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Czechoslovakia EDUCATION
Czechoslovakia has a tradition of academic and scholarly
endeavor in the mainstream of European thought and a history of
higher education dating from the Middle Ages. Charles University
was founded in Prague in 1348, and the Academia Istropolitana was
founded in Bratislava in 1465. In the First Republic, education
was the chief instrument for dealing with ethnic diversity.
Perhaps in no other aspect of public life did Czechoslovakia more
effectively address the disparities among Czechs, Slovaks,
Hungarians, Ukrainians, and Germans. Eight years of compulsory
education in the native language of each ethnic minority did much
to raise literacy rates, particularly among Slovaks and
Ukrainians. An expanded program of vocational education increased
the technical skills of the country's growing industrial labor
force. Some disparities remained, however. Germans and Czechs
predominated disproportionately in secondary schools and
universities. In the Czech lands compulsory education, even in
rural areas, had begun nearly half a century before the advent of
the republic. Prosperous farmers and even cottagers and tenants
had a long history of boarding their children in towns or cities
for secondary, vocational, and higher education. Despite regional
and ethnic imbalances, Czechoslovakia entered the socialist era
with a literate, even highly educated, populace.
Education under KSC rule has a history of periodic reforms
(often attempting to fit the Soviet model) and efforts to
maintain ideological purity within schools. At the same time,
higher education has been a reward for political compliance. By
the mid-1970s, the historical disparity in educational resources
between the Czech lands and Slovakia had been largely redressed.
A certain equity in educational opportunity was achieved, partly
through the concerted efforts of policy makers and partly through
the vicissitudes of normalization.
The Czechoslovak education system has four basic levels:
nursery and kindergarten; a compulsory, nine-year primary cycle;
various kinds of secondary schools; and a variety of institutions
of higher education. Education is compulsory between the ages of
six and sixteen. In 1974-75 planners began an education reform,
shortening the primary cycle from nine to eight years and
standardizing curricula within the secondary- school system. The
state financed education, and all textbooks and instructional
material below the university level were free.
Secondary schools included gymnasiums, stressing general
education and preparation for higher education, and vocational
schools, which emphasized technical training; both were four-year
programs. A highly developed apprenticeship program and a system
of secondary vocational/professional programs were attached to
specific industries or industrial plants. In both secondary and
higher education, provision was made for workers to attend
evening study in combination with work-release time.
In 1985 there were 36 universities or university-level
institutions of higher education, comprising 110 faculties; 23
were located in the Czech Socialist Republic, and 13 were located
in the Slovak Socialist Republic. The mid-1970s reform shortened
the course of study in most fields from five to four years. A
1980 law on higher education increased the control of the Czech
and Slovak ministries of education over universities and
technical colleges. Postgraduate study involved three to six
years of study. Faculties could exist within a university system
or as independent entities (as in the case of the six theological
faculties under the direction of both republics' ministries of
culture, or educational faculties sometimes administered directly
by the republics' ministries of education). Educational
enrollment and admissions have been delicate matters during the
socialist era. Virtually everyone attended primary school, and a
majority of those of secondary-school age attended some kind of
specialized training or a gymnasium (see
table 6, Appendix A).
Beyond this, however, the questions surrounding university
admissions (and who attends secondary schools and who becomes an
apprentice) took on political overtones. In the 1950s the
children of political prisoners, well-to-do farmers, or known
adherents of one or another religion were victims of the party's
discriminatory admissions policies.
Youngsters of working-class or peasant background ostensibly
had preference over those of other socioeconomic groups. However,
a look at students' backgrounds during the 1950s and 1960s
reveals that in no year did children of workers or peasants
constitute a majority of those in institutions of higher
education. Precise estimates vary, but through the mid-1960s
workers' families gained an average of one-third of the admission
slots, peasants a mere 10 percent, and "others" nearly 60
percent. The proletariat fared better in Slovakia, where nearly
half of those with secondary school or university degrees came
from workers' or peasants' families.
The regime made intensive efforts to improve the educational
status of women in the 1970s. The number of women who completed a
course of higher education jumped by 93 percent between 1970 and
1980 (for men the increase was 48 percent). Although women
continued to cluster in such traditionally female areas of
employment as health and teaching, their enrollment in many
secondary schools outstripped that of men. Women have accounted
for 40 percent of university enrollment since the mid-1960s. In
the 1985-86 school year, this figure was 43 percent.
In 1971 the regime announced that "The selection of
applicants must clearly be political in character. . . . We make
no secret of the fact that we want to do this at the schools in a
manner that will guarantee that future graduates will be
supporters of socialism and that they will place their knowledge
at the service of socialist society." This was the "principled
class approach," a complex set of criteria that purportedly
refected a student's "talent, interest in the chosen field, class
origins, civic and moral considerations, social and political
activism of the parents, and the result of the admission
examination." In practice, class background and parents'
political activities outweighed all other factors. Children of
dissidents, of those in political disfavor, or of open adherents
of a religious sect were denied admission to higher education in
favor of children whose parents were party members or who were of
proletarian origin.
Amnesty International reported in 1980 that institutions
ranked applicants according to the following criteria: students
whose parents were both KSC members, children of farmers or
workers, and those with one parent a KSC member. Students who
failed to meet any of these conditions were considered last.
Children of dissidents were effectively disqualified. The system
allowed for some manipulation; a member of the intelligentsia
without a political blot on his or her record might have taken a
job as a worker temporarily to permit his child a claim to
proletarian status. There were charges as well of bribes and
corruption surrounding university admissions. Whatever the
mechanism involved, the social composition of the student body
shifted in the mid-1970s; roughly half of all students in higher
education were from workers' or farmers' families.
Charter 77 protested discrimination in educational admissions
based on parents' political activity; there was some indication
by the late 1970s that, if parental sins could still be visited
on the children, at least questions concerning their parents'
past and present political affiliations would be less blatant.
Whether or not politicizing university admissions ensured that
graduates would be "supporters of socialism" could be debated.
However, it is evident that in controlling university admissions
the regime knew how to ensure acquiescence on the part of most
Czechoslovak citizens. If a moderately secure livelihood and a
reasonable standard of living were the regime's "carrots,"
excluding children of dissidents from higher education was one of
its more formidable "sticks."
* * *
English-language material on contemporary Czechoslovak
society is limited. The Czechoslovak government periodically
publishes the Statistical Survey of Czechoslovakia, a
summary of the annual Statisticka rocenka CSSR, which
contains a wide variety of statistical information. It also
publishes a glossy monthly, Czechoslovak Life, available
in several languages, which offers a view of life in the
republic, albeit through rose-colored glasses.
Roy E.H. Mellor's Eastern Europe provides good
background information, as does Joseph Rothschild's East
Central Europe Between the Two World Wars. Robert W. Dean's
Nationalism and Political Change in Eastern Europe and
Stanislav J. Kirschbaum's "Slovak Nationalism in Socialist
Czechoslovakia" both provide insight into Czech-Slovak relations
in the 1970s. Jaroslav Krejci's Social Change and
Stratification in Postwar Czechoslovakia assesses
socioeconomic relations between the two republics from early in
the post-World War II era until the mid-1970s.
The eventful late 1960s and the 1970s are reviewed by
Vladimir V. Kusine in Political Groupings in the Czechoslovak
Reform Movement, From Dubcek to Charter 77, and "Challenge to
Normalcy: Political Opposition in Czechoslovakia, 1968-77," and
also by Otto Ulc, in Politics in Czechoslovakia and "Some
Aspects of Czechoslovak Society since 1968." Ota Sik's
Czechoslovakia: The Bureaucratic Economy and Radoslav
Selucky's Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe: Political
Background and Economic Significance, both works by former
Czechoslovak officials purged during "normalization," offer
analyses of the problems that gave impetus to the reform
movement. Women under Communism, by Barbara Wolfe Jancar,
"Women in East European Socialist Countries" by Jarmila L.A.
Horna, and "Women's Labour Participation in Czechoslovakia since
World War II" by Alena Heitlinger describe the role of women in
Czechoslovak society.
Developments affecting Czechoslovakia's dissidents in the
late 1970s and early 1980s are reviewed by O. Sojka in "The
Bounds of Silence," H. Gordon Skilling in "Charter 77 and the
Musical Underground," and Charles Sawyer in "Writing on the
Party's Terms." Jiri Otava's "Religious Freedom in
Czechoslovakia" and Peter A. Toma and Milan J. Reban's "Church-
State Schism in Czechoslovakia," review church-state relations
and detail some of the difficulties that believers face in
communist Czechoslovakia. (For further information and complete
citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of August 1987
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