Tivadar Pauler took over the office of his predecessor on 10 February 1871; his appoint-ment was recommended to the Prime Minister by Ferenc Deák. With his first measures, he immediately set the goal of raising the level of teacher training, therefore, he founded the primary practising grammar school in Budapest and with MRPE decree No. 6351 of 16 May 1872, ruled that the fifth pedagogical department of the teacher training unit should become the property of the practising grammar school. He imagined the relationship between the teacher training institute and the practising school as the relationship between the medical faculty and the clinic (Felkai 1987: 56).
The importance of quality training is supported by his speech delivered in the National Assembly on 22 December 1871: “I do not mean to say that there is no need to multiply teachers:
[…] I only want to point out that I am not expecting everything from that. I expect everything from science, from the sense of duty, didactic ability and character of the teacher.”46 The leadership of the new institution was entrusted to Mór Kármán who taught pedagogy at both the university and the teacher training institute (Tóth 1995a: 15). Starting from 1873, the training was carried out in the teacher training institute on the basis of an independent curriculum and it tried to extend its influence to university lectures as well. In fact, Kármán demanded from the Faculty of Arts that lectures that had become compulsory to be visited by teacher trainee students
46 Tivadar Pauler (1871): Speech in the budget debate of the Parliament. Quoted by Mann 1987: 30–39.
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should be tailored to the needs of teacher training. This demand ran into a violent protest by the University as it violated the principle of freedom of education (Németh 2005a: 211).
In 1872, one of the most interesting debates about teacher training unfolded in the era of dualism. It was then that Mór Kármán started his scientific offensive against Ágost Lubrich, professor of education. As a believer in herbartianism, Karma strongly criticized Lubrich’s Catholic orientation. From the point of view of my work, the only important aspect of their debate, which was becoming increasingly personal, is that they imagined the solution of secondary school teacher training along different concepts. While the head of the teacher training institution considered it natural for the training of secondary school teachers to be detached from the university, the new professor considered teacher training to be the primary the task of the university. (Németh 2005a: 208). This means that the education policy elite of the age of dualism had a disagreement in the final settlement of the issue of teacher training. The front lines between the disputing parties were stiffened by the process that unfolded in the 1880s, resulting in a dual institutional system in teacher training.
When the government led by Menyhért Lónyai47 was reorganised, there was a ministerial change in the MRPE and Ágoston Trefort became the new MRPE minister with effect from 4 September 1872. Despite the rejection of his higher education bill, the new minister succeeded in bringing fundamental changes to the training structure of universities.48 He introduced the seminar system at the Faculty of Arts and at the same time increased the training time from three to four years starting from the academic year of 1880/81. The launch of seminar training meant raising the quality of the training in that, through direct teacher-student contacts, students had more opportunities to acquire new and higher levels of knowledge (Felkai 1988: 682).
In 1875, Trefort made a proposal to set up a teacher training institute with a boarding school based on the École Normale Supérieure model. The suggestion probably originated from Loránd Eötvös who had the opportunity to get to know the Parisian institution during his trip to France in 1874 and reported his experiences to the Minister of the MRPE. The National Council for Public Education supported the proposal, but also pointed out that, in order to make teacher training more effective, it is necessary to reorganise the lectures of the Faculty of Arts. The faculty concerned strongly objected the proposal referring to the principle of freedom of education (Tóth 1995a: 16).49
In 1878, the University put forward proposals for the renewal of the teacher training: these were aimed at extending the training period by one year and introducing the seminar-based system. As we have seen above, both initiatives were implemented in the early 1880s. By the academic year of 1887/88, history, classical philology and modern philological seminars had been launched. In 1891 the geography seminar and then by 1894 the geophysics seminar and
47 Prime Minister from 14 November 1871 till 4 December 1872.
48 In addition, Act XIX of 1872 arranges the establishment of a new university in Cluj-Napoca.
49 In the first days of January 1880, the proposal was considered again when Ágoston Trefort invited Loránd Eötvös, Gustav Heinrich, József Stoczek and Károly Than and Aladár Molnár for a private meeting. At the meeting they discussed problems related to teacher training. The participants agreed that a final solution could only be expected from the establishment of an institute based on the model of the École Normale Supérieure.
In addition, it was planned to increase the duration of teacher training to four years and to include a practising year; furthermore, they considered it necessary to change the order of teacher assessment (Ladányi 2008: 23).
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a year later the mathematics seminar had also been launched. However, these practical studies did not solve the problem of teacher training, as over the time the emphasis in the courses was rather on scholar training. In addition, as a result of the conceptual debate, the relationship between the university leadership and the teacher training institute became greatly aggravated.
Nothing proves the bad relationship better than Loránd Eötvös’s proposal made in 1878, according to which the institute should have been merged into the university’s organisational framework and the training of teachers transformed to become primarily a scholarly training.
However, the Minister stated that he would leave the autonomy of the teacher training insti-tute until the establishment of the aforementioned boarding school (Németh 2005a: 213).
Thus, the dual institutional system of teacher training remained unchanged and the situation did not change considerably until the mid-1890s.
Act XXX of 1883 (the secondary school law) was passed after long negotiations with the legislative body. The law provided state supervision rights in all secondary schools in the country. The provision set out two types of secondary education institutions: the grammar school and the secondary school of sciences. Legislation precisely defined the conditions for obtaining a teacher’s qualification: each teacher trainee student had to study their subject for four years, then they had to attend a one-year practical training and then pass a teacher examination before the teacher-examination committee. As a result, obtaining a secondary school teacher qualification in the country became uniform, which was a significant step in the development of the secondary school teaching profession.50 However, the legislator still did not eliminate the double institutional system within teacher training, since the student had to pass the teacher examination at the university (cf. Mann 1993: 50–51).
The teachers themselves felt the need to introduce changes to teacher training, as on 11 October 1885 the National Union of Secondary School Teachers submitted a memorandum to the minister, in which representatives of the body suggested that, along with the teacher training institute, a boarding school for students should be created. According to their idea, university studies would have been supplemented with practical and theoretical lectures held by the teachers of the boarding school, thereby remedying the shortcomings of university education. In addition, it was also suggested that prospective students should also learn the manners and social customs of educated societal groups (Ladányi 2008: 28–29). Many elements of their draft were incorporated into the operating principles of the boarding school that was established a decade later.
By 1888, there were 179 secondary schools in the country (151 grammar schools and 28 secondary schools of sciences) with 42,619 pupils and 2913 teachers. As a result of retire-ments as of the 1870s and the level of qualification required by Act XXX of 1883 and the increase in the number of secondary schools, by the 1890s there was a severe shortage of teachers, which put a heavy burden on the educational elite. Presumably, the fact that this issue became acute may have played a role in the final settlement of teacher training (Keller 2010: 190; Felkai and 1988: 679).
With the adoption of the Remuneration Act in 1893 (Act IV of 1893), the social position of secondary school teachers also changed. According to the law, directors and teachers of
50 Articles 60–70 of Act XXX of 1883.
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grammar schools and secondary schools of sciences were classified into the 9–4th remu-neration categories. Teachers could start their career as a substitute lecturer in the 9th remuneration category; while only secondary school directors could be appointed into the 6th remuneration category (Keller 2010: 188). As career entrants they received an annual salary of 1,200 forints,51 which could be supplemented with a housing allowance in the value of 200-400 forints and towards the end of their career their salary could reach up to 1,800 forints. The salary of the heads of institutes ranged between 1,400 and 2,400 forints. Their salary and the occupied social position were the same as those of the ministry’s support staff, district judges, royal prosecutors and police chiefs (ibid. 188–189). Based on their ranks and prestige, they belonged to the middle class, most of them were addressed as tekintetes – public officials and workers not classified elsewhere – while a smaller part of them rose to the order of upper class addressed as nagyságos (Kende–Kovács 2011b: 179–182).
Image 2: Loránd Eötvös in 1894
51 With regard to the use of currencies, I would like to note here that according to Act XVIII of 1892 the gold crown was introduced in both states of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The exchange rate of the forint and the crown was as follows: two crowns were exchanged for one forint (Act XVIII of 1892). According to Article 2 of Act XXXVI of 1899, from 1 January 1900 calculation in crowns was introduced in state, municipal and communal institutions. In everyday life, this was becoming widespread only slowly, thus in the period of dualism the sources often provide the value of payment both in forints and crowns. Since a mixed use of currencies was common even within one document, the solution I chose was that in my dissertation I used the denominations used by the sources. In the sources that were produced after 1927, this duality disappears as it was then that pengo was introduced (Romsics 2004: 157).
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