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Memory and kindergarten teachers' work: children's needs before the needs of the socialist state

More than 20 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, scholars and educators continue to engage with histories under socialism and re-evaluate the consequences of those education systems for everyday lives then and in the present. This article develops an understanding of how kindergarten teachers understand their historical work in the socialist system. It does so by using the memories of five teachers who taught before 1989 in socialist Hungary. I consider memory as discourse that teachers produced during their interviews to reason about their practices. My research question is: In what ways did the interviewed teachers see themselves as ideologues representing the state? To answer this question, I use Foucauldian discourse analysis informed by the concept of governmentality to examine the organised practices and rationalities through which political subjects are governed. I discuss three rationalities: (1) constructing children's needs and generating their interests through play; (2) collective engagements; (3) teachers as experts; and then move on to analyse the ways in which explicit socialist ideology is understood by the interviewed teachers. From the interviews it emerges that the teachers understand their own historical position as not being ‘in the service of the state’ but as experts looking after the interests of children to learn so that they can become useful members of society. The analysis also offers some insights into the interconnectivities of politics, history and culture across localities.