(CZ) Metodologické problémy ekonomiky vzdelania
(EN) Some Methodological Problems of the Economics of Education

The authors have made and attempt to define the subject of economics of education and methodology of investigation. They stress the specificness of the areas investigated by economics and pedagogy and point out that it is impossible to turn economics into pedagogy and vice versa. Research into the marginal space of economics and pedagogy requires a special method, which cannot be simply taken over from other sciences. The scientific method of the economics of education must be a medium, which man creates in order to make spontaneously operating objective laws and relationship between economics and pedagogy cease to operate as a reality by itself, to make it a reality which is ours and operates for us. Then the authors proceed to analysing relationships in the production process in general and especially to analysing relationships which have arisen as a result of work, manpower, working object, modern technology and education. In particular they stress the personal aspect of the production process and the place and function of the subject in it. It can be seen, in the praxeological model of the Working process. This model shows that education and training must provide for Mastering the achievements in man’s relationship to nature and thereby create conditions for its further development. The Praxeological model of a higher degree of the level of technology in the period of mechanisation of labour is so complex that the bulk of physical work is done by machinery. Therefore the original five serial couplings are joined by others in it. Especially the need for qualification of manpower is growing. In the working process man influences nature so as to accommodate it to his needs. In the educational and teaching process man influences man so as to prepare him for work and introduce him into the appropriate study of historical development. Consequently the praxeological model of the educational process is identical with the praxeological model of work. Using some factual materials the authors demonstrate that each economic and technical intervention in the educational process (cost of education) must be, from the aspect of its praxeological model, adequately reflected in the economic scene. They refer to ≫Keldys’s law≪, according to which technology must be ahead of Industry, science and education must be ahead of technology. The educational system in our education, too, must correspond to these tasks and aims. Therefore the cost of education cannot be included, from the economic point of view, in the area of social consumption, but in the area of reproduction, i. e. reproduction of the most important component of productive forces — manpower. Consequently if economico-technical structural changes in the educational system do not condition one another, their models lose their stability, i. e. constancy of certain variables, the so-called homoeostasis. Its disorder can be brought about by loss of information or its delay. The authors have tried to prove that the educational system must keep in equilibrium with the economic, scientific, cultural and sociographic systems.