Buzinkay_Geza_Ney_Ferenc

Ferenc Ney (1814-1889) is primarily known as an educator: he was a Hungarian pioneer of early learning and the nursery school system, and, later in life worked as the headmaster of Reáltanoda, the secondary school of sciences in Pest, now Eötvös József Secondary School. He worked as an educator at a time when the increasingly bourgeois state needed to establish its primary operating conditions, administrative functions and institutions – the Hungarian nation itself, together with its own modern language. Besides a handful of trained professionals, this creative process was pushed by amateurs, fanatic activists, and passionate promoters, immediately responding to any need identified. This phase, prior to professionalization, was characterized by both frenetic activity and the adoption of idiosyncratic solutions and combinations. Despite all his mental dedication and ambition, Ferenc Ney was not yet a professional educator but a patriot of the Hungarian Reform Era, who operated and experimented in many domains of nation building – at times in haste – and who sought to advance “the good of his homeland” in every activity he was involved in. He had a persistent and very real passion as the “nation’s educator,” which was precisely what precluded him from becoming a professional teacher like many of his colleagues at the Reáltanoda at the time. At the same time, this habitus made him, a headmaster, suitable for successful educational policymaking, which was yet to be defined and established in this era.