taught by a neighborhood parent in the afternoons. They basically followed the old 70s-80s curriculum that you guys are talking about. So basically, I'm convinced it's not just the codger instinct. They were 3-4 years ahead of the 3rd & 4th graders. These days, I have a few eastern european (polish, slovak & lithuanian) friends with schoolkids of their own. They had the same view of the modern/western curriculum as my childhood friends' parents had. It's substandard. Two years ago one couple moved back to lithuania. She reckons the modern standard for math is as bad as it is here, these days. To hazard a guess, I think that the old/soviet-ish system was very rigorous but not very enjoyable for the kids, especially below average kids. For example, it was very sequential and intolerant of a bad week. But, it probably produced a much better educated top half. Also, I think the old educational systems of the later soviet era got a lot of criticism for being too focused on math & science, with not enough creativity, humanities and such. Soviet era "liberal arts" were ideologically impacted, and I think people developed a tendency to just stay away. But much of Eastern Europe has a strong tradition of arts and humanities, and a cultural tendency to promote it. From a purely traditional-cultural perspective, many Lithuanians would like as much art and philosophy in their kids education as French parents, the European high watermark for teenage philosophy classes. I think there was pressure to get these subjects into the system, with due respect. Anyway, there's plenty of proofs-of-concept that math & science education could be a lot better. We're nowhere near the ideal pedagogical system.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
xab9 9y ago
Most of the articles I would be able to dig up are in Hungarian. Like the thread op said, PISA scores are generally used around here and they are not nice. Like he or she said, education affairs are "not great" nowdays. The government increases centralisation, forcefully decreases teacher authority and freedom, the wages are still very low (even though multiple raises had been promised), the things you need to learn are way too much and not particularly useful et cetera.
- roel_v 9y ago
  "The government increases centralisation" "forcefully decreases teacher authority and freedom" "the wages are still very low (even though multiple raises had been promised)" Just curious (I don't know anything about actually living in Communist times/system) - isn't that what it was like under Soviet [rule|influence]? What's different this time?
  - xab9 9y ago
    Many of my friends, especially the older ones say that it's pretty similar to the socialist era around here :D I don't know myself, been a kid around the shift of the regimes.
ots 9y ago
Another Eastern European here. Unfortunately, the same trend of degrading education is happening in my country of origin, Bulgaria. Another metric, particularly for math education is the representation of the country at International Mathematical Olympiad. Bulgaria used to score almost always in top 10, even being number 1 in 2003, beating China, USA and Russia, until the beginning of the new Millennium. Now can barely make it in the top 20. https://www.imo-official.org/results.aspx https://www.imo-official.org/results.aspx
zoltaan 9y ago
A further example is the case of the earlier mentioned KöMaL. It faced closure this year after the government reformed the funding of journals targeting exceptional students. In the new system it was destined to receive only 1/3 of its operational budget from the government: only 16K EUR instead the necessary 48K EUR / year. Possibly it was an oversight. After public outcry and some donation from common people to keep the journal running eventually the agency in charge promised to provide dedicated funds for the 124 year old journal. Probably this case is more indicative of the Hungarian Approach today than the one in the article. The KöMaL helped countless talents throughout the modern history of Hungary (excluding wartime but including the communist block years) to learn and master mathematics. It is the benchmark of the best high school students. Yet it almost got sacked just over ca. 32k EUR / year (while money flows almost freely in certain non-educational directions). This is more indicative of the Newest Hungarian Approach where continuous structural reforms, forced and urged changes in teaching methods (many times just months before exams), increased bureaucracy and cutting down of even elementary independency and financial self control - with retorsion in sight for "renegades" - of the teachers makes the moral very low in the education system and the outcome unreliable, unsustainable.