On Ss Cyril and Methodius' heritage to our contemporary school

The present text is based on my paper "Ss Cyril and Methodius' Heritage and Our Contemporary School" at the international seminar for teachers The Christian Foundations of European Culture and the Contemporary School organized by The Union of Christian Pedagogues of the Czech Republic on August 19–24, 1996 in Velehrad, and on my subsequent personal experience acquired during many years' teaching activities at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Hungary. If we wish to become acquainted with Ss Cyril-Constantine and Methodius' heritage and with its functioning in our contemporary school, we should first – at least briefly – recall the life and the missionary and teaching work of these Moravian apostles, Constantine the Philosopher and Methodius, subsequently the Christian saints Cyril and Methodius, patrons of Moravia (Bl. Pope John Paul II. also proclaimed them co-patrons of Europe, along with, inter alia, St. Boniface and Bl. Vinfrid, the patron of Teutons, ?680–754, when he was murdered); we should recall here their heritage in the domain of literature, culture/politics, and also pedagogics and didactics, in order to uncover some of the basic pedagogical and didactical means and procedures that brought our Thessalonikan brothers such excellent results; we should point to the salient features of their spiritual legacy, and its acceptance by ecclesiastical and secular circles, and should finally consider the possible activities which might be adopted today by the Christian school – its teachers as well as its students – with the help of this heritage, to improve of the present gloomy situation not only in our educational system, but also in a morally devastated society. The body of questions connected in one way or another with the christanizing activities of our apostles has been treated in many periodical publications and in book form by writers both Christian and atheist. This fact bears clear witness to its enormous and multifaceted significance. And yet there remain a series of problems not definitively resolved, and still debatable, even though sometimes of major importance, and it seems that some of them may stay veiled in obscurity.