Kornis Gyula: Education in Hungary Studies of the International Institute of Teachesrs College (New York, 1932)
Part Two: Secondary education
SECONDARY EDUCATION 77 ideal, which cannot be realized in' the school; it leads to an overloading of the curriculum, to superficiality, and to a complete diffusion of the mind, and hinders the development of the power to penetrate deeply and independently into particular fields. The différentiation of secondary schools was supported also by education'al psychology, which indicates that an individual should attend schools where the cultural values are in harmony with his endowments and leanings. The authors of the new law were also influenced by the fact that all progress means différentiation and that a System approximates perfection in proportion to the n'umber of organs which exist to take care of the individual functions. Thus the school System must be differentiated in order that the various needs of social life and the different capacities of individuals may find their proper type of school. The uniformity of the national subjects in the various types gives sufficient assurance of a uniformity in the essentials of national culture. Uniformity and identity in the general cultural subjects, however, would ultimately lead to cultural poverty and loss of color. The new law sets up also the aim of a general cultural éducation in secondary schools, yet not from the point of view of content, but rather from that of form. The task of each type is first of all to train its students for independent intellectual work, that is, to bring about an aptitude and maturity of mind that will enable a student readily to become familiär with any field of specialization. The curricula of the Gymnasium, Realgymnasium, and the Real school, which we shall discuss later, would seem to serve this end. In determining the various types of secondary schools the reform had in mind the following points of view: 1. There is need above all for a secondary school which will perpetuate the intensive and vital consciousness of the historical pást. A State will nevcr be cultured if it breaks with the historical past. The school of this historical culture is the humanist Gymnasium, in which the Greek and Latin languages and literatures occupy the central position. 2. There is need, furthermore, for a type of secondary school which does not go back to the original source of modem culture but reaches back with a more restricted historical perspective only to Latin culture, becoming, as it were, a reduced Gym-