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VIKTOR ZOLTÁN KAZAI
somewhere caught up in between these two groups. I attended clubs, participated
in the cultural life of the university, but I must admit, I also had friends with whom
we preferred to just play football and go out for a beer.
As for the lectures, I can say that most of them were simply boring. And I
don’t think much has changed since then. But I did discover some professors
from whom much could be learned, even if they didn’t have much in the way of
lecturing talent. These were, among others, Kálmán Kulcsár and Miklós Világhy.
I also specifically remember Zoltán Péteri and his excellent legal theory seminars.
The other professors were largely forgettable.
A few years on, as a young teacher, I co-authored a study with László Kéri on
small group education. What we wrote in that study on the enormous potential of
this form of education, which is largely left unexploited, we gleaned in part from
our own teaching experience. Unfortunately, seminars were generally also quite
uneventful. It was not by chance that we attended lectures at the Arts Faculty and
the Faculty of Medicine. But truth be told, students from those faculties also came
to listen to Robert Brdész teach Roman law.
V. Z. K.: When I started university in 2009, there were around 400 students
in each year. By then, we were long into the era of mass education. There were so
many of us and our schedules were so different that it was hard to forge lasting
friendships. Do you have relationships that were formed during the university years
and outlasted graduation?
K. B.: In my time it was much easier to get to know your fellow students, since
there were roughly 120-130 of us in each year. The headcount clearly mattered.
But it was the military that had a decisive influence on our relationship. Early
friendships were forged in the military and groups of friends were formed, later
joined by girlfriends during the university years. By contrast, learning groups were
less of a catalyst in building new relationships. We hardly made friends with those
who hadn't served in the military. I was lucky to have belonged to several groups of
friends already during the military, and these relationships persisted throughout
the university years. It even caused some friction when I met with other groups.
A fellowship of young teachers
V. Z. K.: Following graduation, you stayed on at your alma mater to teach. To what
degree was university teaching enmeshed with ideology at the time? Was there any
palpable political pressure on lecturers? In other words: to what level was freedom
of education guaranteed?
K.B.: What's certain is that there was no central political control over university
education. Nor did I ever have the feeling that anyone interfered with education
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