Laws of Education and the Minorities of Transylvania between 1867 and 1990: some considerations

Abstract

"Through the laws passed in the educationnal field, this study aims to apprehend the governments’ relation with the minorities living in Transylvania from the beginning of the Dualist era until the end of communism in Romania. If Transylvania represents a fairy land in both Romanian and Hungarian imaginaries, it was also the center of an intense national competition between Bucharest and Budapest during the last 150 years over the control of the region. Following the rise of national feeling, mother tongue education became one of the most sensitive aspects between the governments and the elite of the nationalities. Considering this fact, this paper attempts to analyze how has evolved the access to mother tongue education from the Dualist period to the regime change in 1989-1990, with the help of the laws enacted as well as the literature data written by the specialists of Hungarian and Romanian educations. Despite the profound differences between the regimes, many parallels exist in this matter. As the study tackles, the reinforcement of the “nation” came at the expense of school access in mother tongue for the minorities. Keywords: Education access, Nation-building, Nationalism, Transylvania, Hungarian-Romanian relations"