How public education reached its breaking point in Hungary Teachers in Hungary are on a wildcat strike and pupils are demanding their pedagogues be paid. Public education has long been at the forefront of the Orbán administration’s centralizing frenzy, which exploits the country’s traditional hostility toward workers’ advocacy. But those caught in the system are more determined than they’ve been in decades. ‘Pay our teachers already!’ This has become a major slogan in the Autumn of 2022. By now, even the representatives of the governing party, whose communication is strictly controlled by party discipline, admit that teachers’ salaries need to be increased. Yet they insist that the pay raise can only happen if the Hungarian state receives the reconstruction funds