Thousands of young demonstrators went down to the street to protest against the dismissal of five teachers from the Ferenc-Kölcsey high school. Their fault: to have bypassed a right of strike which has become impossible to exercise.
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She can no longer move in the streets of Budapest without the Hungarians expressing their support. At 53, Katalin Törley has just lost the post of French professor that she had occupied for twenty-three years at the Ferenc-Kölcsey high school, a magnificent very famous establishment of the center of the capital Magyare which delivers a Bilingual Franco-Hungarian baccalaureate. Its brutal dismissal, which occurred on October 5, created such a shock in Hungary that it has become one of the main figures of the Fronde which has been shaking, for several months, the Hungarian education system against the Prime Minister, Viktor Orban.
Her fault and that of the four other teachers of the same high school who were, like her, dismissed? Having coordinating a movement of “civil disobedience”, the only way to get around a right to strike recently reduced to the congruent portion. They organized wild debraying to ask for salary increases and more educational freedom in the face of the ideological pressures of power.
“We put ourselves in the target, it’s indisputable”, loose Katalin Törley, with a certain satisfaction. Jovial, glasses on her head, she taught Molière’s language in this high school that she attended during her youth and whose “spirit of freedom” she claims. “We, French teachers, are particularly active,” she notes. Perhaps because we know what reactions are in France as soon as we touch the school system. “
This seasoned activist, who takes part-time tutoring for young Roma, is not her try. As early as 2016, Katalin Törley had launched a vast movement of teachers to claim more educational freedom in the face of a power “which advocates an education worthy of the 19th century century with skull jerk rather than the construction of Critical minds “.
The evening of his dismissal, 35,000 people went down to the street to express their anger against the five dismissals, decided by the rectorate in the name of “endangering the right to teaching students”. This crowd, unprecedented since the triumphant victory of Viktor Orban during the April legislative elections, was mainly made up of high school students who are not even 18 years old. “No teacher, no future,” they chanted under the windows of the Parliament.
last winter, taking the COVVI-19 as a pretext, the Hungarian government introduced a minimum service forcing in particular the striking teachers to ensure the Home of their students in class. What make de facto any strike almost invisible. In his new government, Viktor Orban has also decided not to appoint a Minister of Education by entrusting the management of this portfolio to the … Minister of the Interior.
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