(CZ) Příspěvek k výzkumu učebnic
(EN) Příspěvek k výzkumu učebnic

The article sums up the results of an examination of the text of the textbook "Dějiny starověku" (A Hiçtory of the Old Age) published by the SNP (State Pedagogical Publishmg House) in 1954 and used during the 19M—55 school-year. At the beginnmg of the article the methodological approach to the set-out task is explained on the basis of the speciiical features of the textbook, the function of the teaching of history at school and the party conception of didactical principles which depend upon their arrangement according o the marxist theory of reflexions. Partiality in the textbook guarantees its real scientific value and has to be not only in its subject matter but also in its didactical elaboration. From the point of partiality every didactical principle gets new specific features: the conception should include all typical phenomena out o f a 11 spheres of the historical reality. The principle of apperception assumes that the text teaches the pupils to woik consciously with single facts — exposes the main features of historical facts and generalises them (in contrast to the textbooks of an objectivistical conception of history wherein the main features of all facts have been neglècted so that the pupils could not succeed in reaching generalising ideas). The systematic order of the textbook consists in its selection of historical facts and also in their generalisation so that there are no gaps which could misrepresent the correlations between historical facts; therefore it is necessary to mark out in the textbook the sphere of facts the pupils are able to acquire during one year.
We have examined the textbook from these points of view. The starting-point for the analysis of the textbook and the examination of the pupils’ knowledge have been notions expressing the basic historical principles. As the analysis of the text of the textbook, completed by the experiences of the examination, shows the text of the textbook lacks in sufficient clearness and there is no systematical generalisation of facts turned into fundamental historical facts; this enables the pupils learning consciously to comprehend the principles of the historical development. A test of the pupils’ knowledge has proved the disproportion of the subject matter in relation to the development of the pupils themselves. At the same time there was grasped that the children are deeply interested in concrete details, e. g. in the historical development of the production, in interesting descriptions by means of narratives, as in the description of the material culture of the past, in dramatic actions, in an action centred round one character, etc., but we have learned that no abstraction is uncomprehendable for them if they are led from concrete facts to common ones.
We have proved that for an ideological, partial elaboration of the textbook it is necessary to enable the children to learn to know the historical reality as thoroughly as possible. Therefore it is necessary to choose only the fundamental subject-matter, to state the sphere of facts which is for eleven-year children understandable. Narrations and descriptions of concrete details have to explain the most important facts which are indispensable in the general relation of characteristics and deductions containing the main principles of the social development.