Dear Editor: One crucial difficulty in creating an efficient, effective education system lies in the fact that most of the voting public do not have international experience, but only narrow, and probably biased, information about alternative educational systems, and therefore, they can relatively easily be manipulated by propaganda. This is why it may be important to see how competent foreign experts view the Canadian educational system and educational philosophy. This article summarizes and comments on the analysis of an intelligent and critical Hungarian journal article that I consider worthy of serious consideration ("School and Church" by Miklós Hegedüs, in Demokrata, 1997, p. 34ff).

The last 7 or 8 years have brought tumultuous changes in the economies and the cultural lives of Eastern European countries. The Hungarian educational philosophy has also been attacked, despite its having been one of the most successful systems in the world. It has not only been excellent at science education, but has exposed students to the values of Western civilization embodied in the literature and poetry of past centuries. Miklós Hegedüs comments: "Hungarian public education now stands at a historical turning point. Those in charge need to decide whether to keep and strengthen the national and continental character of the Hungarian educational system, or gradually to give up their several centuries old traditions and try to adjust to the American version of a deteriorated `Anglo-Saxon' school system. Until now, the Hungarian system of education has been centred on achievement and learning; disciplined, orderly, seated students follow an exact curriculum, where teaching and learning is sensitive to detail. Its principle is that knowledgeable teachers should be recognized and appreciated by society and the student body. It involves the dominance of the non-interactive form of teaching; placing individual behaviour under community control; and the supremacy of community interests over that of the individual. It teaches students to be modest, honourable, unbribable, and polite." This philosophy subjects learning to social obligation. It prescribes initial equal opportunity, but expects higher achievement to be merited.

In its pure form, the Anglo-Saxon system can be attractive. It appreciates strength coming from individual freedom and self-discipline more than results that originate from strict organization. Many believe that its strength is guaranteed by the historical continuation of the competitive spirit which supports the Anglo-Saxon spirit of fair play. This philosophy includes the appreciation of free choice and justice. In their clear forms, both philosophical concepts have deep roots in European civilization and reflect real human values. Normally, the choice is not subject to momentary individual decisions, but it is the result of centuries old historical processes, where the given country's social and cultural traditions are the determining factors.

The situation in Hungary is different. In historically more fortunate times when social relations were more consolidated, education was more a professional than political issue. Unfortunately, that is not the case today. The major educational choices are not about what pedagogical concepts are more efficient, but rather on what philosophy is best, keeping in mind the socio-political processes it may create.

To go back to Hegedüs,

The liberalization of public education can be spread as a virus and can ruin the continental as well as the Anglo-Saxon philosophies of education. One of its main characteristics is that it propagates individual self-realization independently from national values and cultural communities. It is both overtly and covertly against national cultures and is anticlerical. While it hides its own ideology and value system, it hypocritically proclaims ideological- and value-neutrality. It emphasizes the importance of being different, and sets it against historical continuity. It tries to enlarge the natural constraints of national duties to global ethics, and as a result, patriotism and national identity are made to be felt as anachronistic. A process of de-heroization is executed without ethical constraints on the greatest historical and intellectual figures ... It gives a green light to speculative educational philosophies and reform pedagogies.... [I]t releases unprecedented ruinous forces: free choice of teachers; the marking of professors by their students and subjecting professorial existence to student evaluators; the handling of students and their parents as consumers and the lowering of teachers to the level of shop-salesmen; the primitive and refined versions of lightened obligations—open-book exams, and multiple-choice tests; the drastic reduction of contact hours in favour of free choice; the cancellation of oral examinations; the introduction of relative marking systems, etc.

Ontario universities offer one of the shortest academic years anywhere in the world. Again, Hegedüs offers guidance: "The basic characteristic of liberal education is that it gradually dispenses with the institutionalized obligation of learning.... The liberal concept leaves the student and his parents alone in this process, and the most substantial decisions concerning individual advancement are completely left to self-motivation. This school system is based on choice ... and, as a result, the range of general, real education becomes extremely wide.... The system produces a great mass of functional illiterates."

In Hungarian public education, publicly-funded religious schools as well as secular schools may be chosen. Any such school must follow a high minimum academic standard, and a strictly defined, detailed, and enforced curriculum. Many schools exceed the minimum requirement. The main reason that schools with alternative philosophies (such as strict rules; high academic standards where accountability and responsibility are enforced; where choice is the exception; and that engage in regular testing) are ruled out in Ontario public education, in my opinion, lies in fear: fear of more work (which is partly due to unsatisfactory teacher education), and fear of strong teachers' unions.

There is a general intolerance in this nation towards alternative educational philosophies. What many of the approximately 20 percent of the Canadians who were born abroad experience is heartwrenching: the deprivation of children of an acceptable alternative education.

Of course we need regular, objective testing, and a strong curriculum that is really enforced. I am convinced that a voucher-type system where at least some meaningful financial support is given to those who would like to have more challenge (academic content) in education is the way now to establish social and political peace. Such a system would partly give back the control of education to the "consumer," and thus would challenge the public education system, and so strengthen it. Such a system would also lead to higher standards, and to savings in the long run. It would mostly help the poor and the middle class who otherwise could not afford alternative (better academic) schooling.