Page:Alice Riggs Hunt - Facts About Communist Hungary (1919).djvu/32

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removed intervening fences, so that it is an open village for the children. Doctors and nurses accompany the children and later on I expect to do it on a more extensive scale, by placing the children in peasant families for their holidays."

VALUE OF WOMEN TEACHERS.

Fogarissi, one of the People's Commissary for Education, and a former student at the Sorbonne and follower of the French Philosopher Bergson, has placed the women teachers in the first category of highest paid workers, as he says under the former regime they were very badly paid. "The women teachers now get the highest salary which the best physical workers get," said Mr. Fogarissi. "They therefore have no more pecuniary troubles to handicap them in their work. For a year before the revolution the teachers were organized, because of their great misery, and they have all been assimilated into the teachers organization since October, so that there is concerted action, and many teachers are members of the Budapest Soviet. We have removed reactionary professors from their posts, because we do not want modified ideas taught, but their salaries are paid until we can place them as librarians, or in other suitable positions. at present we are restricting the method of teaching, but later when the system has been thoroughly changed the teachers will have absolute freedom.

"We have experimental schools in the method of teaching, and have stopped the study of law, as it is based on the old capitalist system. I am now organizing a new university on the lines advocated by Marx and Engels for a workers' university, and we are already using the building of the law school for preliminary classes. This university will give not only practical knowledge, but will train workers to take the leadership in the Soviets. The students will be accepted on the recommendation of their trade unions and will be paid while studying, with a subsidy of two hundred crowns a week, and will be exempt from other work. Some students will study two hours a day and work four hours a day, thus actually making the products of their chosen trade while in school. The subsidy eliminates the need for child labour to supplement the family income."