(CZ) Ke koncepci polytechnického vzdělání a pracovní výchovy
(EN) The Conception of Polytechnical Education and Workshop Training

We consider the polytechnical character of the socialist general school the basic trait of our educational system, which is an important condition and, at the same time, the aim of the all-sided development of the socialist personality. The more intensive development of this sphere of educational work was stimulated by the resolutions of the July session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, which gave an overall critical view of the present state of polytechnical education and workshop training in our country. The most recent findings of Marxist education, mainly the work of the educationalists of the USSR and GDR, have made it possible to more accurately define the aims and the place of polytechnical education and workshop training within the broader frame of communist education. The ideas on which polytechnical education and workshop training are based gained their historical significance in the works of the Marx-Leninist classics, who considered the link of education and productive work the only method by which to educate the people to meet the versatile demands of the socialist society. The many years in which polytechnical education was developed in the Soviet Union led to many successes which are very instructive for us. A progressive form of the organization of workshop training at the municipal schools in the Soviet Union are inter-school production plants, organized by the school administrations in cooperation with industrial enterprises. In the educational system of the GDR the link of education and productive labour also holds a foremost place. Similarly as in the USSR this leads to the search for various forms of the direct participation of pupils in the socialist production industries. The first step in the implementation of workshop training in our country was the Free Socialist School of Labour In Kladno. The further polytechnical education and workshop training in Czechoslovakia did not follow a straight course, however, several successes had been gained. Only in exceptional cases, however, did pupils participate in the productive labour of adults, in the way mentioned by the founders of socialist education. We do not consider polytechnical education and workshop training to be a specialized field of education directed only towards some certain subjects or pupil’s activities. There should be no single aspect of educational activity which does not participate in the forming of the pupil’s personality from the point of view of these aims. An important place in the implementation of these aims is held by the general subjects. Workshop training is closely linked with collective education. In the special-interest activities the individual traits and interests of the pupils are much more clearly realized. Very favourable conditions for the development of the work activity of pupils are created by the all-day educational system, which enables the optimum synthesis of the best experiences reached in the CMEA countries.