(CZ) K otázce kritérií pro hodnocení činnosti dětského hnutí
(EN) The Question of Criteria for Appraising the Activities of Children’s Movement

Children’s movements of the present-day world are a very complex structure and operate in very complicated social contexts. What is therefore of extraordinary importance for their further development is the appraisal of the effectiveness of their real influence on the given part of the population, which is the only thing that permits to judge their actual success. Such an approach requires the elaboration of adequate criteria for the evaluation of their activities and effectiveness. It is a complicated question which so far has not been solved either in our country or abroad, even though its solution is urgently needed because of the present- -day requirement to make the process of the children’s movement activities more effective. Each criterion of evaluation has its quantitative and qualitative aspect, regarding both society and individual members. In the past the external, quantitative indices were overestimated, but their significance is substantial if they are correctly incorporated into the whole group of criteria. But in the recent period it was the inner factors that came to be overestimated in our country, although the optimal solution is a synthesis of the two aspects. Individual criteria of evaluation do not permit a general analysis; a complex analysis therefore requires the application of a whole set of these criteria. They include especially: — the width and dynamic of the membership itself and with regard to potential members, which enables us to give a more precise answer to the outstanding question as to whether the movement should be based on a mass organization or a so-called selective one; — the structure of the membership from the viewpoint of the degree of activity and aspiration level of the members with regard to the movement; — the extent of the participation of members as well as non-members of the organization in various activities organized by it; — the quantity, the aim and the level of material and spiritual values created in these activities by members or non- -members of the organization; — the value system laid down by the organization and presented to its members, the inner structure of this system, the ways and the measure of attaining it, and especially its real aim judged from the viewpoint of a progressive, socialist development of society. It is here, where philosophy and pedagogy meet, that the basic orientation of the movement is formed, and also the criteria of its appraisal proceeding from the Marxist view of the development of society and from the Marxist concept of man. Children’s movement provides space for the application of the factors of socialization as well as for the individualization of its members, and it is essential that individual aspects of both these factors should be further analysed in greater detail from the viewpoint of the perspectives of our society. The basic criterion, even though not the only one, in appraising the activities and the effectiveness of the children’s movement appears to be the measure of success in implementing its educational aims, which lead to developing various aspects of the child’s personality in the spirit of a progressive, socialist development of society while consistently respecting the specific conditions and possibilities of the movement itself as well as the needs and interests of its individual members, constituting a smaller or a greater part of the given population.