‘Kínjában röhög az ember’ – on human rights educators’ accounts of censorship, commitment, and community in contemporary Hungary

Abstract

The social acceptance of human rights education may vary a lot depending on factors like the exact topic, the methods, the educator, and the audience. In today’s Hungary, the limitations to what can be taught, where, by whom, and to whom, are being imposed on the schools and the public sphere in various ways: through legislation, political statements, and media, for instance. Such developments have been observed with growing concern in the European Union and Council of Europe, both of which Hungary is a member to. This research sheds light on the Hungarian human rights’ educators’ experiences, emotions, and perceptions about how such limitations affect their work and other actions by themselves and the people around them. Using Dialogical Narrative Analysis to explore the stories told by human rights educators, and completing that with a content analysis of survey answers, this paper has a particular interest in discovering how censorship and self-censorship operate in the field of education when it comes to human rights topics. Furthermore, the stories reveal means of combatting and circumventing the censorship and building a supporting human rights educators’ community.