Siklódi Csilla szerk.: Tradicionális sportok, népi játékok (A Sportmúzeum Kincsei 2. Budapest, 1996)

Tradicionális játékok a magyar középiskolákban a századforduló előtt (Szabó Lajos)

Lajos Szabó Traditional Games at Hungarian Secondary Schools before the Turn of the Century 1996 is the year when the Hungarian school celebrates its millennium, the aniversary of the foundation of the first church school in the country. This event cannot be considered as the first step of our topic as we cannot talk about secondary schools in a today sense before the 18th century. There was no uniform state regulation before that time and it was also in the 18th century when physical education at schools appeared. In the 1650ies the Moravian origin pedagogue Ámos János Comenius who spent the most productive period of his life as the dean of the protestant college of Sárospatak, Hungary was ahaid of his time. His steps were led by the idea: "Schola Ludus" - that is let the school be like a play and let the moral rearing done with the help of training the children's body, and playing games. In his illustrated enciclopedy "Orbis Sensualium Pictus" he gives place for motion in a never seen before extent. His work "Fortius Redivivus" which was written for his Hungarian students can be taken as a call for playing sports and games. He described in it the training and developing motions (sports) and the games and in connection with that about the importance of the fair play. Traditional folk games were beloved also by the pupils as it is shown in the school statutes which subcribed the games which were allowed or prohibited to be played. The enlightened absolutism brought the state regulation of the Hungarian school system. Queen Maria Theresia Habsburg dissolved the Jesuit Order, the schools were taken under state control and the educational system was regulated by the decree "Ratio Educationis" issued in 1777. The decree underlined the importance of the varied, many-sided education included the "healthcare of the studying youth". "The state needs citizens who can bare any kind of burden, can survive in any period of the year in any kind of weather and who are strong and not effeminate. That is why they must be allowed to be in the open air, to walk and talk and to find out freely how to spend the time that is to play. Anyhow we must be careful that both the spiritual refreshment and studying at school must be in accordance with the main goal (that is: to bring up strong and dutiful subjects) so we shall need to regulate the types, places and times of the plays and to state the rules and order in everything." As it is clear from the documents preparing the decree "Ratio Educationis" one of the main goals of the decree was to establish a unified state using the common language: the German. That is why the original Hungarian games which had been