Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)
SPIRIT AND MOOD - Together, yet apart - independence for the secondary school
structures in Sárospatak. Prompting this was not only an internal desire to do so but there was also an external push which was brought on by the modernization and standardization requirements prescribed by the Entwurf. It is not a coincidence that the separation in 1851 of the secondary school unit from the upper level academic unit within the College took place at the same time as the number of grade levels was increased from six to eight. From this point on, a permanent director was placed in charge of a group of regular teachers in this independent institution. This change, however, did not succeed in satisfying all parties. The newly established autonomy of the secondary school troubled certain circles, especially the teachers of the academic unit. Furthermore, the teacher training institute shortly came into operation and, in this way, the former unity of the College had now become seemingly undone, divided into distinctive groups with different interests. Those opposing the changes achieved some initial success in their endeavours when, in 1861, they temporarily succeeded in convincing the church district to forego the idea of a permanent director in the secondary school and, instead, to introduce a system of yearly rotation with the new director being placed under the guardianship of the academy. With this modification, the autonomy of the secondary school was significantly reduced but this particular arrangement did not prove overly enduring. The teachers in the secondary school began to push for the restoring of the organizational order established in the 1850s. They argued, from a professional standpoint, that it is well-known that in secondary schools the emphasis is on maintaining order and teaching discipline to students while the academy is much more an intellectual environment which requires both different methods and educational principles. And just as the academic level teacher does not teach at the secondary level so is the opposite true, and this same principle applies to the question of the mixing of administrations, which they deemed to be detrimental. One and a half years later, the church district restored the autonomy of the secondary school. As such, the direction of the secondary school and the academic institution were permanently separated from each other, so much so that from then on the academy and the secondary school prepared and filed separate reports at the end of each academic year. Nonetheless, no permanent director was appointed by the church district and the yearly rotation system remained in force for years. The sole cause of this was of a financial nature for in this way there was no requirement to reduce the number of teaching hours for the person directing the institution. Autonomy has played an important role, not primarily within the College, but more in terms of its relation to national requirements. As previously mentioned, the state made it mandatory that all schools - including those with a centuries- long history of having their own curriculum - align themselves according to the decreed centralization policy by which the state would be able to extend more political influence over the schools. With the Secondary School Law in 1883, an important chapter of school autonomy came to a close. Naturally, the weight of this was felt in Patak, also. It is perhaps typical though that, at the end of a decade lengthy preparations and discussions, the heads of institutions had grown tired of the constant and futile struggle and were only glad to find a bit of respite. But already the following year, just after the first newly-introduced 151 Playwright Ede Tóth (1844-1876) was a student in Patak
