Pedagogical revolution as a minimum of democracy

Abstract

Today, in the developed world, it is compulsory to attend public education until at least the age of 16, which imparts traditional literacy and general knowledge of the world conveyed by the sciences and arts (and in many places, religion). However, the democratization of education has never actually taken place. The knowledge of the world provided by schools has simply become uninteresting and therefore unreliable. Schools have thus grown into the most robust institutions for the oppression of the working classes. We can hardly trust in the effectiveness of top-down reform of education. However, “good pedagogy” can be partially achieved even when the structural conditions for it are not yet in place. Here you can read the revised version of the presentation given at the Hungarian Pedagogical Society’s conference “The Future of School – Utopias and Dystopias” (May 16–17, 2025).