(CZ) Spolupráca českých a slovenských pedagógov pri tvorbe a prebojúvaní zákona o jednotnej škole
(EN) Co-operation of Czech and Slovak Educationists in Drafting and Campaigning for the Unified School Bill

The February victory of the working people in 1948 created the conditions for the enactment of a unified state school, which for decades had been the aspiration of progressive Czech and Slovak teachers and the working people. The victorious February, 1948, paved the way for a Socialist development of education in Czechoslovakia, its democratization and the removal of the bipartite school system; it made not only full secondary education but also higher education accessible to the children of the Czechoslovak working people. Thirty years ago, on 21st April 1948, the Constituent National Assembly of the Czechoslovak Republic passed the Education Act providing for the setting up of a unified state educational system. The road which let to the passage of this Act was neither simple nor easy. On the contrary, in the years 1945—1948 the progressive forces of Czechoslovak society, headed by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, waged a bitter struggle with the Czech and Slovak bourgeoisie for a popular, democratic character of Czechoslovak education. The author describes the way Czech and Slovak educationists co-operated in drafting and campaigning for the Unified School Bill. He dwells on the situation in the Czech lands and in Slovakia, and highlights especially the leading role of Communist educationists, who were uncompromising in pushing through the educational policy of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and waged a fierce struggle with the bourgeoisie. The author underlines the historical significance of the Education Act on the basic arrangement of a unified school system Number 95/1948 seeing it in the fact that by this Act a unified school, unified education was established in Czechoslovakia for children of compulsory school age. The unified school removed once and for all the artificial barriers introduced by the bourgeoisie into the educational system, particularly into secondary education, namely dualism, the bipartite system in the education of children according to class distinctions. Further development of Czechoslovak education is unthinkable without the victorious February, 1948. Not only the Unified School Act, which the progressive Czech and Slovak educationists had fought for together, but also the subsequent Education Acts adopted in Czechoslovakia in the course of the last thirty years with the basic aim of improving and raising the quality of the Czechoslovak educational system, could not have been realized if in 1948 the Czechoslovak working class had not been victorious.