Attempts at Renewing Vocational Training and Education in Hungary in the 17th century

Our paper explores the development and content of vocational training in guilds, the professionalization processes of becoming a skilled worker as well as potential individual career paths, using the method of document analysis, based on research conducted in libraries and archives.Starting from the analytical presentation of medieval circumstances, it leads into the modern era and places the development of guilds into a social-historical context. Furthermore, it describes the main characteristics of guilds in Hungary, up to their dissolution in the 19th century.The paper details the following aspects:–the circumstances around the formation of guilds;–the main functions of guilds;–potential career paths to be pursued in guilds;–the characteristics of the apprentice years;–the conditions of the master-year and of becoming a master.On the basis of primary sources on the history of (vocational) education, the paper presents the thoughts on vocational pedagogy and the educational work of Jan Amos Comenius and János Apáczai Csere. It also describes the social circumstances of 17th-century Hungary, where vocational training was carried out in guilds, while in the post-feudal societies of Western Europe, due to the rise of manufactures, more modern courses and institutions of vocational training were introduced.