Politologie a výchova k občanství
Political Science and Civic Education

Summary/Abstract: Civic education has gone through a very deep transformation since the fall of the communism; nevertheless, it seems that democratic political culture, civic culture (comparable with that of Western Europe) has not fully developed yet in the Czech society. The author asks the question whether the main problem is not underestimation of the personal experience of the students, who cannot live democracy through in the school environment. In fact, during the transformation of civic education on basic and secondary schools after the fall of communism the attention was paid on new information and knowledge, critical thinking, values etc. but not on the rules, procedures, rule of law, that is the basic skills were developed only in formal way. The pilot research in several basic and secondary schools dealing with school self-governance showed strong underestimation of these aspects that are crucial for any democratic society. The author concludes that there is necessary to strengthen the cooperation of civic education teachers with political scientists and to prepare deeper empirical research of the situation in the Czech schools, to compare the results with “old” EU countries and to propose methodology how to change the education.

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