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MIKLÓS HELTAI — PÁL HELTAI
higher form of the teacher/pupil relationship (which, curiously, is condemned
as "anti-democratic" in some guarters of the pedagogical profession).
Karácsony often called attention to the strange situation that was, and
perhaps is, typical of school work, namely that the fundamental pedagogical
relationship in schools is distorted: teachers well-trained in their subjects put
guestions to students who know much less. It should be the other way round.
Naturally, it is the teacher who has more knowledge (in present-day parlance,
who is more competent) and has a desire to impart this knowledge, while it is
the pupil who is, or should be curious to know. Yet, in spite of this imbalance
of knowledge, in a natural pedagogical relationship there should be a two-way
flow. If we accept his interpretation of interpersonal psychological relations,
this pedagogical antinomy will also be resolved.
FURTHER CONDITIONS OF EDUCATION
Getting down to the thorny problem of how all this should be implemented
in pedagogical practice, Karácsony offers the following principles. First, as we
have seen, he proposes that education must not be direct, must not aim at
educating individual psychological functions, but must happen, as a spin-off
of the process of teacher and pupil interacting across the whole range of inter¬
personal-psychological relations. But even that is not enough.
If the teacher regards education as a social relationship, and — based on
principles laid down together with the pupils — s/he aims to achieve a legal,
aesthetic, linguistic, social and confessional relationship in every lesson and
on each opportunity (taking into consideration the psychological stage of de¬
velopment of the pupils), he might facilitate the intervention, but still has not
made it acceptable. To be acceptable, education must meet a further criterion
(however reluctant mainstream pedagogical theory seems to accept this), and
this is the presence of love in the process of education.
It is a widely recognized fact that the education of children and young people,
their socialization, is best achieved in the family, while it is very difficult to
make up for lack of family education. Karacsony states explicitly that those who
have not been educated in the family will hardly get educated at the school, and
he was of the opinion that formal education can only be successful if it is based
on the principle of family relations.“ Naturally, Karacsony was not referring to
a kind of family feeling or love that allows children to do whatever they want
4 KARÁCSONY, A magyar demokrácia, 31.
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