(CZ) Východiska pro pojetí právní výchovy na základních a středních školách
(EN) Starting Points for the Conception of Law Education at Elementary and Secondary Schools

Law education forms an organic part of the system of communist education of the young generation. The condition of success in forming legal consciousness is the social adaptation of children and young people, voluntary and conscious subordination of the individual to the moral and legal norms of the socialist society. The underlying harmony of legal and moral norms under socialism makes it possible for the requirements of law to be changed into inner regulators of behaviour and to become gradually merged with moral regulators. Formation of the socialist law consciousness as an inner regulator of behaviour and actions is the crucial task of law education at elementary and secondary schools. But in law education, too, the school must integrate its educational influence with that of the family and other social organizations. With regard to the possibility of adverse influences of the social environment in which some pupils are still living, law education has also the character of reeducation. Formation of individual law consciousness as an inner regulator of the individual’s activities cannot be only a matter of cognition, knowledge of the legal norm does not preclude unlawful behaviour. It is essential to understand the usefulness of the socialist legal order and to indentify oneself with its principles. It is only when the attitude to legal norms and priciples becomes positive and emotional that the condition is fulfilled for the transformation of the knowledge acquired into inner conviction, on the basis of which the legal norms and principles become the inner regulator interest orientation, a criterion for the appraisal of other people’s and one’s own behaviour. Therefore, acquisition of legal knowledge must be accompanied by that of socialist interhuman relations in practical activities, in the confrontation of individual purposefulness and social significance of these activities. The efficiency of law education is therefore dependent on the level of pupils involvement in social relationships starting with the pupil’s entry into the first year of the elementary school, on socialist collective education.
Possitive motivation of the pupil’s activity as to goal and performance, following up the development of his needs and interests, leads pupils to identify themselves with the class collective, there is a parallel educational influence if the teachers and the clajs collective, of social and group norms. The possibility of selfrealization in this collective prevents the pupils from seeking compensation for any possible failures in compensatory, undesirable activities, which may have an unsocial or even anti-social character.