(CZ) K problematice výchovy vytrvalosti
(EN) The Problems Involved in Training Perseverance

Perseverance is one of the important personality traits; the ways of its formation, content and focussing affect, among other things, man’s attitudes and efficiency. The socialist society sets educational theory and practice, among other tasks, also the task of educating young people in such a way as to make them acquire this quality. But the formulation of this social requirement is too general. For educational purposes it is necessary to analyse perseverance and show how it should toe 1) understood, 2) formed in the course of the educational process. The most common explanation of the term ≫perseverance≪ is given by semantics. In educational literature we meet with references to perseverance in connection with the training of will-power. The requirements as to its content have been different not only at various stages of social development, but are different even among contemporary authors. Lack of uniformity in terminology and differences in conception occur also in the psychological interpretation of perseverance. The study of specialist literature and many years of research into this problem at secondary general schools has led us to the following conception of perseverance: It is a deduced quality, which cannot toe inquired into separately, but in broader connections together with qualities including volitional, character and moral traits, from the complex manner of their formation in social interaction. Perseverance is dependent on motivation, on the level of habits, on the general psychological level, on the state of health of each individual. The character of obstacles and their strength has certain limits, which are not the same for each person. Perseverance can be shaped only in the course of activities. Therefore in training perseverance pedagogy has to deal with the following:
1) the aim of action, 2) the accessibility of the aim, 3) the course of action, especially the character of obstacles and ways of overcoming them, 4) the observance of inter-individual differences among persons as to their efficiency and education.