János Rácz

János Rácz (born August 29, 1919 in Budapest ; † March 18, 2005 ibid) was a Hungarian mathematician , teacher and author . In 1963 he was the first to introduce the mathematics- specialized classes in Hungary . His textbooks are the basic material in many schools.

Life

His career as a teacher began as a schoolboy , because he liked to give his classmates tutoring - including mathematics. Instead of working at the university , he chose the grammar school as his educational establishment, as the contact with the students is much more personal there, and so the influence is higher and the methods of education are more diverse.

From 1946 on he worked as a teacher. After his early years in Szentes , Tatabánya and Székesfehérvár , he continued his career from 1957 at the Szent István Gimnázium in Budapest until the end of his life in 2005. His specialty was geometry .

In 1963 he founded the special classes (Hungarian: "matematika-tagozat"), which had mathematics as a focus in the curriculum. He also founded the school's mathematics study group , which he managed himself. For national competitions and for the International Mathematical Youth Olympiad , he prepared his students carefully and with extraordinary effort, which always took excellent places.

According to the opinions of his students, he had logical educational methods tailored to people and always got the most out of his students. The most outstanding students today are represented as leaders in math , economics, and computer science .

He himself received a single scholarship to Switzerland, which was difficult to come by, partly because of the political situation at the time. He did not get a scholarship for his son to go to England. He often criticized this injustice.

Since 1969 he was the external senior educator at the University of ELTE and made enormous contributions to teacher training. He was the author of numerous textbooks, many of which he wrote for the mathematically specific classes, as well as an exercise book for specialist groups. Several of his articles have been published. He regularly held useful advanced training demonstrations, several times at the László Rátz's walking meetings .

His educational method was just as unique as he was himself. The new material was also presented as a series of tasks by his students, he just said the tasks and helped at the specific points. The subject matter was practically demonstrated from student to student. For every important formula that you did not know, you immediately got the worst grade, a 1 (corresponds to 6 in Germany). If you didn't know something but could deduce it, that wasn't a problem. In the same way, however, you could also earn a 5, i.e. the best grade. He had several favorite assignments in which you could collect several grades at once (in the best case always fives). If you got a 1, you mostly had to go back to your seat and another student could take his role. On a 1 you could collect a 5 again in the next moment, you noticed that everything was based on the knowledge of the respective person. It also happened that a number of students had to go back to the place with a 1 when doing an assignment in the same place. You got so many of the firsts and fives that other teachers usually found them unbelievable or prescriptive. If you had a lot of ones, you could have them crossed out all at once with a good questioning. So it came about that the class register in mathematics at Rácz looked more colorful than any other. He himself also had his own small class register in which he entered the grades, using his own method: from α = 1 (German 6) to ε = 5 (German 1).

These hours were also much more emotional than the rest. If you didn't know something important or you made a big mistake, Rácz's voice kept getting louder until he screamed or pounded on the blackboard with a clenched fist without any aggressiveness. This gave him the attention and respect he needed, knowing that he wasn't upset because of who the student was, but only because of the mistake you made.

From the important formulas, which you absolutely had to know by heart (in order not to get a 1), the students developed the Rácz know-it-all - which was also constantly passed on to the lower classes. Rácz had invented many formulas himself and cannot be found in any other book. Most of the time, they served as an improvement, a simplification of a well-known formula or simply for better arithmetic.

You were allowed to present your own solutions to the tasks, and he always memorized the best solutions for a task together with the name of the student and the year. If you then came up with a solution and someone before him had already solved it in the same way, at the end the comment always came: Yes, that is Wassel Robi's solution from 1968.

Outside of class, he was always there for the students, protecting them no matter what kind of nonsense they had been up to.

He loved the very early morning hours that started at 7:00 a.m. His lessons always started on time, he always calculated his way to the classroom so that he stood up to the gong on the classroom door. Five minutes before the end of the lesson, he always presented the events of the previous day (mostly from politics) from his point of view, always insisting on logic in his argumentation.

Another often repeated statement from him was that he did not have a calculator and would only buy one as soon as the calculator could calculate faster than him. Here the technology was meant, so until you know what you want to type and then type it in - by then he had long known the result. This demonstrated once again his extraordinary memory and numeracy. His calculation methods were always based on logic, which he always taught his students to swap the actual difficult tasks for simpler but identical ones (easy example for the technique of the train of thought: 98 + 17 = (100-2) +17 = 100 + 15 ). He gave the best example himself with the complicated calculation of the number π or e, in which the students were even allowed to use pocket calculators for the intermediate calculations.

He himself was a very educated man whose knowledge far exceeded the average. He had an extraordinary knowledge of literature , history , physics and mathematics . He said that on the daily train trips from Székesfehérvár to school, he spent hours (several hours) with his friends and colleagues reciting memorized poems by their favorite poets; they never finished before the end of the line.

However, the "Az ember tragédiája" (Human tragedy) by Imre Madách , which was his favorite piece and from which he always recited in mathematics lessons , had priority over all literary works .

It often happened that he was substituting for a sick teacher, regardless of the teacher's subject. Unprepared, he still gave the best and most interesting history, literature and of course math lessons as a substitute, so that the students did not have to catch up. The students were either flabbergasted or didn't notice anything, because an hour like that went like this: He came in, asked where the subject matter was and continued at the same moment as if it were an hour like any other, mostly standing and rather in some kind of conversation.

Even in his old age he often worked on the computer , wrote mathematical programs, and gave his students tasks to be solved on the computer.

His high level of intelligence in mathematics was again noticeable in 2001, when he was finally looked up with an unsolved problem and was finally able to solve it. In his solution, he promptly looked for the places that, in his opinion, high school students could also solve, and immediately presented them as a task in the Hungarian mathematical competition magazine KöMaL . Several other tasks by him can also be found here.

Until 2003 he managed the timetable for the entire school all by himself and out of his head. In a year other teachers tried to do this, but failed.

He has received several awards , including the renowned "Beke ManóEmlékdíj", the "Apáczai-díj" and the lifetime achievement award "Rátz Tanár Úr Életműdíj 2004". János Rácz is rightly well known as a pedagogue in Hungary .

Since 1963 he has taught all special math classes with no exception for 41 years. His lessons were mostly double lessons.

He was married and had several children.

Honors

• 1987: Apáczai-Csere János díj
• 2004: Beke Manó Emlékdíj
• 2004: Rátz Tanár Úr Életműdíj

Quotes

• "Mathematics is one of the subjects in which the student can be right about his teacher."

• (Orig. Hungarian: "A matematika az egyik olyan tantárgy, ahol a gyereknek igenis igaza lehet a tanárával szemben." )

Fonts

• Matematika feladatok - ötletek - megoldások I. (Középiskolásoknak - egyetemistáknak). Tankönyvkiadó Vállalat, 1990, ISBN 963-18-2892-1 .
• Matematics. A hatévfolyamú gimnázium 1-2., 3-4., 5-6. osztálya. SZ and SZ Kft.

Web links

• Website of the Szent István Gimnázium
• Article by Szent István Gimnázium on János Rácz