Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol3, 1919.djvu/352

 school graduates could enter the secondary school without an obstacle.

2. The secondary school will wind up general preparation in the sixth year, so that the last years might be specially devoted to preparation either for the university or for a definite practical calling.

3. Gymnasia and “real schools” will have the same number of grades. Perhaps we shall have combination secondary schools, with different courses in the higher grades, but united in one system, so that young people in smaller cities would not be compelled to choose either the gymnasium or “real school” according to the type that happened to be in their city.

5. More emphasis will be laid on mother-tongue, on folk lore and domestic history. In Czech schools instruction will be given in Slav tongues and English, in addition to modern languages heretofore taught. More attention will be paid to practical exercises in laboratories and workshops. Manual work and domestic science will find a place in the secondary school curriculum, and physical training will be given more time.

Thus secondary education in the Czechoslovak Republic is to be reformed from the very foundation and made modern, in order that the young citizens of the Republic might be prepared for the manifold problems which they will have to face.

4. Co-education will not be opposed, but at the same time the state will strengthen girls’ secondary schools.

That branch of the Russian nation living south of the Carpathian Mountains has been attached by the peace conference to the Czechoslovak Republic. Our nation has not maintained, up to the present time, any political or intellectual relations with this Slav element, although the language of this fragment of the Russian nation is very close to the Czech language. Nearly a hundred years ago, in 1828, a Polish writer, Ondřej Kucharski, noted in the course of his travels through Hungary a striking resemblance between the Czech tongue and the “Rusňack” tongue of the district of Marmaroš.

How does it happen that the Russians, or, as they call themselves, the Rusins of the former kingdom of Hungary, became attached to the Czechoslovak Republic? Is it the Czech imperialism which annexed a strange ethnic element, or is it the Entente which has generously presented the Uhro-Rusins to the Czechoslovak Republic? It is neither.

The union of the Rusins with our Republic has occurred through their own decision. Magyar oppression has lain so heavily upon them, both in the political and in the economic and national spheres, that after the disruption of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy it became out of question to incorporate them in the new Magyar state. It was thought that they would desire to attach themselves to Russia. But since Russia even before Austria-Hungary suffered an eclipse, there was nothing left for the Rusins south of the Carpathians except to ask for independence or else join a neighboring state. They did not dare accept the first solution to found their own state, because they did not feel strong enough. Among neighboring nations the Ukrainians are their nearest kinsmen, and one would have expected that the Rusins south of the mountains would attach themselves to the Ukrainian state north of the range, a state that was then in the process of formation. But the Rusins of Hungary do not favor Ukrainian nationalism and prefer to emphasize their unity with the great Russian nation. Between the years 1849 and 1867 an attempt was made to create a written Uhro-Rusin literature in a language imitating the Russin and called “jazyčije”. This artificial language was the cause of the lack of national consciousness among the Russian people south of the Carpathian Mountains. This was really a national misfortune, for there was thus no efficient means to combat systematic magyarization. For that matter, intellectual leaders who could arrest magyarization are very rare among the Rusins.