On January 10, 2022, on the third anniversary of the death of Mihály Csákó, the John Wesley Theological College’s Pedlabor workshop organized a commemorative conference, where his former colleagues and friends remembered one of the founders of the Hungarian sociology of education, a renowned researcher of political sociology.
The online conference began with short lectures on the topic of political socialization. István Murányi (DE BTK) recalled that Csákó, as always, was democratic in his research, playing at once the roles of project leader, coordinator, and fellow participant. In the second half of his lecture, he presented selections from the results of the School and Society research series. Andrea Szabó (MTA TPI) summarized the recently published results of research at Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, highlighting the positive effect of the COVID-19 crisis on the political interests of the youth. She also stressed that politics in Hungary is so polarizing that pro-and anti-government young people have completely differing views on the state of education. Domonkos Sik (ELTE Institute of Sociology) recalled his memories of research work conducted with Csákó. Péter Tibor Nagy’s presentation complemented the conference outlining the oeuvre of Csákó with his political activism. Finally, the posthumous publication regarding political socialization, edited by Zsuzsanna Hanna Biró, was discussed too.
The conference recordings are available here.
Réka Heszterényi, Assistant Archivist at Blinken OSA currently working on the personal papers of Csákó, demonstrated in her presentation how the EU goals concerning education and the youth, and especially those concerning active citizenship, are represented and reinterpreted in the 2020 Hungarian National Curriculum. Réka’s research and training interests lie, similarly to Csákó’s, in the topic of education for democracy, as described in her recent post on the Blinken OSA blog.
The personal papers of Mihály Csákó are preserved at Blinken OSA. The complex collection of documents related to Csákó’s teaching, research, and opposition activities will be available following its archival processing.