Campaign for the Realization of Work Education in Educational Experiments in the Twenties

In the introductory section of her study the author deals with the origin and the Mission of experimental schools in Czechoslovakia after the First World War find draws special attention to the fact that the main reason why these schools came into being was the endeavour of progressive teachers to build up a school for proletarian children, who in the existing bourgeois school institutions received neither proper upbringing nor adequate education. She examines the contents and methods of work in the Kladno Independent Socialist School conducted by František Naprstek, where physical labour was an organic part of the educational process. Similarly mental work was linked with physical labour at the House of Childhood at Krnsko, which had such educationists as Švarc, Krch and Havranek on its staff. The Experimental Labour School at Holešovice, founded by Jaroslav Sedlak and Karel Žitny in 1922, is considered by the author to be the most elaborate and thoughtful experiment to introduce labour into the educational programme. The authors of the above-mentioned experiments devoted their attention to physical labour first of all as to a character- training medium. They came to the conclusion that the process of upbringing and education linked with physical labour results in the mutually compensating operation of physical labour and rational activities, with labour playing a stimulating role for the development of all aspects of the child’s personality.