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A PIONEER OF MODERN PEDAGOGY IN HUNGARY: SÁNDOR KARÁCSONY (1891—1952)
everyone elses opinion, he looked at things with a fresh eye. He had a firm con¬
viction that the transcendental has a role in educational theory and practice.
After the turn of the century new child-centred trends were gaining ground
in Europe. Ihere was dissatisfaction with previous theories and practice. Based
on his experience in school teaching and the youth movements, as well as on
contemporary pedagogical literature, Karácsony developed his own radically
new approach to education. In this paper we shall try to provide a summary
of that approach.
His Works
Karácsony laid the foundations for his pedagogical system in ten large vol¬
umes, published between 1938 and 1947 with the following series titles: The
Interpersonal Logical Foundations of Educational Science and The Interpersonal
Psychological Foundations of Educational Science. A list of the book titles is
given in the Appendix.
Here a note on terminology is in place. Karacsony had a novel approach to
the problems of pedagogy, linguistics and philosophy, and to express his novel
ideas he used a terminology different from the conventional terminologies of
these sciences. For this reason his works are not “easily accessible” for those
who want to make a cursory acquaintance with them — some more effort is
needed.
Those unacquainted with his work might find his frequent use of the word
Hungarian peculiar. Indeed, most of his titles contain such a reference (The
Hungarian Way of Thinking, A Hungarian Grammar Based on Interpersonal Psy¬
chology, etc.), which might (and in the past did) give rise to misinterpretation.
Yet Karacsony was far from being a nationalist. He maintained that the starting
point in his investigations was always something that he knew well, and it was
the Hungarian language and the Hungarian people that he knew best. This is
the reason why he included the adjective “Hungarian” so often in his titles.
Subsequently he came to the conclusion that his findings have significance,
beyond the Hungarian educational scene, to education in general, that is, they
are of universal application."
® KarAcsony, Sandor, A magyar demokracia, Budapest, Széphalom, 2011, 13-14.
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