Az „oláh fiúk”. Román diákok magyar középiskolákban (1867–1914)
The “Wallachian Boys”: Romanian Students in Hungarian Secondary Schools (1867–1914)

Summary/Abstract: During the decades of Dualism less than half of the Romanian secondary school students in Hungary attended Hungarian language secondary schools. Most of them were children of intellectual families, and most of the Romanian national middle class had learned Hungarian in Hungarian secondary schools. However, many of them were born peasant, and the Hungarian secondary schools could convince many students to enrol who otherwise wouldn’t have pursued higher education with the promise of learning the Hungarian language. This paper examines the questions pertaining to this topic from two perspectives: based on education history sources and on works of the Romanian memoire literature. Besides the self-legitimising, “Hungarianising” rhetoric of education policy, another discriminatory attitude can be identified on the Hungarian side, and it is shown through examples how the two mixed in teacher communication and the internal regulations of the schools. On the other hand, Romanian parents had ambivalent reactions to the possible ideological implications of Hungarian education. The study showcases how Hungarian secondary schools – primarily the state institutions on the non-Hungarian peripheries – attempted to close the gap between Hungarian students and the large number of students who didn’t speak Hungarian, and how educational considerations intersected with the Hungarian state’s goal of self-representation. As a final point the teaching of the Romanian language as a facultative subject in Hungarian secondary schools is also discussed.

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