Educate rather than regulate — or how a state might treat its citizens as adults, instead of trying to govern their behaviour by decree.
A state can approach its citizen with two base assumptions: as a problem that must be regulated, or as a partner whose capacity must be awakened. The first is fast in the short run. The second, in the long run, produces a stronger citizen and a stronger state alike. Knowledge as a birthright is the founding claim of the second.
Ha ezt a bekezdést gond nélkül elolvassa, Önnek nem ez a kiadás kell: az eredeti a tanul.io/tudas címen várja, lábjegyzetek nélkül, mert Önnek Eötvöst nem kell bemutatni. Ha viszont egy szót sem ért belőle, ne aggódjon: a tudás alanyi jog, és ez a kiadás pontosan ezt a jogát szolgálja ki.
P.S. If the paragraph above defeated you, relax — this edition exists precisely so that it may stop defeating you. That is, in fact, the entire thesis.
The Hungarian legal term in the original title, alanyi jog, means a right that attaches to you simply by virtue of existing — no application form, no means test, no gatekeeper. The closest English word, "entitlement", has spent forty years being used as an accusation, which tells you something about the two political cultures. This essay uses "birthright" and asks the lawyers for patience.
Over the past ten or fifteen years, a particular governmental instinct became fixed in Hungary: if something is not the way we would like it, the answer is a decree. Another prohibition, another requirement, another line in the schedule of fines. The instinct is not new — every modern state wrestles with it — but in Hungary, in the recent period, it operated with unusual force.
Rendelet: government decree. During the sixteen years discussed throughout this series, Hungary was governed to a remarkable extent through them — states of emergency proved renewable, and the decree became the default grammatical mood of the state. The Guide notes that the Hungarian citizen learned to check the official gazette the way other nations check the weather, and with similar expectations of control over the outcome.
The psychological pattern is familiar. The state slides into the role of an anxious parent — one who does not say to the child "let me help you understand why this matters", but "do it this way, because I said so." In the short run this works. In the long run it manufactures a very specific type of citizen.
The type is this: the citizen who does not think about what is right — but about what carries a fine. Who does not look for knowledge — but for the loophole. Who does not regard the state as a partner — but as an opponent to be evaded.
This is not a morally bad citizen. This is precisely the citizen the system conditions. When every answer is a decree, every question becomes a detour.
Two classic philosophies of government stand opposed. Neither is evil — they produce different outcomes.
Base assumption: the citizen fundamentally produces problems.
Its job: regulate, restrict, sanction.
Measure of success: how much behaviour can be herded into norms.
Time horizon: short.
Base assumption: the citizen fundamentally possesses capacity.
Its job: provide knowledge, create opportunity, build capability.
Measure of success: how many people have access to what makes them self-sufficient.
Time horizon: long.
The difference shows in the long-run output. The longer the regulator state operates, the more the citizen feels the distance from the state, and the more energy goes into circumventing the rules. The longer the educator state operates, the more citizens it produces whose own decisions coincide with the common good — without anyone having to specify this by decree.
The regulator model is like leading a child on a rope. Efficient. But if the rope is never let go, the child never learns to walk.
The concept itself is simple: every citizen has an elementary right to high-quality, practice-oriented knowledge — not only inside the school system but across the whole of their life.
This is more than the usual "lifelong learning" slogan. It is more concrete: the state has a duty to make the key knowledge of public life, the economy, health and culture broadly and excellently available. Not an option, not a premium service — a birthright.
Names in this essay a Hungarian reader carries from school: József Eötvös, who wrote Europe's most ambitious public schooling law in 1868 (compulsory education five years before Britain got around to it); Kuno Klebelsberg, the minister who answered the catastrophe of Trianon in the 1920s by building five thousand schoolrooms across the countryside; Sándor Karácsony, philosopher of adult education; István Bibó, the political thinker whose vocabulary — "capable citizens", "the misery of small Eastern European states" — this entire site quietly borrows. The Guide's summary: Hungary has a first-class tradition of the educator state. It has simply been kept, like most first-class Hungarian traditions, in storage.
Systems that take this seriously operate in the world today:
Teachers are highly trained, autonomous decision-makers; the curriculum is tuned to real practical problem-solving. Result: decades at the top of international assessments, and high civic participation.
A municipal adult-education system offering accessible, high-quality courses at 1,500 locations — from finance to programming, art to political analysis. Millions of visitors a year.
The agricultural knowledge-diffusion system founded in the late 19th century, which carried new farming science out to the farmers. Its modern version still runs, and remains one of the main engines of rural technology adoption.
All three systems run on one shared principle: knowledge is not a privilege but a public precondition. Whoever lacks access is left out. Whoever is left out cannot decide as an adult. And whoever cannot decide as an adult will be herded — by necessity — back into regulator mode.
Take three concrete domains where the two models diverge. These are not abstract examples — they are the furniture of everyday life.
Regulator: ban cigarettes in public spaces, tax sugary drinks heavily, mandate workplace health-management presence.
Educator: make basic physiological and psychological knowledge available to everyone. The citizen does not refrain from smoking because it is forbidden — but because he understands what happens in his lungs.
The first model is more efficient in the short run. The second consumes the cause of the problem in the long run.
Regulator: introduce the mandatory financial administrator, cap the lending market, ban risky products.
Educator: teach the financial basics — interest, risk, diversification — from secondary school through adult education.
Under the first model, the citizen falls for the first glittering "investment opportunity". Under the second, he recognises a classic pyramid scheme.
Regulator: ban the "harmful" sites, mandate certain outlets, police speech.
Educator: teach the craft of media evaluation — source identification, bias recognition, fact-checking — as a compulsory subject in schools and in adult courses.
The first model loses the race against changing technology within years. The second produces a citizen who does not panic at a deepfake.
Hungary has a rich tradition pointing toward the educator state. Eötvös's public schooling act of 1868, Klebelsberg's school-building of the 1920s, Sándor Karácsony's adult education, the Hatvany line of cultural patronage — all belong to this lineage.
What would this mean in practice, in 2026?
First, a restarted adult-education system accessible to everyone — online and in person — offering practical knowledge: finance, law, health, technology, communication, the forming and defending of opinions. Not political propaganda — practical capability. A Hungarian Volkshochschule, with local pride and local teachers.
Second, the transformation of the school system from content memorisation toward problem-solving knowledge. The curriculum is not "what must be known" — it is "how to learn." The Finnish or Estonian example is not utopia: it is a working, copyable model.
Third, the knowledge approach to new technologies, in place of prohibition. With AI, deepfakes and generative systems, let the first reflex not be the decree but the building of interpretive capacity. Whoever understands how a large language model works does not fall for its confidently wrong output. Whoever does not understand is protected only until the decree catches up with the technology — which is to say, rarely.
Fourth, and this is the most delicate: switching from regulator mode to educator mode is a political decision. The switch changes the state's own position — away from direct control, toward long-term investment. That is not necessarily popular in a cycle-oriented political environment. Which is exactly why it is worth raising, beyond the horizon of daily politics.
A closing observation: a state that regards its citizens as adults becomes, in time, an adult state itself. This is not rhetoric — it is a system-level feedback loop.
Adult citizens give better feedback. Better feedback yields better decisions. Better decisions generate more trust. More trust requires fewer decrees. Fewer decrees leave more room for civic responsibility. And the circle closes.
And in reverse — the direction that is, unfortunately, far more familiar: a state that treats its citizens as children slowly becomes a child-state itself. Ever more decrees, ever less efficacy, ever deeper civic apathy. Regulator mode is self-reinforcing, because weaker civic capacity justifies ever more rules — and ever more rules produce ever weaker civic capacity.
This connects, incidentally, to what an earlier essay here said about mis-learning a model of work, and how hard it is to climb out of it. Mis-learning exists at the level of states too — only with system-wide consequences. Producing the adult citizen is the same long crop rotation as producing the adult professional. Neither is manufactured by decree.
In Hungary, the choice is visible. On one side: the continuation of the great education-builders' line (Eötvös, Klebelsberg, Sándor Karácsony). On the other: the long-run consequences of permanent decree mania.
This is a different kind of work. This is the new work.