Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)
SPIRIT AND MOOD
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST MARGINALIZATION 202 The teaching staff of the secondary school in 1948: First row: Károly Szabó, József Bakos, Károly Jakob, Árpád Tárczy, Gyula Szabó, Barnabás Urban, József Hegyi, Ernő Szabó Second row: Sándor Mailer, Antal Egey, István Orbán, Miklós Kajdy, Lajos Héthy, Zoltán Batár, Gyula Palumby Third row: Jenő Dévai, Zoltán Bertha, Gyula Demeter, András Ruszkay school. Ernő Mátyás, director at the time, followed and observed, with open criticism, the progression and growing popularity of the English class section and the English language in general while the Greek language seemed to have lost all its influence among the youth. In his estimation, this posed a threat to the traditional values of the College which could only be replaced by “an ethically less valuable lifestyle”. He was further saddened by the fact that the state was systematically reducing their autonomy and the famous “Patak Way” was disappearing. The number of teaching staff increased, which was a surprising development in this era. In 1920, there were thirteen teachers, ten years later there were nineteen and, by 1938, there were twenty-four. This increase was related to the starting of the English class section and partially to the hiring of additional supervisory teachers for the student residences. The strong presence of the traditional, humanities subjects shows, that, despite the reduced number of hours, in 1948, the subject being taught by the most teachers was still Latin (nine teachers). However, there were already seven English teachers, too. In taking a brief glance at the teaching staff, mention must be made of the directors of the secondary school: József Csontos (eight years), Imre Elekes (six years), Sándor Novák (five years) and Árpád Tárczy (nine years). For a long time, a defining teacher of the staff, József Gulyás is also worth mentioning. He was a teacher of Hungarian and Latin and published often, many times writing about the history of the College. Zoltán Dávid was also a teacher of Hungarian and Latin while Barna Urbán taught geometry and physics. Géza Képes, who taught for only a few years in Patak was a well-known poet who taught Hungarian, English and German. Sándor Maller, Gyula Palumby and József Hegyi started teaching in
