Učitelé nižších škol v době reforem a osvícenství
Elementary School Teachers in the Age of Reform and Enlightenment

Summary/Abstract: In the present text I have attempted to describe the profession of elementary school teacher and the changes it underwent in the last quarter of the 18th century. At that time, the education of the majority of children between the ages of six and twelve or thirteen was mostly in the hands of village schoolmasters, and these are my primary focus. Following the reform of the education system by Maria Teresa, teachers in Bohemia and Moravia were trained predominantly in what were known as preparanda at the Normal School in Prague. Their training differed from that of their predecessors in that their knowledge was now tested in examinations, with greater emphasis on teaching methods and closer supervision. Drawing on lists of teacher training graduates and other sources, I  have analysed how many graduated every year and under what conditions, what textbooks they later used in the classroom, and the official view of pedagogy at that time. From those lists I was able to conclude that graduates who only spoke Czech ended up teaching only in small Czech-medium village schools. By looking at certain individual teachers more closely (such as the composer Jakub Jan Ryba, the pastor Tomáš Juren and several members of the Vlach family of teachers from Boleslav), my aim was to describe in outline the career of these “Czech” village schoolmasters, their motivation, level of knowledge, and deduce what they probably taught. From 1787 on, they were subject to inspection by regional school commissioners. I focussed on the first sixteen of these (one for each region), noting in particular how they were selected, their duties and aims. For it is they who were the guarantors of the new school system and the disseminators of the new thinking. As a result of the reforms, mandatory training and more exacting standards, elementary school teachers were able to improve their social standing and prestige. This meant that by the end of the 18th century they had become an important part of the emerging Czech-speaking elite.

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