(CZ) K základům problematiky plynulého přechodu žáků z 5. do 6. ročníku
(EN) On the Problem of a Smooth Transition of Pupils from the Fifth to the Sixth Year of the Basic Nine-Year School

The uniform basis of our educational system is the compulsory Basic Nine-Year School. The age peculiarities of children from six to fifteen years of age make it necessary even for this comprehensive school to be subdivided into different stages. So far it has been divided into two stages with different systems of instruction, and that is just what gives rise to a certain contradiction between the continuity of the physical and mental development of the child on the one hand, and the differentiation of the educational work into stages on the other hand. Each stage of education has its own specific character, which is reflected in the content, methods and means of instruction. An orientation research has confirmed the experience that the specific characteristic features of each stage manifest a strong tendency to remain unchanged throughout the entire stage, and that certain traditional processes of work are formed which are influenced ¡most distinctly by the level of the pupils’age.
In the first, stage of the Nine-Year School it is the elementary classes that form the most expressive working component, which results in methods of work and educational requirements as to pupils being transferred from the lower classes up to the fifth class. In the second stage it is the components used mainly from the seventh to the ninth class that prevail in the teachers’work and become the basis traditional working processes at this stage. Thus there is a contradictory didactic transposition in the two stages. This brings about sharp differences in the work of both teacher and pupil at each stage, which sometimes interfere with the whole educational process when pupils pass from the first to the second stage. The longer each stage of education, the more persistent and the more deeply entrenched become the traditional processes of work.
The system under which the pupils have the same class teacher for a period of five year appears as an obstacle to a smooth transition of pupils from the fifth to the sixth year. Psychology also shows that in the first five years there appear two distinct phases of development: elementary (1st do 3rd year) and intermediate (4th and 5th year). The pattern of the educational system in the Nine-Year School should be made to correspond to these successive stages o f ' development. The 4th and the 5th year ought to provide a distinct transition to the system of instruction In special subjects by introducing semi-specialised instruction and this transitional stage might also Include the 6th year with partly specialised Instruction. In this way the Nine-Year School would be subdivided into three stages, which would prevent the formation oi long-term traditional processes of work.