Multiculturalism in Central and Eastern Europe: The Hungarian story

Abstract

The European discourse of multicultural education almost exclusively addresses the experiences of Western Europe. Countries in Eastern and Central Europe have experienced not only different ways of economic and political development in the 20th century, but also different constructs of social, especially ethnic diversity. In the CEE region the interpretations and discourses of cultural and social diversity in the social and educational science have been predominantly economic status related from the 1960s. My paper argues that this discourse has strongly influenced teachers’ perception and attitudes towards diversity in public educational institutions. For my research a three-dimensional model of multicultural attitudes (3DMA) was constructed and a related questionnaire administered with 350 Hungarian teachers. The paper describes the structure of the questionnaire and the most relevant results of the research. The results of my research prove the presence of a complex, multi-layered structure of teachers’ multicultural attitudes. These results corresponded with the findings of my analysis of the Hungarian discourse on social diversity in education. The long history of social class focused approach to the Roma community and their presence in educational institutions is reflected in the high sensitivity for discrimination based on socio-economic status.