Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)
SPIRIT AND MOOD - The teaching staff
108 FROM THE ENLIGHTEMENT TO THE END OF THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE The leadership, however, was not content. The returning concerns included the desire to establish separate departments for pedagogy and for Hungarian literature (history of literature), the latter in the 1820s, and the granting of academic status to chemistry was suggested even earlier. However, none of these were realized until much later. By the middle of the Reform Era, pedagogy had become a core subject in every curriculum. Instead of according chemistry separate status, the mathematics-physics department was separated into two departments. Earlier on, when dwelling on István Nyiry, it was mentioned that, for a certain period of time, as an independent professor, he taught statistics, astronomy and geology (and pedagogy) but this “mixed” department proved to be short-lived because Nyfry’s vacated position was never filled. The melding of exegetics, church history and Greek into the same department was similarly dependent on a given person and similarly short-lived, Ferenc Vályi Nagy being charged with the teaching of these subjects but passing away one year into his appointment. Here again, there was no one to fill the position after him. “Humaniorum professors” were hired as a consequence of the changing direction of the school’s functions. Since the number of pupils who were content with only a secondary school education and left the institution afterwards increased significantly, the leadership wanted to entrust the responsibilities of teaching to qualified teachers whose work could be verified over longer periods of time. This, however, was a costly step and furthermore reduced the number of student teachers needed, which in turn led to a significant decline in the influence of the student government. Initially there were four humaniorum professors who began work in 1797. The following year another one was added in the person of Ferenc Vályi Nagy who eventually became the professor who stayed on the longest. The secondary school teachers published very rarely, if at all. Only the Emődy-Gelei-Vadnay publishing trio can be mentioned on the same page as Vályi Nagy with respect to their textbook series on the natural sciences. These instructors generally avoided school management issues as much as they avoided doing any academic-level research. As a consequence, there remains hardly any written trace of their activity. Despite this, their arrival and longterm tenure is extremely important in the development of the history of the College in Patak. Not only were the foundations laid for local secondary school education through their work but secondary school teaching as a new profession also received an important boost. The third large group working in education in Patak was the student teachers, the so-called praeceptors. Their role remained dominant because they were the only teachers in the lower four classes and they were responsible for important tasks in the upper classes as well. It is possible to further classify these student teachers into groups according to their functions. In the early years, each secondary level group had its own class praeceptor (classis-praeceptor) but, after the introduction of humaniorum professors, the class praeceptors functioned only in the lower four classes. At the academy level, professors put former students (praeses) to work as student teachers, their job being to review and practice the Hebrew and Greek language lessons with the students and to direct the choir. Private teachers (privatus praeceptor) played an important role in coaching and mentoring for they not only ensured that the students completed their homework but supervised the younger students during their free time and
