Béla Gabóda: Minority educational affairs during the Czechoslovak Republic (1919-1938) (II. part)

Minority educational affair in Sub-Carpathia during the two World Wars. The Czechoslovak Republic’s public educational affairs (more important regulations, laws). Teaching societies (associations) in Sub-Carpathia. Direction of educational affairs (educational districts). Nursery schools and national schools. Higher elementary schools. High schools. The history of the Hungarian Grammar School in Berehovo during the Czechoslovak Republic. Vocational schools. Hungarian children in foreign schools. Educational network of the city.

After the formation of Czechoslovakia, the politics devote great care on the total re-arrangement of the educational system. On the one hand it meant the change of Hungarian laws on educational. The main difference between the Hungarian and the Czechoslovak educational system is that while Hungarian public education wanted to ensure the joint teaching effect of school and religion, the Czechoslovak public educational system wanted to divide religion and school completely. This principle was applied in the Czechoslovak constitutional law in 1920 (although in a hidden form), and the governmental provisions on public education intended to enforce this principle by terminating and nationalising religious schools and pushing religious education to the background. The negative features of the Czechoslovak nationality politics revealed primarily in educational affairs. The public education policy of the Czechoslovak civil democratic country was characterised by the fact that no pedagogue with Hungarian nationality could be in the management of educational institutions, from the Ministry to the district educational inspection, no school master with Hungarian nationality could be in the post of no state grammar-school with Hungarian teaching language. The grammar-school with Hungarian teaching language in Ungvár was even closed by the authorities. Part of the teachers in state elementary schools, grammar-schools, vocational schools, teacher-training colleges with Hungarian teaching language was no of Hungarian nationality. Nevertheless, teachers of Hungarian nationality, because of deliberate political consequences, were placed to Slovak and Ruthenian schools. One of the insufficiencies of the education in Hungarian language in Slovakia was that besides the theological teaching, there was no higher education training in Hungarian language. Therefore, the Felvidék (Up-Land) Hungarian people, including Sub-Carpathia, had by 31 per cent fewer schools than it should have according to the data from the population census. On the basis of statistical data the author introduces the situation of educational affairs of the minority in Sub-Carpathia between 1919-1938.