Student Day

Towards the end of May, at Roosevelt High School, we have something last year called Roughrider Day, I think, which had before this time been called Campus Day, a name changed when it became associated by name and tradition to too many paddled, taped, chased, dowsed and painted ninth graders. On this day, we have an assembly to honor departing twelfth graders, and then the campus is opened up, for just this one day of the year, for talking, wandering, laughing, playing, and delight. Students play games and play music for each other, eat and sign yearbooks until they go home to a long weekend. 

Compare this to what the students at Dráva Völgye Középiskola do on their students' day: cooking competition for three hours, class against class, soccer and basketball matches, eating and strongman competitions. At the face of it, the intentions and activities are not so different. But as students here wandered in and out of the forest and built fires and whittled sticks or threw knives in the dirt or rode horse-led wagons or tractors or kicked each other in the air on mechanical swings, I thought of how teachers back home take stations around the school, guarding students and make sure none leave or misbehave, of how all music and comedy routines must be vetted, of how the bell still rings at the end of the day to evacuate the building.

I can only explain to teachers here about the litigious threat that hangs over everything in the United States, putting rounded plastic bumpers everywhere. When I watched students on the swing here, and listened to them holler and scream as they held tightly to their friends against the centrifugal force, or kicked the chairs in front of them into wider arcs, their safety tied to one serviceable but easily detached chain at their waists, I thought, no one's going to experience it in America; the closest equivalent is an expensive, heavy machine in evenly spaced seats at even speeds. And the fires, and the long walks in the woods?

In the center of the field rose a high metal hunting tower. You see wooden ones in almost any field of size around here. This one was tall. And beckoning. But here is a reason these students can build fires and carry knives and ride lightly-protected swings: With just a small sign and string at the base to say entry was forbidden, no one seemed to pay any interest to the tower. I think American teenagers would have the same urges I had. Stronger. And how does one explain all the people killed on the train tracks by Karkeek Park and Golden Gardens, anyway? Maybe Americans are not just more litigious. Maybe we really are dumber.

In any event, this was a good day. I got to know the beautiful forestry campus of our school, Középrigóc. Forestry is the oldest and most vaunted program in the school, and just one of three in the country. Almost all of its students are boys living in a stunning villa, a former hunting lodge belonging to the Széchényi family. Nearby, the school owns faculty duplexes with lovely yards. Walking around with Stephanie was peaceful and good. 

We ate deer stew boiled in a cauldron over an open flame for lunch. And I was able to view the biggest acquisition the school has ever made: a 20,000,000 forint ($100,000) candy-red tractor that arrived last October. Campus Day at Roosevelt is nice. Hallgatói Nap at Dráva Völgye Középiskola was better.