Conference Agenda

It has been not widely analyzed how intense emotions (both positive and negative ones) maintained the Cold War situation between 1945 and 1990: between the Blocks and inside a country (an example of this attitude: Biess, 2020). The topic of this presentation is a blind spot in the history of Eastern European education, namely the role and feelings of teachers and principals during the collectivization. In a one-party socialist system, every state employee (including teachers, managers, local officials, cultural workers, etc.) had to function as a propagandist (Slapentokh, 1989, 106–107); regardless of his/her commitment, and attitudes. Proving loyalty to the official ideology and the requirement to take part in socialist development (industrialization, collectivization, transformation of the culture) might cause conflicts of conscience for teachers, especially in rural areas, where these intellectuals were closely related to their communities.

The context of educators’ activities in mass mobilization campaigns in socialist societies (like collectivization) has already been elaborated (e.g. Fitzpatrick, 1994; Kligman & Verdery, 2011), but the personal views of these participants are mostly missing. I am going to present these through a special case study, showing the final phase of the collectivization in Hungary, in the early months of 1960. Originally, the process of radical change in agriculture was considered to be a field of historical investigation. Historians traditionally focused on the Party regulations, local implementation, and the reactions of the farmers (from collaboration to resistance), meanwhile, the other actors who were involved, remained in the shadow. On the other hand, scholars from the history of education were not interested in that topic, as it seemed to be too far from the issues of schooling, and belongs to the terrain of economic and political history. These all concluded in a forgotten and sometimes tabooed story of the dominant presence of schoolteachers in the collectivization: even the participants did not want to speak about it, because the persuasion of the individual farmers might connect with psychological and physical pressure.

My preliminary statements were the following before the analysis:

1. Education, as a content and activity was subordinated to different ideological and political intentions until the first half of the 1960s in Hungary. Teachers had to fulfil the Party-given goals at that time, with limited professional competencies.
2. Teachers’ (and other social actors’) involvement was enforced and manipulated by the Party, to take the responsibility down to lower levels (Ö. Kovács, 2012): the local staff had to agitate their own families, relatives, pupils’ parents, and so on. In an all-round movement, everyone was a link in the chain.
3. The communist project about social transfiguration was evaluated as a modernization program (even nowadays), and in this progress, the state educationalizes the whole society (Świrek & Pospech, 2021). Teachers had to educate not just the children, but their parents as well – and sometimes the educators needed an education too (Welton, 2014).
4. Propaganda and agitation made parallel universes in this world, where ideology immensely infiltrated everyday reality.

There are two broader dimensions surrounding this theme: the roles, possibilities, and limitations of intellectuals in an authoritarian, totalitarian system (Tismaneanu & Iacob, 2019); and the utilizing emotions in the history of education (Sobe, 2012). In this presentation, I will first outline the socio-historical background of the concrete case, and then comes the analysis of the complex interactions between teachers and their environment in the winter of 1960.

The term Anthropocene, popularised by J.P. Crutzen, suggests that humankind has become a global geological force in its own right (Steffen et al., 2011). In the search for the origins of the Anthropocene, it is often associated with capitalism(Foster, Clark, York, 2010; Zalasiewicz, 2019), most notably the US hegemony (Foster, Clark, 2021). The question is even raised as to whether the Anthropocene should be called the Capitalocene (Moore, 2016). Marxist philosophy and the ecological policy of the Soviet Union are presented as a counterbalance to predatory capitalism towards nature. But even while admiring this policy, it is acknowledged that it has been ambivalent (Foster, 2015). As Bolotova notes, “The slogans on the conquest and subjection of nature were among the most important ideological frames of the Soviet state. The idea of human dominance over nature and the call for humans to subdue, modify and reconstruct a chaotic and meaningless nature in order to regulate natural processes supplemented the overarching goal of a total reconstruction of the social order, making for an intrinsic link between state policy and the ideology of conquering nature in the USSR” (2004, p. 107). But in its outward-looking propaganda, the Soviet Union positioned itself as the greatest defender of nature and a fighter against the capitalists destroying it. The aim of this presentation is to analyse which of the Soviet Union's narratives - the conquest of nature or the preservation of nature - was dominant in Soviet educational policy and school practice. Has attention been paid to the ecological problems of the Soviet Union itself: the Aral Sea's destruction, the rivers' diversion, the causes of desertification, destructive forms of timber exploitation, irrational mining practices, etc?

This paper explores how pedagogies of place can support an analysis of the connections between people, places, and communities by including pedagogical and ecological discourses in a specific time and space in Denmark - The Travelling High School Tvind in the 1970s.

Grünewald (2003) describes five "dimensions of place" that can shape the development of a socio-ecological, place-conscious education: (a) the perceptual, (b) the sociological, (c) the ideological, (d) the political and (e) the ecological. Warren (2000) states that human beings must (a) examine the impact of places on culture and identity, and (b) embrace our political roles.

The case study examines the educational ethos and the conceptualisation of pedagogical actions and the concept action competence.

Tvind began (1970) near the village of Ulfborg (2000 inhabitants) on Denmark's west coast by the North Sea. A small group of young teachers settled there to live collectively and with a shared economy when they set up a state-funded folk high school. They were pioneers in social development, education and sustainable environmental projects. (Today the Teachers' Group has hundreds of members in several countries). Tvind Folk High School became internationally known in the 70s through this construction. It proved to be significant not only for the wind turbine industry, but also for the wider environmental discourse. The case highlights a close and complex relationship between environmental activism, pedagogy and the development of agency.

Special emphasis was placed on developing international solidarity with the working class through direct experience. Young Danes were sent to Third World countries, thus turning the folk high school into an international, globalised forum for dealing with Third World problems and power. At that time Tvind's pedagogy was inspired by Maoism and its strong focus on manual labour and material production based on solidarity with the people.

Environmental problems have been on the agenda since the 1960s and 1970s. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is therefore a complex concept. The concept: Action competence is central to the field. It is defined as a personal capacity that encompasses more than the intellectual-cognitive domain and is a pedagogical and ethical challenge, as it involves the will to act. The concept is ideologically influenced by German critical theory (Oscar Negt (1964) (2019) (including inspiration from C. Wright Mills concept of sociological imagination) as well as W. Klafki (1983/1959).(Breiting et al, 2009).

The intention is to foster democratic and action-oriented citizens. It involves the whole personality, including many of the mental capacities and dispositions. (Mogensen, 1995). Ideland, M., clams the notion of action competence inscribes standards for what is to be thought and acted, experienced and felt.( Ideland, M, 2016.) ESD is discussed as a top-down directive promoting an indoctrinating education (Hasslöf, H. Ekborg, M and Malmberg, 2013) (Jickling, 2003) (Jickling and Wales, 2008) ( Ideland, M, 2016.) as action and behaviour change appear as imperatives within a sustainability discourse.

From a democratic perspective, the extent to which citizens see themselves as potential actors in societal development may be of paramount importance (Kollmuss, A (2002)).

If eco-politics requires a new political subject that can, among other things, realise the notion of freedom without abundance and integrate ecological materiality into a democratic and emancipatory politics, it is necessary to develop some common competences for action. (Charbonnier, P (2021). Scholars argue the need for a new ecological class directed against the production horizon to sustain the planet (Latour, B & Schultz, N. 2022).