(CZ) Několik otázek k ontologii vzdělání
(EN) Some Questions Concerning the Ontology of Education

The article proceeds from the existing discrepancy between the possibilities and functions theoretically attributed to education and the way the problems of education appear ontologically. The methodological starting point is the knowledge ) that every theoretical concept of education is only an ideal project, which is verified, one way or another, by the actual existence of education in the aggregate of anthropological categories of man. This difference between the theoretical concept of education and its ontological existence reflected in the society’s general awareness of the significance of education for man can only be investigated with great difficulty in the historical periods of the past through the history of pedagogy. But the author maintains that it also keeps aloof from the contemporary pedagogical theory, questions of the ontology of education being raised very seldom. Consequently, scientific pedagogy cannot define with sufficient accuracy the anthropological significance of education resulting from educational processes, i. e. the real significance of education for the life of man and for human self-realization. Pedagogy pays no attention to changes going on in the world of today and disregards especially the fact ' that education today finds it very difficult to seek and maintain its former human integrity and is becoming more and more markedly one-sided, science-obsessed or even simply institutionally-manipulatory training of man for some life functions (especially for professional qualifications), but is unable to enter the contemporary man’s consciousness as an integral human phenomenon. Today’s education, the author points out, serves predominantly other phenomena (e. g. science, technology, social institutionalization etc.) but is unable to make its own humanizing contribution to human reality. The author remarks that this fact is reflected, outside the field of pedagogy, especially by the younger generations, and not only by those groups of young people whose programme is to turn away from education (the hippies and the like) but also by university students in many European countries who realize the inadequacy, utilitarianism and poor anthropological basis of education offered by present-day educational concepts. The author points out that the ontological problems and discrepancies in education will continue to grow and reach a crisis stage unless pedagogy, as a scientific theory, succeeds in solving the current problem of democratizing education and getting under control the ever-increasing amount of information by selection and, above all, achieving the balance between the utilitarian, professional training of young people for work and the mission of education as a component aiming at the humanization of man, as a stimulus and contribution to human self-realization and self-fulfilment. This will be impossible, the author says, if education is confined to reproducing the registration and communication of facts dealing with other phenomena, e. g. science and technology, without being able to contribute to the anthropological consciousness of man from endogenous sources of its own, i. e. to find it’s most intrinsic and autonomous sense of human existence.