Formal Education and Latin in the Context of Secondary School Reform in the Period of the First Czechoslovak Republic

Abstract

The study presents a little-known debate about Latin, which took place in the context of secondary school reform in the First Czechoslovak Republic. Many opponents of classical languages questioned the traditional importance of Latin in secondary education as the main representative and bearer of classical culture. It was through the teaching of Latin that the pupil’s competences were to be shaped and developed, which could then be applied by the pupil in their everyday life. At the time, this was known as formal education. The subject of much discussion has therefore been whether the practically useless Latin has any superior importance in this respect at all, and whether this role cannot be taken over by other subjects that are more practically useful. Advocates of the classical languages have therefore attempted to champion Latin, justifying and defending this unique role of it in humanities education. The aim of this article is to try to reconstruct how Latin was perceived by different parties in terms of this importance. The paper is based on a critical study of period documents and the period press. It uses critical discourse analysis to achieve its aim. We found that answering the question of whether Latin had a special significance in the transmission of formal education was not easy. This is demonstrated by the outcome of the reform itself. There was no radical elimination of Latin, but the number of Latin lessons was reduced and it was only taught from grade 3 onwards. The focus of formal education was eventually shifted to the language of instruction. However, the reform still retained Latin as a compulsory subject, which was also to continue to impart formal education. The reform thus ended in a compromise. It highlights the ambiguous and period-specific search for an answer to the relationship between the practical and the humanistic content of education.