Contact: Sammy McDavid
Four Hungarian officials will be in the state next week to learn more about efforts to teach civic education and responsibility in the public schools.
The group is to meet Thursday [Jan. 23] with state Department of Education and other executive and legislative officials in Jackson. The following day [the 24th], they will tour the Starkville school system and meet with faculty, administrators and students at Mississippi State University. While at MSU, they also will be joined by representatives of United States Sen. Thad Cochran and Representatives Chip Pickering and Roger Wicker (all R-Miss.).
Mississippi is one of three states being visited by Attila Mesterhazy, political state secretary; Gergely Arato, chair of the Hungarian Parliament's Youth and Sports Committee; Andrea Kinisch, representing Budapest, Hungary's capital city; and Tibor Gal, director of the Civitas Association of Hungary.
Civitas, sponsor of the tour, is an international civic education exchange program begun in 1995 to link professionals in the U.S. with their counterparts in the established and emerging democracies around the world. Offices of the congressionally created program are located in Calabasas, Calif.
"The program provides leaders in civic education with opportunities to learn from and assist each other in improving education for democracy in their nations," said Susie Burroughs of MSU, coordinator of the Mississippi visit. "It also addresses a full range of activities, including educational policy, standards and curricular frameworks, among others."
Burroughs, an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction in the College of Education and Mississippi Civitas director, said the Hungarians' itinerary also includes stops in Florida and Texas, as well as Washington, D.C.
MSU's John C. Stennis Institute of Government is assisting the state Civitas program with next week's exchange effort.