The Development of Special Defectological Pedagogy in Czechoslovakia after 1945

The author gives a critical outline of the development of special defectological pedagogy as a scientific branch after World War II in Czechoslovakia. He has decided to divide the most recent history of this branch of science into periods dividing the past twenty years into four basic stages of development. The first period (1945—1948) is characterised by the conception of the so-called Czech social pedagogy (Stampach). It was only the orientation on the Marxist conception of man and society that enabled special defectological pedagogy to be made a branch of science. Therefore the one-sided orientation on Soviet pedagogy and Soviet defectology in the second post-World War II period (1948—1953) is quite natural. What makes itself felt here is the positive influence in the first place, but also the negative influence, of the resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on what is called pedological deviations (of the year 1936) and its distorted interpretation in the years of culminating dogmatism. Further development of special pedagogy, however, is marked by the decisive significance of the Soviet discussion on the physiological teaching of I. P. Pavlov, which became the immediate source of ideas for working out an original Czechoslovak Marxist conception of defectology (Sovák). The conception of defectology based on the principles of the teaching on the higher nervous activity meant a decisive turning point and opened up a new (i. e. the third) period in the development of Czechoslovak special pedagogy (1953—1956). Finally, the fourth period of development (from the year 1956 up to the present) is characterised, above all, by gradually overcoming limitations {n special defectological pedagogy, resulting from the fact that there was only the one-sided possibility of applying exclusively Pavlov’s teaching; it means adding new aspects from the field of social psychology and/or sociology. Thus it represents the stage of development in which the crucial problem of the relation between special education and the development of the defective child is to be solved in a creative manner.