SCHOOL ORGANIZATION. – Between 1918 and 1938, the school system was divided into Czech, Slovak, German, Hungarian, Polish, and Ruthenian sectors. COMENIUS’s ideas (v.) did not form the foundation of education in its entirety, since religious education, the cornerstone of COMENIUS’s system, was reduced to a secondary and non-compulsory subject. A gap thus arose, which it was thought could be filled by the teaching of “civic living doctrine,” intended to form the moral and political character of pupils in the first three grades of school. There was no single textbook for this subject, and wide freedom was granted in the choice of material to be taught. The study of experimental psychology was encouraged, and an “Institute of Human Labor” was created to investigate the effectiveness of selection methods in secondary schools. The secondary school was meant to select the future ruling class while also shaping character. To gain clearer insight into the pupil’s character, three-day camps were established in Prague and Brno, where the pupil was examined from all sides. Attempts were made to determine pure inclinations through psycho-technical tests.
Prague hosted a Ukrainian University for exiled Ukrainians. Mukáčevo, Užhorod, and Malý Berezny were centers of the Uniate Church, which aimed to educate intellectuals and clergy who would one day promote the rebirth of the Ukrainian people in Russia and Poland. The school was not to lose contact with the family, and so “student committees” and “parents’ councils” were instituted; to maintain contact with the world of manual labor, the latter became a principal subject in the first two grades of school.
Between 1945 and 1949, the school abandoned its previous direction to become increasingly a politically partisan school. Communist doctrine gained ever greater ground. Education was popularized, the Russian language was introduced at all levels of schooling, a total renewal of school textbooks was envisaged, and the reprinting of ancient texts was only provisional. Particular care was given to preschool education, which was divided into crèches for children from six weeks to three years and kindergartens for children from three to seven years. Compulsory schooling was extended to the age of fifteen (