(CZ) Aktuální otázky formování socialistického vědomí mladé generace
(EN) Topical questions concerning the formation of the young generation's socialist consciousness

The study presents an analysis of influences affecting the consciousness of the young generation, and this analysis concentrates especially on some influences that are negative from the viewpoint of forming the socialist consciousness. In addition, it is also an analysis of some questions concerning the formation of young people’s immunity to these negative influences as well as the formation of their active inner offensiveness against unfavourable influences. The problems involved were analysed on a theoretical plane with the support of some researches carried out empirically. Attention is focused on work with contradictions in the youth education process.
In analysing the process of the formalion of young people’s consciousness we must respect the category of contradiction. Contradictions in young people’s reality and their consciousness. We must at the same time realize that we are working with young people who are already fully formed by the socialist reality. Problems in their level of consciousness cannot be reduced to the intricate com plex of past influences alone, but the character of present-day contradictions must also be taken into account. A young person is formed by all the positive influences of the socialist reality as well as by its contradictions and problems. And in our educational work with the youth this fact is not always respected with sufficient emphasis, which leads to undermining the process of organized education.
An analysis is made in the study of the notions of socialist consciousness, social consciousness, and individual consciousness, all on the basis of contem porary literature dealing with these questions. Then it is pointed out that the content of some young people’s consciousness does not have a socialist charactcr, which is a consequence of the unity between the socialist reality and the value system being violated, of individual experience in the form ation and the functioning of the personality’s value system being divorced from scientific knowledge.
The study goes on to analyse the unity between the scientific knowledge of reality and a person’s values, especially those of a young person of today. What is pointed out is the education system’s failure to respect the reality of “pupils’” life, failure to respect the fact thgt the pupil is also form ed by other elements of reality than the educational system alone. Thereby the education sometimes becomes formal. The complexity of social reality creates problem s in the deep kowledge of this reality and thus its understanding in the higher stages of m an’s development. For the time being, however, some value orientations have already been formed which subsequently also influence the process of getting to know social realities. Hence the necessity of working more intensively with those media which are of particular significance in influencing the values of a young person — that is family, youth group, collective, active w ork in the society. A second im portant point is to push through, at an earlier age and with greater emphasis, a high quality of the rational development of personality as a prerequisite for a high standard in m astering the social reality and the complex relationships which represent it. Early developm ent of the level of theoretical thinking usable for orientation in social conditions also means simultaneous o rg anization of acquisition of social experience.
In this connection an analysis is made of the pupil’s role and other parallel roles which children and young people play in their lives. In the educational system it is also necessary to work with other roles than that of pupil when working with children and young people, and thus increase the value of the influence of other elements of the environm ent which is exerced through the intermediary of other roles than that of pupil. This becomes all the more im portant as school attendance is being extended. It involves making more use pupils’ individual experience in school work, equipping the school with first-rate diagnostic media for a continual link-up of educational work with the results achieved, enhancing world outlook education at school, developing the sociopolitical activity of young people together with their assuming the responsibility for the solution of society’s problems, developing and utilizing the synthetising role of the school and especially that of classroom instruction.