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MIKLÓS HELTAI — PÁL HELTAI (about 20 to 30 years later), that educationalists in Britain came round to the view that grammar parsing is a sterile practice, and discovered that a different kind of grammar teaching is needed. It is much more useful to make pupils aware of the fact that language is used for communication, and that acquiring knowledge at school is inextricably linked with acquiring language. In foreign language learning Karacsony advocated a learning style based on extensive reading and the learning of collocations, just like some of the most recent methodologies.” IMPACT As we noted at the beginning, Karäcsony had tremendous impact in his own time. He was very popular and was regarded as one ofthe foremost pedagogical authorities in the country. Through his disciples he influenced the pedagogical practice of many schools, and this influence still exists, at least in the schools of the Reformed Church.”® He also had some influence on pedagogical reforms in Hungary, again mostly through his disciples. However, he had less influence on educational theory and linguistics. The reasons lie in historical circumstance. The Communist dictatorship of the post-war years had little sympathy with Karácsony, because the transcendental bases of his thinking were irreconcilable with prevailing vulgar materialistic doctrines. Under such conditions there was no opportunity to make his work available to international audiences. As a linguist aptly put it, this was “change of paradigm in a vacuum”: he brought (or could have brought) about a change of paradigm in several sciences, but his findings remained within a narrow circle, and were subsequently suppressed for political reasons.? Some of his principles were (sometimes intentionally) misinterpreted. In reading his works one realizes with surprise that he was in many respects well in advance of his age. Many of the pedagogic and linguistic principles he advocated are now among the basic tenets of these sciences. York, Cambridge University Press, 1984. 25 KARÁCSONY, Sándor, Leckék a leckéről, Budapest, Az Erő, 1931.; see also HELTAI, Pál, Iskolai tantárgy-e az idegen nyelv?, Nyelvi Mérce, 1 (2001), 13-19. 26 BOGNARNE Kocsis, Judit, Karácsony Sándor pedagógiai modellje és recepciója a református felsőoktatásban, PhD thesis, Veszprém, 2010. 27 SIMONCsics, Paradigmaváltás, passim. + 248 +
