Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)

SPIRIT AND MOOD - The curriculum and its changes

104

FROM THE ENLIGHTEMENT

TO THE END OF THE WAR

OF INDEPENDENCE

The first edition of István Losonczi’s Historical Geography textbook

SPIRIT AND MOOD

THE CURRICULUM AND ITS CHANGES

The decisive development in the history of the College in Sárospatak came as the result of the work of the Litteraria Deputatio in 1796. The committee established by the church district specifically to reform the College’s curriculum proposed changes to the internal structure of the curriculum and thus significantly altered the profile and function of the school. Although the Latin language, religious studies, the study of classic texts and related philosophical and historical studies remained dominant in the curriculum, their relative proportion was significantly modified with the introduction of additional subjects. The main change was the introduction of the Hungarian language as the language of instruction at the secondary level of education. As grounds for this, the leadership argued that many students enrolled in the school only to acquire basic and practical knowledge and not in order to become pastors, so it would be unnecessary for them to study all subject matter in another language. It was furthermore noted and emphasized that understanding the proper grammar rules in the Hungarian language helps in the learning of a foreign language. In addition to these practical reasons, it was pointed out that proficient instruction in the mother tongue is the principal pillar or key to the survival of the nation. The curriculum for secondary schools in 1810 prescribed the detailed instruction of Hungarian grammar at every level and, from 1818 on, Hungarian was the language of instruction at academic levels. The unmistakable advance of Hungarian language instruction was interrupted, however, by a modification in the curriculum in 1828, whereby, for the subsequent ten years, the teaching of Latin once again dominated, although the language of instruction remained Hungarian.

The curriculum of contemporary schools focused predominantly on ancient history and church history. To this was eventually added national history and the history of neighboring nations and then, later, world history. Interest in recent history gradually increased and thus the teaching of modern and world history was included in the curriculum in Patak from the mid-1820s on. Students learned about the nation’s past from the historical chapters of István Losonczi’s Hármas Kis Tükör (Triple Little Mirror). The book gained nationwide popularity to a large extent from being written in Hungarian; it was reprinted countless times and remained the backbone of every curriculum until the end of the Reform Era despite its overdue use of technical language, its amateurism and its inaccuracies. In addition to Hármas Kis Tükör, other essays describing slices of the history of neighboring countries began to appear and, in 1843, the first real summary of universal history, written by József Csengery, appeared. All of the things mentioned above indicate that Patak followed with minimal delay the national trends in the teaching of history, this including the teaching of more recent history with an increasingly secular yet still personality-centred perspective, one which spread quite rapidly. The inconsistent availability of textbooks, the insufficient amount of time allotted for history classes and the lack of regular repetition also parelleled conditions elsewhere in the country. Despite having traditional roots, universal literary history was first offered by the College only in the early years of the new era when, in 1783, János Szombathi