(CZ) K otázce gnoseologických základů přestavby výchovně vzdělávacího systému a k jejímu společenskému významu
(EN) On the Problem of the Gnoseological Principles for the Reorganisation of the Educational System and on its Social Significance

The reorganisation of the Czechoslovak educational system just carried out is on the one hand determined socially and on the other it has its gnoseological foundations. Socially the necessity of its realization has been provoked mainly by the important role and concrete aims of the present cultural revolution — in a time when the achievement of socialism is near at hand. From some of the social /factors determinating its basic principles, those which nowadays mark out the nature of the contrast between physical labour and intellectual work, and the perspective of Its development, are most important. Gnoseologically these principles are influenced, above all, by the Marxist answer to the problem of the relation between theory and practice.
In the terms of our building of a socialist society the contrast of physical labour and Intellectual work loses the antagonistic character it had in class society, and determinative conditions for its final abolition are being created. Physical labour is waiting for its emancipation and social credit, and the workmen’s and peasants’ labour is, in accordance with the new circumstances of life resulting from the realisation of economic and social changes, gradually becoming a creative activity. Besides, the demands for the social and productive work of the workers set down by the very nature of building socialism are continuously growing. (In consequence of the pronounced character of this process, the working class has to raise its ideological maturity, and, as the class which directs the technically quite pretentious and its technical niveau continuously developing process of production it has to get command of the modern technique.)
These social facts make it necessary to build such a system of schools which would - offer the whole young generation a maximum of liberal and professional education, and, at the same time, also direct the pupil’s choice of the right form of education, for the school must act as a preparatory for the work on the solution of urgent productionary and social problems laid down by the concrete perspective of evolution. This goal can be most easily reached through a direct union of the educational activity of the school and the social and manufacturai activity of the pupils, as well as through a close neighbourhood of schools and productionary enterprises. With the fulfilment of these tasks there must obviously be connected also the instructive work of the school, the main substance of which must be the cultivation of the socialist conception of work and physical labour, and the ideological training of the young generation in the ideas of communism.
Though, the educational function of the school cannot be limited only to its influence on the younger generation. The abovementioned social conditions are yielding it much broader social tasks. The school must enable all working people to accomplish their training and it has to take an active part in the propagation of the scientific conception of the world.
These principles are in harmony with the conclusions arrived at when applying the results of the Marxist investigation of the process of the human world perception on the educational process. Ih e Marxist theory of perception has proved that practice is the starting-point for human knowledge, as well as the criterion of its truthfulness, and that the true scientific investigation of the world is possible only on the supposition that it is joint with the revolutionary struggle of the working class. And even from this can be concluded that the process of education must needs comprise some practical activity of the pupils, and that it Is necessary to draw them into public life and to unite their special training with their Ideological education In the Ideas and principles of communism.