(CZ) K některým teoretickým otázkám pojetí prvního stupně základní školy
(EN) On Some Theoretical Questions Concerning the Conception of Junior Elementary School

On 1st September 1976 the first-year classes of all elementary schools introduced a new conception of the first stage of children’s education provided by a four-year Junior elementary school. The problems involved are complex, and their theoretical solutions are being further developed. The question of continuing democratisation and humanisation of the school is connected with the elaboration of the theory of the small-sized village school, whose development necessarily tends to stabilise a school of two classes comprising four years. This school model can, by grouping first-year and second-year pupils in class one and third and fourth-year pupils in class two, create optimal conditions for the realization of a new conception of junior elementary school and achieve very good educational results. This presupposes a systematic development of pupils’ activity and independence; activity is understood to be a form of self-realisation of the pupils’ personalities, and pupils’ independent work is looked upon as the creation of various pedagogical and didactic situations in which the pupil wants to, may, and is able to, work independently. The two above-mentioned requirements are necessarily connected with the need for a newly conceived elaboration of the theory of teaching methods at Junior elementary school, the choice of efficient methods being an act of the teacher’s creative approach. Elaboration of modern didactics for the studies of future junior elementary school teachers at pedagogical faculties must not be delayed.