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Hungary Premilitary Programs
Hungarian schools required some military education for
all
students from the seventh grade through secondary school
and
higher education. The regime saw military education as an
integral part of general education, a way by which young
people
could acquire the skills they would need when serving in
the army
and a means to increase the defense capability of the
country.
Such training included weapons maintenance and use, radio
communications, electronic and mechanical engineering,
aircraft
piloting, parachute training, and scuba diving.
Actual premilitary training was optional but was
advised
before age seventeen and obligatory from age seventeen to
callup , up to age twenty-three. No more than two years of such
training could be required. This training could assume
different
forms, including a camp setting. In 1984 the MHSz and the
Pioneer
youth organization established such a camp for premilitary
training on Szentendre Island in the Danube, north of
Budapest.
In 1987 nearly 150 secondary students attended, half the
number
that applied. The boys were placed in radio communications
and
shooting groups, while both girls and boys participated in
sports. Various programs included military theory and
practice,
computer games, movies, "patrol competitions," sports, and
excursions. Soldiers supervised some activities, and the
HPA
provided the meals.
Data as of September 1989
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