(CZ) K teoretickým a metodologickým otázkám prognóz dalšího vývoje socialistické školy
(EN) The Theoretical and Methodological Problems of Prognoses of the Further Development of the Socialist School

Prognoses of the school of the future proceeding methodologically from the Marxist-Leninist theory are essential to enable a socialist society to confront its present- day plans and intentions with the more remote objectives of its development and the prospects for the development of its educational system. Without these prognoses it would be impossible for the current conceptions and programmes to lay the foundations of those elements and relationships which characterize the school of the future; nor would it be possible to create the conditions for the present-day project of the school to allow a gradual development of these new, progressive elements. The article clarifies the pre-requisites for a correct methodological approach to the prognoses of education. As to the basic prognostic methods, special attention is paid to exploratory methods as the fundamental condition of scientific approach and of the relative reliability of scientific forecasting in general and prognoses of education in particular. It is recommended that exploratory methods should be supplemented and combined with normative prognoses allowing us, whole respecting the objective tendencies and laws governing the development, to include normatively our target ideas and intentions in the shaping of educational models. As regards the basic methods of the prognostics of education, the author pays greatest attention to the methods of extrapolation and modelling, which can be combined^ in forecasting the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the development of the educational system. He also suggests the possibilities of using the structural system approach in drawing up the methodology of prognostic work. In conclusion, the author deals with the fundamental theoretical questions of the prognoses of education, which are simultaneously methodologically significant as well, and points out the main areas of problems which are being dealt with by the research into the prospective system of education in Czechoslovakia.