Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)
SPIRIT AND MOOD
without undue pride, concrete results to show. The construction and opening of the residential school became the cornerstone of the development of the College and to this end a pledge of three hundred sixty thousand crowns of state aid for construction purposes had been received at the end of 1925. Unfortunately, two years went by before the pledge was honoured, but, by the autumn of 1927, the Residential School, with thirty-two students admitted, was inaugurated. Zoltán Dávid was appointed to be the head of the institution and was responsible for the religious-moral education of the students living there. The director of the College noted with pride that parents already line up to secure a place in the institution for their children. The overwhelming number of applications for admission remained a lasting phenomenon. Despite the school’s best efforts to create more space and beds, by the beginning of World War II, all reserves were exhausted while the crowdedness increased. There was no major change for this branch institution until the mid-1930s. The leaders still did not give up on the principle of an entirely traditional secondary school. With the advent of English instruction, some of the classes now functioned according to the curriculum of the Secondary School for Modern Languages and Sciences model, but in the other classes the classic values were faithfully observed. This new endeavour laid claim to most of the available resources so, by the mid 1930s, the classic classes of the secondary school were receiving less attention. To counteract this and manage the increased amount of administration, an assistant director was appointed in the autumn of 1934. Sándor Tárczy was the first person to occupy this position - which was a new position in Patak - but many schools around the country had already adopted this solution for quite some time earlier. The new Secondary School Law in 1934 brought only minor changes in the curriculum. The most significant change - as an experiment - was to reduce the length of classes to forty-five minutes. This initiative had the intent of taking some of the load off the students but it was not popular among teachers who experienced it as something of a turmoil. In the first grade of the secondary school, the number of Latin classes was reduced from six to four while the number of physical education classes rose from two to four. In the other grades, the number of physical education classes was increased from two to three. The director’s message in the school bulletin addressed the changes openly, noting that no one had become obsessed with their body. But in a country which was “forced into an economic and strategic lockdown" no one can afford to give up military preparations, since “we can only be pacifists if we are ready to give up not only the occupied territories, but every single Hungarian mole-hill. If this is your vision for the nation, do not enroll in the College of Patak.” It was not only in the question of physical education that the people of this era underwent a change in their perception but in other questions as well. There were reports about the shift in emphasis from the previous didactic innovations towards the ideal conservative education. While a few years ago the agenda included the introduction of film studies, extending the availability of music classes or applying new teaching methods based on students’ activity, concepts of national education or individuals’ responsibility towards the communities received more attention at this time. But in Patak this was crossed by a process running counter to it, at least according to those endorsed the humanities-type 201 Barna Nagy (1909-1969), professor of theology, student of Karl Barth and an internationally respected expert on Calvin
