Cseri Miklós, Füzes Endre (szerk.): Ház és ember, A Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum évkönyve 9. (Szentendre, Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 1994)

BÍRÓ FRIDERIKA-KÁLDY MÁRlA: "Serkenj fel és állíts alsó iskolákat..." Fejezetek Vas megye falusi iskoláinak történetéből I.

„ WAKE UP AND RAISE PRIMARY SCHOOLS... " ELEMENTARY EDUCATION IN VAS COUNTY I. The appeal we have chosen for the title of this study was made by János Apáczai Csere, the Transylvanian thinker of exceptional talent, to his nation in the middle of the 17th century. He had attended elementary school in a small Transylvanian village, graduated from high school, and obtained his doctor's degree at one of the far-famed universities in The Netherlands. Then he had returned home. As a result of the initiatives, then conscious programmes of school building by the Protestant and Catholic Churches, more and more village schools had been founded from the middle of the previous century. The number of highly educated teachers also grew gradually. Still the picture that met the eyes of the „school builder * scientist on his arrival from abroad was that of misery. However he knew that the systematic building up of a structure of lower and higher education had been hindered by wars, the fight against the Turks, the religious struggles of Reformation and Counter Reformation as well as other adverse circumstances in Hungary. We have quite early data about parish schools, even in the smaller villages of Vas County, but the network of village schools had actually been formed by the late 18th - early 19th century. School buildings looked, up to the middle of the 19th century, like peasant houses. In most cases teaching took place in the teacher's room. On more than one occasion, in the description of the school house we find the methods of peasant architecture, the peculiar building materials, versions of roofing, of heating apparatuses, and farmyards, bearing the marks, characteristic of the various areas of the County. Village schoolmasters, in many cases even those who had higher education, were appointed and supervised by the parish priest in Catholic villages, and were elected by the community in Protestant ones. The teacher's salary was governed by the customs of the village. When he was hired his emoluments were put down in a letter of agreement. In addition to his house, outbuildings, and the fields belonging to this croft, he also received produce, wood, and money according to his teaching duties. He rendered the village other services, too, like ringing the bells and singing at funerals. In several places he also acted as the parish clerk. For each of these he was separately paid. Until the second half of the 18th century the aim of education was the teaching of religion and some reading in both Catholic and Protestant schools. Later writing, arithmetic and, in some places, the elements of Latin grammar were added to the curriculum. However the function of public education continued to be fulfilled by the Church, just like in other parts of Europe. A systematic order was actually introduced into education at the end of the 18th century, the age of absolutism in Hungary. According to absolutist principles education was a function of the state. Among a series of rules and regulations, compulsory school attendance was declared universal. The training of teachers and the improvement of their situation was also attended to. The aim of all this was to produce loyal subjects. It was only a hundred years later (in 1868) that a law of public education - one of the first in Europe - was adopted in Hungary. That epoch-making law entirely reshaped and modernized public education in our country. The paper outlines the history of public education in the villages of Vas County from the middle of the 16th century to the second half of the 19th.