Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)
SPIRIT AND MOOD - Together, yet apart - independence for the secondary school
153 amount of time. Up until then the provision in force stated that enrollment was to begin on the first day of September and that for the first four days of September only Protestant students were permitted to enroll, if at the end of the fourth day the limit of sixty had not been reached, then students of other denominations could also apply for enrollment. Another clause stipulated that the only students allowed to enroll in grades two, three or four were the ones who had completed the first grade in Patak. To try to cope with the situation, the school hired two assistant teachers in 1893 but the Ministry immediately signalled that such efforts were insufficient and that parallel classes must be organized in the first four grades. Thus the school year of 1898-99 started with ten classes. After launching parallel classes in grades two and four, parallel classes for grades one and three were launched the followingyear. In 1904, grade five students were also organized into parallel classes. Although the need for additional classes in the lower grades was also evident, the teachers criticized the notion. According to their reasoning, there was no real need to start more parallel classes; doing so would only result in a decrease in standards and an increase in administration. They also agreed that it would be more harmful than useful in a broader sense as well, because “if we make education easier, it will only increase the number of intellectual proletariat and, later on, masses from the lower classes of society will overcrowd our institutions, people who have never supported our institution financially in the past nor do so at present.” This caused some hesitation and, as a consequence, the two parallel classes which were organized for grade five students were organized to function for one year only. From 1906-07, only grades one and two had parallel classes (with a limit of fifty students each) as well as grades three and four (with a limit of sixty- five students each). A maximum of only forty students were allowed to study in the single grade five class. For this reason and in order to ensure that Protestants would not be left out of school, the “two phase” method of enrollment was reintroduced. Typically and due to the hectic nature of the era, only a few years passed before another very different kind of problem surfaced, that being that, beginning in 1910, the number of students enrolled in the secondary school decreased by ten percent from year to year. A similar decrease in the number of students enrolled at the academic level was observed, especially within the ranks of those at the Academy of Law. All this combined pointed to a bleak future. The construction of a student residence for secondary school students which would provide board was proposed as a possible solution. The College could not afford to build it alone and had to solicit assistance from the state. The high hopes attached to this undertaking were somewhat dampened, however, once it was realized that this proposal had been formulated after all the competitors in the country had already finished building their own similar residences. Thus such a building in Patak would not be able to offer any competitive advantage; at most, it could only slow down the accumulation of setbacks. But the developments of the war years basically rewrote these calculations. Instead of decreasing, the number of secondary school students increased from four hundred to five hundred. This was due to two factors. The first was that small farmers in the region were able to benefit from the war. Having accumulated some wealth, they were able to keep sending their children to secondary schools. The second factor was that the number of girls who wanted to study increased. Writer and literary translator Zsolt Harsányi (1887-1943) In the introduction ofZsig- mond Móricz's “Be Faithful Unto Death” (also inspired by Móricz’s experiences in Patak) written for the literary journal “Nyugat”, Harsányi said the following: ‘..I was a student in Patak, and the overwhelming power of the regenerating atmosphere of the Reformed Church College unsettles me, touching the deepest memories of my years as a youngster.'
