Learning Nation in Early Childhood Education: Multi-Sited Comparison between Pedagogies of Nation in Australia and Hungary

Abstract

This study investigates how nation is taught, learned, practiced, and performed in early childhood educational settings in Australia and Hungary. Analysis, based on comparative multi-sited ethnography, reveals nationhood as a taken for granted, unreflexively promoted framework for organizing social life. The “pedagogy of nation” operates in different ways in these two settings. In Australia, it draws on contemporary patterns of lifestyle, whereas in Hungary it rekindles past traditions within contemporary global flows of culture. The paper concludes by calling for the relevance of revealing everyday nationalism in institutions for young children and for reflexivity to trouble its exclusionary forms.

Author Biography

Zsuzsa Millei is interested in child politics in its broadest sense and post-socialist knowledge production. Employing comparisons of different timespaces, she highlights from child perspective how the taken for granted ways everyday nationhood, Cold War divides, and ideologies operate. Her current projects are: ‘Nationalism and Childhood’; and ‘(Post)Socialist Childhoods and Schooling’ through collective biography and from a de-colonial perspective.

Sirpa Lappalainen is a sociologist, whose research interests are in cultural processes of inclusions and exclusions in education as well as in ethnographic methodology. She has conducted research on intersections of gender, ethnicity and nationality in preschool; the constructions of citizenship in the context of vocational upper secondary education, and education policies and practices concerning marginalized ethnic minorities and students with disabilities.

Notes

1 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/07/viktor-orban-hungary-preserve-christian-culture

http://abouthungary.hu/news-in-brief/pm-orban-we-must-protect-our-religious-traditions-in-order-to-keep-hungary-hungarian/

2 A thing or phenomenon that is unique to Hungary and therefore representing great value for the Hungarians. From combination of the words Hungary or Hungaria and "unikum" meaning "unique" in Hungarian. (https://www.definition-of.com/Hungaricum )

3 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/30/australias-leaders-are-sitting-on-the-sidelines-its-up-to-the-people-to-take-a-stand

4 https://hungarytoday.hu/the-hungarian-population-decline-shows-no-sign-of-slowing-down/

5 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-crisis-hungary-border-police-guards-fence-beating-asylum-seekers-migrants-serbia-push-back-a7610411.html