Hungarians protest tight government control of education

[inanna]

Source: Reuters

Wed Feb 3, 2016 1:44pm EST

Thousands of Hungarians protested on Wednesday against reforms of the education system by Prime Minister Viktor Orban's center-right government that they consider oppressive and heavy-handed.

The protesters say the reforms are yet another example of what they see as Orban's authoritarian style of leadership that has drawn criticism from the European Union and the United States as well as human rights groups within Hungary.

<snip>

It has significantly increased teachers' workload and set a new curriculum using textbooks the critics say contain factual errors and promote very conservative views on issues such as homosexuality.

"The government does not want educated, creative people but dumb automatons who are easy to control," said one protester, Marta Baliko, a retired teacher in the eastern town of Miskolc, epicenter of opposition to the reforms.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-hungary-protests-idUSKCN0VC2BO?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews

[turbinetree]

1. Wow..............................more ego of right wing conservatism bent......................

I thought I was reading a synopsis of what Texas and other right wing republican controlled states are doing----------------like lets say feed the tykes conservative propaganda to hell with facts and then to top it all off most of the educational material books are being shipped to other states----------------------really :

http://billmoyers.com/content/messing-with-texas-textbooks/



Honk--------------for a political revolution Bernie 2016


It is about getting a Progressive President, U.S. Supreme Court, Congress and State and Local legislatures

[pampango]

2. RW regimes don't seem to like teachers, student or parents who think for themselves

Hungarian teachers’ revolt gathers steam

Realizing that the catastrophic state of Hungarian education is starting to galvanize parents and teachers throughout the country, the Fidesz regime’s Minister of Human Resources, Zoltán Balog, called for a special round table with teachers and others involved in education. But it soon transpired that the only people invited to this round table were those who were most servile and indebted to the regime, and who were largely docile.

As such, a group of teachers calling themselves “The Uninvited” have called on all parties to boycott these talks. The leader of the Teachers’ Union (Pedagógusok Szakszervezete – PSZ), Mrs. István Galló, has labelled the proposed round table as a “delaying tactic.” Mrs. Galló added that there is little reason to meet, as the acute problems in the Hungarian educational system are well-known to the regime.

Teachers in Miskolc (population: 161,300) will take to the streets on February 3rd, marching with torches through the industrial town’s city centre. But the revolt is now spreading and teachers in at least eight other cities in Hungary announced Monday that they would be holding their own marches and demonstrations, in solidarity with those who initiated this protest at the Herman Ottó High School. The cities where protests are being planned for Wednesday include Budapest, the Budapest suburb of Budaörs, Békéscsaba, Pécs, Sopron, Szeged, Szombathely and Veszprém. All of these protests are being skillfully organized at the grassroots level, through social media–primarily Facebook.

The demonstration in Budapest will be held in iconic Szabadság tér, or Freedom Square, which has also been the location of almost nightly open air lectures and talks by the Living Memorial group–those who for the past two years have been protesting the regime’s revisionist monument to the German occupation of Hungary in World War II, and who have erected their own grassroots memorial.

http://hungarianfreepress.com/2016/02/01/hungarian-teachers-revolt-gathers-steam/

[happyslug]

5. More on the man whose Statute was being protested

He is tied in with the Holocaust, for he backed the German supported Coup of 1944:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A1lint_H%C3%B3man

Now, there is a statute of another WWII politician who committed suicide to protest Hungary's decision in 1941 to support the German invasion of Yugoslavia. He also helped a lot of Poles escape the German Occupation of Poland between 1939 and 1941. On the down side he wrote the first Anti-Semitic laws in Hungary in 1920 and again in 1939, but enforcement appears to have been weak till after his death (But he left 10-15,000 Jews who lived in parts of Czechoslovakia that became Hungary in 1939 to be exiled to Germany and be executed), Like most politicians a mixed bag, but to the Poles he helped a hero (and to the Jews he discriminated against a pest).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pál_Teleki

[uhnope]

3. a real danger of fascism spreading thru Europe. Orban is Putin's tool

& Russia is trying to create more and more of this throughout the region

[nyabingi]

4. The same thing is happening in some states

here in the US, with conservatives trying to make sure our children are properly indoctrinated into the "America is great" mindset while omitting all of the negativity of our history (as in the attack on AP History courses). It's foul and dishonest stuff, but not nearly bad enough for large-scale protests to take place.

It would be interesting to see which American/European NGO's have been operating in Hungary, whom they're funding, etc. This whole scenario is starting to look like a classic "color revolution". Very soon Reuters will put forth articles stating that Hungarian authorities killed a certain number of protesters, we'll condemn their heavy-handedness, Orban will become the newest "Hitler" in our media, the protests will turn into open civil war, and we'll be picking a leader for Hungary more accepting of our geopolitical goals in Europe.

Orban, in not properly distancing himself from Russia, has been asking for regime change to be visited upon him, and it looks like it's starting up (especially when Reuters starts reporting it).

You could see this coming miles away...