Czech Pedagogy and School Reform Efforts in the Inter-War Period

The class and social aspects of dem ocratization of education in the efforts to reform the Czech school and pedagogy in the inter-w ar period are characterized by antagonistic viewpoints, with the revolutionary Marx’s viewpoint opposing the reform ist conception of Masaryk. Tendencies to rebuild the bourgeois school in a socialists way by means of a redical reform were rare. The situation was complicated by revisionist tendencies which steered Social Democracy away from revolutionary changes so that it became a party of social reforms.
The bourgeois democracy in the first republic clearly pro-western, exploiting the disunity in the labour movement, was well aw are of the class character of education, of the close links between education and the area of ideology and politics. It is characteristic that the first republic took over the A ustro-H ungarian organization of education completely, including the Education Act of 1869, and calls for a new Education Act did not meet with any response in the camp of the bourgeoisie or with any support in the Social Democratic Party, which, as one of the parties forming the then coahtion government, controlled the Ministry of Education.
The complexity of struggles for a new school in the variegated field of pedagogical experim ents is reflected in the characteric features and signs impressed on them by individual teachers.
It is necessary to differentiate between the official educational policy and the conscious efforts of progressive teachers seeking new means methods and forms of putting the reform efforts into effect.
A straightforw ard criticism of the bourgeois school was the Free socialist work school at Kladno, which went beyond the fram ework Czech reformism and became the first all-in socialist school.