The Teachers’ Left and the Teaching Proffesion during the Depression Period in Czechoslovakia

From the so-called Reparation Act (1922), whereby the parity of teachers with Civil Servants was renewed, the teachers had to face a constant pressure on their material situation. They waged an especially hard struggle in defence of their salaries during the depression period in the early thirties. The teaching profession as a whole did reject the drastic austerity measures unanimously and with determination, but owing to organisational disunity, which corresponded roughly to differences in the political and ideological orientation of the teachers’ organisations, they were incapable of effective defence. The m ajori^ of teachers placed great hopes in me niblic Employees’ Executive, which acted as a spokesman for Civil Servants in questions of salaries and Mchich took over the defence of teachers’ salaries, too. After its failure the teachers transferred their activity to the newly established „Action for Democratic Co-operation“, which proclaimed as its aim to work for a revival of democracy, political and public life. The teachers’ left, on the other hand, adopted a critical attitude to these tactics, advocated independent action by teachers and a broader social base of their defensive struggle, rejected illusively conceived revival of democracy and the hopes placed in it In the numerous discussions that were taking place the teachers’ left gave a Marxist inteipretation of the questions raised. Under the impression of failure a deeper differentiation in views took place in this struggle, but there was also an apparent shift to the left on some questions and a kind of rapprochement between the teachers’ left and that section of the teaching profession whose views and emotions were in line with the official government policy, and this was especiallv true of the younger generation of teachers. The unsuccessful struggle of the teaching profession was thus dso becoming a school of political thinking, the development of which was gready influenced by the teachers’ left.