(CZ) Obsah vzdělání na všeobecně vzdělávacích školách v socialistických zemích
(EN) Curricula at General Education Schools in the Socialist Countries

The purpose of this article is to compare the content of education at general education schools*) in the socialist countries in the early seventies. With the help of the Party and State documents and by analysing the macro-structure of the content of education, which is to be found primarily in the curricula of general education schools, the author characterizes the application of the basic principles of socialist pedagogy in the conception of the content of general education. He shows how the aims of the communist education of a universally developed personality are projected in the conception of moral and intellectual education and form the basis of the content and structure of education at general education schools. He appraises the new, higher stage in the application of the principle of democratization in the development of the school system in the socialist countries in the period when the transition to complete secondary education for all is beginning to be put into practice. He underlines the historical significance of the introduction of general secondary education in the USSR. By analysing the areas of education and their relationships he demonstrates the efforts of socialist pedagogy for ever- increasing attention to be paid to the principle of all-round and scientific education. A socialist school teaches the fundamentals of sciences, includes manual work in its curriculum, looks after the development of artistic creativity, gives more scope to physical training. In all the socialist countries due attention is paid to the development of each individual’s interests and abilities, hobby activities are encouraged as well as the links between these activities and classroom instruction. The author touches upon some tendencies and problems of raising the quality of the content and structure of general education at the socialist school, especially as regards the unity of moral and intellectual education, the problem of polytechnical education, the problem of uniformity and differentiation, and the questions concerning the relationship of the elementary school and the secondary school. In conclusion, he characterizes the present-day and prospective ways of the further development of general education in the socialist countries, as outlined in the resolutions of the communist and workers’ parties in recent years.