History of National and Ethnic Minorities in the Carpathian Basin: Present-Day Concept and State of Multicultural Education in Hungary and the Neighbouring Countries

The paper examines how and why the actualisation of the cosmopolitan model represented by the first Hungarians to live in the Carpathian Basin changed over the history. It presents how governments face the consequences of history and how they try to resolve the problems accumulated over the past centuries by means of a multicultural policy while discussing the political background of the Carpathian Basin. We posit that education has an enormously important role in developing a multicultural perspective in people, in whom discrimination and xenophobia are not present. This is not so easy to realise given the particular historical and political background of the Carpathian Basin. Cohabitation among two or more ethno-linguistic communities and the joint exercising of power within a given state is not impossible today either. However this ideal state presupposes an understanding of the moral values of every ethnic community, the assurance of their future, as well as their unperturbed cultural reproduction.