It Takes a Village: Budapest Jewry and the Problem of Juvenile Delinquency

Abstract

Writing in 1851, Abraham Hochmut, the architect of Jewish educational reform in nineteenth-century Hungary, offered the following instructions to teachers in the soon-to-be created network of Hungarian state-sponsored Jewish schools:

Discipline in school is like discipline in the army: it is the dominating spirit on which success depends. As is known to every leader, and to every team in the midst of a military operation, this spirit cannot be replaced, and without it victory can be snatched away so, too, a school can be derailed by the same lack of regulation and control. It must be a permanent, uniform element from the lowest to the highest class, and must be implemented with rigour so that the impact of education is not paralyzed by the misconduct of a few bad apples.¹