Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)
SPIRIT AND MOOD - Back in the hands of the Church again - the Golden Age of the Teacher Training School
211 ‘brother school’ of the College. At the same time, it was abundantly clear from the first moment - due to common roots and a common operating authority - that, in spirit, in defined roles and in religious and moral education matters, these two schools were similar and, as such, the Training School would be best integrated as another branch into the College. Events were celebrated jointly, Bible study groups and mission tasks were organized under the unified leadership, the youth associations worked together and the Sárospatak Youth Gazette was edited together. The situation matured enough by World War II to have the separate teaching staffs merge into one. Teachers from the secondary school and from the theological school were able to teach - after a short primer - the courses of the teachers of the Teacher Training School who happened to get conscripted for military service. Later on, in September 1947, based on the experience of the war years, it was decided to officially merge the two teaching staffs. The College in Patak, like all schools, was affected by the initiatives of the government which aimed to raise the standards and the profile of the Teacher Training Schools throughout the country. The original three-year training program was expanded to a four-year program in 1882 and, in 1924, it became a five-year program. The Ministry initiated another broad reform in 1938, whereby the already existing classes were to be transformed into a four-year program to be run within the framework of a Ticeum’ structure, and subsequent to and above this was to be organized a two-year program within the framework of a newly created Teacher Training Academy. Not only did this mean extending the duration of the training program, but it also created competition for the secondary school. The transformation accompanied by obligatory costly development could not be finished as the government had to contend with a severe shortage of teachers during the war and the proposed creation of the Teacher Training Academy was never realized. Having organized the líceum according to the stipulations of the state, it began to function and increasingly served the purposes of the Teacher Training School, the final year of the program being one of specialization. In this manner the paths of the training school and the secondary school went their separate ways. Although both schools’ programs concluded with final examinations, the former had a much more practical side which made it quite different from the latter. Those who completed four years of the Teacher Training School received a degree in teaching as granted by the MNER after the war. The other aspect of the organizational changes concentrated on establishing a teacher training institution for the working class. The Ministry wanted to mobilize those adults who until then did not have access to further education and, as a consequence, wished to establish appropriate institutions in several parts of the country. Two such initiatives for institutions under the banner of the College in Sárospatak were proposed: one for workers in Sárospatak and one for village workers in a nearby village in the Bodrogköz, but only the former materialized. The poor infrastructural conditions encountered in the endeavour in the village of Riese village led to insurmountable difficulties after the first year and thus the two programs were merged into one in Sárospatak. The atmosphere of the Teacher Training School was largely defined by the fact that only a small number of teachers worked there at the same time at any given time. Usually there were only ten teachers, even together with those from
