The “New” Civic Education in Czechoslovakia between Pedagogical Autonomy, Political Instrumentalization, Educational Sciences and the Soviet Model (1945-1953/1960) – Transfer Analysis

Abstract

The article focuses on the development of a “new” model of civic education as one of the results of the “new” educational sciences in Czechoslovakia after 1945 and especially after 1948, when political power was concentrated in the hands of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Civic education played a fundamental role in the task of building the “new” communist man and the socialist mind of man. The article reconstructs the transformations of the concept of civic education in the years 1945-1953 (the subject of civic education was part of compulsory school education) and contextualizes it with regard to the socio-political changes after 1948 and the “model” discussion of civic education in the Soviet Union. The article analyzes the discourse and practices of civic education actors in 1945-1953 on the basis of primary sources – journals, scientific publications. Through the optic of pedagogical transfer, policy borrowing, and cross-national analysis, the processes of Sovietization of civic education in the former Czechoslovakia are discussed, including with regard to the Sovietization of educational sciences of the time.