The Changes of Education for Kindergarten Teachers in Czech Lands and Czechoslovakia from 1890’s to 1990 in the Context of Social Movements

1. Introduction

This study is based in part on a thorough review of older and contemporary literature, and above all on our own study of primary archival sources. The author recently published a study on this issue concerning the university education of kindergarten teachers at Palacký University in Olomouc between 1946 and 1950. In the same year, he published another study on Professor R. Tesařová, who founded a seminar on preschool education at Masaryk University in Brno. Among the most recent scholarly works, we must first mention the monumental three-volume monograph by Opravilová and Uhlířová from 2017 and 2021. In just four pages, it outlines the education of kindergarten teachers in the Czech lands from the 1830s to 1989. In addition, there is a study from 2004 published in a collective anthology edited by Spilková. Another important collective monograph on the history of preschool education in the Czech lands was published in 2012 by Šmelová and Rýdl. There are also older studies and monographs with numerous references to the institutional forms and content of kindergarten teacher education by Fottová, Somr, Krejčí, and others. Kádner’s 1929 monograph is important for researching Czech education before World War I. The archival sources on which the study is based are located in the Charles University Archives in Prague, the Palacký University Archives in Olomouc, the National Archives in Prague, and the state district archives in Přerov.

The content of the study is structured chronologically, that is, from the nineteenth century to 1990. Using historical and pedagogical research methods, we seek not only to reconstruct the changes in the model of kindergarten teacher education, but also to understand the possibilities and limitations of the entire system of preschool care and education and the motivations of its creators. By the early 1890s at the latest, issues of modernization and democratization of education, which concerned both the school network (including kindergartens) and teacher training methods, began to attract the attention of mass social movements in Austria. In the field of education and culture, the increasingly powerful labor movement and the Christian social movement competed with each other. Jiroušek was the first to study and describe this phenomenon in the Czech lands as early as in 1903. The most significant scientific work after 1990 remains Znebejánek’s monograph from 1997.

2. The Czech lands and Slovakia in Austro: Hungarian empire (1869-1914)

The foundations of the modern network of preschool facilities in the Czech lands were laid between the late 1860s and World War I. At that time, the Czech lands (Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia) were an integral part of Austria, while Slovakia (the so-called Upper Lands) belonged to the Hungarian part of the monarchy. Therefore, both systems developed differently before 1918, also from a legislative point of view. The starting point and absolutely key moment for examining our topic were the adoption of the Education Act in Austria in 1869. The so-called Hasner Act primarily codified the establishment and operation of teacher training colleges, which provided education to future teachers for compulsory schools (elementary schools) for the next 40 years. Teacher training colleges were divided according to gender (boys, girls) but also according to the language of instruction (German, Czech). The law also allowed for the establishment of institutions by various founders—the state, private associations, or churches. Studies at teacher training colleges lasted 4 years, with the final year focused on practical skills training at elementary schools. Graduates of teacher training colleges completed their studies with the so-called maturity exam, that is, a regular high school diploma. After the adoption of Hasner’s law, the education of nursery school teachers (later kindergarten teachers) was directly linked to the development of women’s teacher training colleges, as future nursery school teachers had to complete 1-year courses there. Women’s teacher training colleges therefore had the so-called training kindergartens. Unlike graduates of teacher training colleges, teachers, or nannies, did not have a proper secondary education. A certificate of completion of a 1-year course at a teacher training college was sufficient for them to practice their profession.

Following Hasner’s laws, a separate law for kindergartens was first enacted in Austria in 1872. It should be added that in Hungary, the establishment and operation of kindergartens was regulated by a law from 1891. Kindergartens were gradually established in the Austrian provinces from the 1840s onward. Their network expanded at a faster pace from the 1890s onward in the context of accelerating industrialization, which mainly affected Lower Austria and the Czech lands. They were mostly established by various foundations or religious orders. These associations financed both the operation of the buildings and the costs associated with the staff, which consisted of a teacher or nanny and auxiliary staff (cook, cleaner). The provincial school administration supervised compliance with the principles of kindergarten operation, appointed the director, and monitored their internal operation. Before the collapse of Austria-Hungary, there were over 1150 kindergartens in the Austrian part of the monarchy (i.e., in a total of 15 historical lands), in which around 2600 teachers cared for more than 82,000 children. The Czech lands were the most developed in terms of the density of the kindergarten network, as in 1911 there were 411 kindergartens employing 1031 nursery school teachers. In the Hungarian part, a total of 1220 kindergartens were registered at the beginning of the twentieth century, but we do not know how many of them were in Slovakia [1].

Since the 1880s, teachers and intellectuals in Austria had been increasingly critical of the inadequate and ossified system of training primary school teachers at teacher training colleges. One of the main critics was Gustav Adolf Lindner (1828–1887), a Czech-German professor of pedagogy at the Czech University in Prague. He reproached the institutes for the superficiality and backwardness of their content and teaching methods in relation to the development of education and culture. Lindner was probably the first university professor to openly call for proper university education for primary school teachers [2]. The issue of improving the quality of education, that is, extending the compulsory education of kindergarten teachers, only became relevant between 1900 and 1914. At that time, teachers’ associations began to be organized in Austria (including the Czech lands) according to nationality (German, Czech) and type of school. At its 5th congress in 1908, the Association of Czech Nursery School Teachers demanded that the compulsory course for future nursery school teachers at teacher training colleges be extended from 1 to 2 years [3]. The government did not comply with this demand until 1914.

As mentioned in the introduction, from the early 1890s, culture and education in Austria became the focus of two powerful social movements. The process of industrialization and urbanization affected the Czech lands more than any of the 15 historical lands of the Austrian part of the monarchy. It was accompanied by a massive growth in the working class, which inevitably caused strong tensions in society. The goal of the movement, whose spokesperson was the Czech Social Democratic Party and the associated labor unions, was the socialization of society through social legislation [4]. A milestone in the gradual fulfillment of partial goals was the enactment of universal suffrage for men in 1907. The primary goal of the movement was to enact social and health insurance and improve the living conditions of workers and their families. Since, according to Marxist ideology, education and culture fall within the sphere of the so-called superstructure, and these issues were not a priority for the movement, at least not until World War I.

Education, on the other hand, was at the center of attention of the Christian social movement, which received a strong impetus after the publication of the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891. This movement had a strong defensive character in the cultural struggle not only against Marxism but also against liberalism. A dense network of charitable, sports, educational, and cultural associations, whose common feature was a shared sense of belonging and strong Christian solidarity, served as a bulwark against the indoctrination of children from working-class families with Marxism. Thanks to the material support of the Church, church and religious schools were able to provide considerable financial and material support to children and pupils from socially disadvantaged families. Teachers—priests and nuns—tried to instill the faith and value system of the Roman Catholic religion in children and students from an early age until graduation, thereby maintaining the stability of the traditional social order in the monarchy. It was no coincidence that the Church also placed great emphasis on the preparation and training of future kindergarten teachers.

An important moment during World War I was the decision of the government in Vienna in 1917 that kindergartens and nurseries would be taken over by the Ministry of Social Welfare. Until then, this issue had been administered by the Ministry of Education (officially called the Ministry of Culture and Education). Until the end of the monarchy, German teacher training colleges (both for men and women) and German kindergartens were generally favored over their Czech counterparts in the field of primary education. Although the population ratio in the Czech lands was approximately 2:1 in favor of the Czechs, the Germans generally controlled the administration of the vast majority of towns and municipalities politically. German-controlled towns and municipalities logically preferred subsidies for German schools of all levels and for culture. In addition, the development of lower German education was taken care of by the active German association Schulverein, which was founded in 1880. The association enjoyed great support from the German-Austrian nationalist intelligentsia. Czech secondary and lower education, including kindergartens, was financially dependent on the Czech patriotic association Ústřední Matice česká (also founded in 1880), which was dependent on financial donations from Czechs and Czech companies [5]. Despite cultural rivalry between Czechs and Germans, which unfortunately also affected education, thanks to the activities of both school associations, illiteracy was completely eliminated in the Czech lands by the end of the nineteenth century. This certainly cannot be said of some provinces in Hungary, including Slovakia and Carpathian Ukraine.

3. The kindergartens and their teachers in interwar Czechoslovakia

After its establishment in the fall of 1918, Czechoslovakia essentially adopted the Austrian legislative system, but with certain modifications. Teachers of all types of schools and nursery school teachers were no longer subject to the so-called celibacy; they could marry and have their own families.

The Austrian government’s decision that kindergartens fell under the jurisdiction of social welfare rather than education remained in force. This fact objectively complicated efforts to improve the system of teacher training in Czechoslovakia until 1946. What was significant was that political influence shifted fundamentally in favor of the Czechs, who gradually took control of a large number of towns and villages in the interior. German primary education, including kindergartens, remained numerically dominant only in the border areas (the so-called Sudetenland), where Germans often represented up to 90% of the population. Overall, education at all levels, from kindergartens through primary and secondary schools to universities, continued to be divided into Czech and German according to the language of instruction. In the Silesian region of Těšín, with its Polish national minority, primary schools and kindergartens with Polish as the language of instruction could be established. In Slovakia, Hungarian schools fell into the category of minority schools, and in Transcarpathian Ukraine, Rusyn schools. The most significant progress was undoubtedly the establishment of two new universities—Masaryk University in Brno and Comenius University in Bratislava. Thus, in the interwar period, there were two Czech universities in the country—in Prague and Brno, one Slovak university in Bratislava, and one German university in Prague. In addition, there were four technical universities—Czech and German in Prague and Czech and German in Brno. Although the Czech and German systems of education developed in parallel, they were qualitatively equivalent and very similar in terms of curriculum. Secondary school and grammar school teachers were trained at the philosophy and natural science faculties of all four universities.

A significant number of teacher training colleges and their affiliated nursery schools remained under the administration of the Roman Catholic Church. Throughout the interwar period, there was considerable cultural rivalry between secular and church-run teacher training colleges. In state-run teacher training colleges, most subjects were taught in a modern liberal approach, and future teachers were encouraged to respect the ideals of freedom, democracy, and humanism. In contrast, in church institutions, especially those for women, subjects were taught by nuns, who placed greater emphasis on religious instruction and tended to interpret all subjects in a conservative spirit and in accordance with papal social encyclicals.

The publication of the papal encyclical Qadragessimo Anno in 1931 provided a strong impetus for Roman Catholic social and educational doctrine. The core of the encyclical is the view that conflicts between social classes, which, according to Marxism will be resolved by the victory of the working class, can be overcome by a new class-based order. It should be added that only a very small part of Czech society began to sympathize with the fascist social movement inspired by social reforms in Italy in the mid-1920s. Much therefore depended on whether future kindergarten teachers decided to complete the compulsory 2-year course at a state teacher training college or a church one.

Soon after the establishment of the republic, various teachers’ associations began to organize and become active in the Czech environment, bringing together teachers according to individual levels of education. From a sociological point of view, we could define these associations as public pressure groups [6]. Their goal was to continue the socialization measures that had emerged from the workers’ social movement before World War I. In July 1920, teachers of all levels of education (except universities) from all over Czechoslovakia held a large demonstration congress in Prague, at which a specific demand was made for new faculties to be established at the universities in Prague, Brno, and Bratislava for the training of teachers for national schools. The second main demand was to enable graduates of teacher training colleges to further improve their qualifications at the new faculties while working and thus obtain a proper university education [2]. There was also a demand for the introduction of university studies in preschool education for kindergarten teachers [7]. The aim of the surge in activity by teachers’ associations and organizations was to influence the wording of the new education bill, which was expected to be passed in 1921 or 1922. At the beginning of the 1920s, some university professors working at Charles University in Prague and Masaryk University in Brno began to actively campaign for the upgrading of the education of national and nursery school teachers to university level. These were primarily Otakar Kádner, Otokar Chlup, and Václav Příhoda. Chlup and Kádner were involved in the founding of the private School of Higher Pedagogical Studies in Prague and Brno, as well as the Institute for Experimental Pedagogy and Psychology. These professors and other experts, mostly from universities and scientific societies, provided free courses at these schools on weekends for interested teachers from national and nursery schools. Due to the great interest of volunteers, additional branches were established in several large cities [2]. But the adoption of the so-called Small School Act in July 1922 caused literal disillusionment among primary school teachers. The only change was the possibility of transforming into the so-called coeducational institutions, which meant that male and female teacher training colleges could be merged into a single institution. Primary school teachers once again only needed a high school diploma to practice their profession. As a result, nothing significant changed in the training of kindergarten teachers, who still had to complete a 2-year course at a teacher training college. So, just as before World War I, kindergarten teachers did not have a high school diploma, but only a certificate of completion of a 2-year course. The reasons why the Czechoslovak government refused to accept the legitimate demands made at the teachers’ congress in 1920 until the end of the 1930s were purely financial. The establishment of three new faculties of education at universities in Prague, Brno, and Bratislava was simply not possible for budgetary reasons. Similarly, the government could not afford to raise the education of national school teachers to university level because it would not be able to increase their salaries once they started working. The same would apply to kindergarten teachers if they were required to have completed secondary education rather than just a 2-year course. In that case, their demands for higher salaries would have an impact on municipal and city budgets.

Representatives of professional associations of kindergarten teachers were also unwilling to accept the failure of the minor school law of 1922. In addition to attending courses at the School of Higher Pedagogical Studies, they organized various educational seminars, built study libraries, and were in constant contact with professors of pedagogy and psychology at universities. In 1933, the Nursery School Teachers’ Study Room was established in Prague, which, among other things, participated in the development of model curricula for nursery schools [3]. The scientific and research activities and publications of Kádner, Chlup, Příhoda, and several other experts in school pedagogy, psychology, and other special disciplines were key to the future form and content of education in the 1920s and 1930s. Not only university experts, but also the wider Czech pedagogical community in the interwar period were very familiar with the works of Decroly, Montessori, Dewey, and other pioneers of innovative approaches to the theory and practice of preschool education. Thanks to this, a sophisticated reform concept was developed in the Czech environment as early as the 1930s, with Chlup as its main representative. Under his leadership, a new younger generation of teachers and scientists began to emerge, who joined the faculties of education after World War II.

At the end of the 1930s, on the eve of the demise of democratic Czechoslovakia, all interested experts essentially agreed that the training of primary school teachers and kindergarten teachers at teacher training colleges was no longer sustainable. They therefore proposed raising it to university level. This was to be achieved through the establishment of proper faculties of education, which would become part of universities. However, experts disagreed on how pedagogical faculties should be designed in terms of curriculum. On one side of the debate was Prof. Příhoda, who argued that pedagogical faculties should focus solely on teaching the pedagogical-psychological foundations and didactics of subjects for future teachers. Research at these faculties should therefore be limited to this area. On the other side was the opinion platform around Prof. Chlup, who argued that future teacher training faculties should be equivalent to philosophy and natural science faculties in the study of substantive social science and natural science subjects. At the same time, they should prepare students for practical work in schools in the fields of pedagogy and psychology. This set the stage for a conceptual dispute that is still being discussed, especially between philosophy and pedagogy faculties at Czech universities.

4. The education of kindergarten teachers in postwar and socialist Czechoslovakia (1945-1989)

After liberation by Allied forces in May 1945, Czechoslovakia entered a period known as the Third Republic (1945–1948). The continuity between the Third Republic and the period known as the First Republic (1918–1938) was largely symbolic. It was embodied mainly by President Beneš, who returned from exile. The first post-war government of the so-called National Front, consisting of four political parties in the Czech lands and two political parties in Slovakia, began to implement radical measures and reforms based on the so-called Košice Government Program. The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) had the greatest influence on the post-war organization of the country, striving to achieve maximum socialization of the economy and society.

Since its inception in the early 1920s, the communist movement in Czechoslovakia has been the most radical part of the spectrum of Czech political parties and movements emphasizing social issues. Even before World War II, it had created a myth that it was continuing the most progressive traditions of the Hussite revolutionary movement of the fifteenth century and the peasant uprisings of the eighteenth century. As for the labor movement of the nineteenth century, the communists claimed that they alone were consistently fighting for the interests of exploited workers. They distanced themselves from all competing forms of older and contemporary social movements, especially the Christian social movement, which was conservative in nature. Members and supporters of the communist movement considered the reform-oriented social democratic movement to be a major competitor. According to the communists, the latter was incapable of ensuring the revolutionary destruction of the normatively determined social order.

After the Communist Party won the parliamentary elections in May 1946, it gained the post of prime minister and occupied key ministries. The establishment of its totalitarian rule was then only a matter of time. One of the most significant measures was the expulsion of more than 2.5 million citizens of German nationality from Czechoslovakia, which had been approved by the Western Allies even before the end of the war. With the expulsion of Germans to the German and Austrian occupation zones, the German school system automatically ceased to exist. Compared to the pre-war situation, the size of the state was reduced—in July 1945, Czechoslovakia voluntarily renounced the territory of Transcarpathian Ukraine, which became part of the Soviet Union. Another key measure was the nationalization of banks, insurance companies, coal mines, and large industrial enterprises employing more than 200 people. The new government had to immediately begin organizing the restoration of the economy, that is, restarting all economic sectors, including agriculture. Particularly difficult was the restoration of industrial enterprises, businesses, shops, and confiscated farms in the depopulated Sudetenland.

The need to involve as many women as possible in the economy led to the need for a dense network of preschool facilities. This is directly mentioned in Chapter 15 of the Košice Government Program of April 1945: “Special attention will be paid to the establishment of future schools, particularly kindergartens for the protection of children of employed parents, as well as vocational schools for the accelerated training of technical youth” [8]. Compared to the previous situation, by 1948 the government was financing the salaries of nursery school teachers and support staff. This greatly eased the situation for municipalities and towns, which were responsible for the buildings and their operation. The so-called nationalization of the nursery school system accelerated their establishment. From an initial state of 920 kindergartens for 37,000 children in May 1945, by the end of 1948 there were already 3700 kindergartens for 150,000 children in the republic [9]. From 1947, intensive negotiations began on the transfer of kindergartens to the Ministry of Education, which was implemented in 1949.

The Ministry of Education, headed until the summer of 1946 by the communist politician Professor Zdeněk Nejedlý, was faced with the task of ensuring the needs of all levels of education, including kindergartens, as quickly as possible. At the beginning of 1946, the government decided that the study of future primary school teachers, and even kindergarten teachers, would be elevated to university level. At the same time, the government also decided to establish a new university in Olomouc called Palacký University. Faculties of education were established at all four universities—in Prague, Brno, Olomouc, and Bratislava—and were tasked with providing university education to future primary school teachers and kindergarten teachers. From the outset, the faculties of education were formally completely equal to traditional university faculties—philosophy, natural sciences, medicine, law, and theology. Each faculty was headed by a dean and vice-deans, who began to build up the teaching staff. In terms of the professional profile of the faculties of education, the concept of Professor Chlup, who became the first dean of the Faculty of Education at Charles University in Prague, was completely successful.

The status of teacher training faculties was determined by a government decree issued at the end of August 1946 [10]. The duration of study for the preschool education program was set at four semesters, that is, 2 years. However, the duration of study was temporarily reduced to just two semesters, that is, 1 year. This measure reflected the extraordinary post-war circumstances, when there was a huge shortage of qualified staff in kindergartens. The status of teacher training faculties was followed by other normative documents: provisional study regulations and provisional examination regulations. Separate specialized departments focusing on preschool education were established at all four teacher training faculties. At the Faculty of Education in Prague, this was a preschool education seminar founded by Marie Bartušková. She also worked at the Ministry of Education as the head of the kindergarten department and represented kindergarten teachers in the national Union of Education and Enlightenment Employees. In Olomouc, the Institute of Preschool Education was built from scratch by Bohumila Dostálová, who came from Prague for this purpose. She was an experienced director of one of the kindergartens in Prague, who was in contact with private educational institutions in the field of preschool education from the pre-war period. The Department of Preschool Education at the Faculty of Education of Masaryk University in Brno, headed by Associate Professor (later Professor) Růžena Tesařová, had the highest professional level. She was a top educator and scientist who was a student of Professor Chlup. At the time the seminar was founded, she already had a well-developed publishing activity based on her own research and knowledge of Western literature. Tesařová was a supporter of the so-called reform pedagogy of the pre-war period and intended to develop the curriculum of the new field based on this concept. All three founders of preschool education studies at pedagogical faculties in the Czech lands collaborated collegially and exchanged experiences. The teaching staff consisted mainly of experts working at philosophical and medical faculties.

All institutes set themselves five basic tasks: 1. to organize teaching for students and at the same time to initiate their own scientific research on all aspects of preschool education; 2. to ensure suitable working conditions for study, establish seminar libraries and collections of teaching aids, and cooperate with training kindergartens where students carried out their practical training; 3. to cooperate with institutes at philosophy and pedagogy faculties that specialized in teaching and didactics of music, art, and physical education; 4. to establish cooperation with similarly specialized institutions abroad; and 5. to organize various voluntary supplementary courses for unqualified kindergarten teachers who wanted to improve their qualifications. The content of the study program was concentrated in three main areas. The first area included subjects in the fields of psychology, pedagogy, biology, and health education. The second area included subjects related to teaching the basics and didactics of art, music, and physical education. The third area consisted of practical training at training schools and supplementary subjects, such as courses in puppet theater, children’s films, and children’s literature. It should be emphasized that all courses were taught by the best experts, usually professors or associate professors from Prague, Brno, and Bratislava. Most of them worked as visiting professors in Olomouc, as the staff was still being formed there.

Soon after the start of preschool education classes at all teacher training faculties, several fundamental problems arose. Due to the temporary and extraordinary shortening of the program to just two semesters, the students were extremely overworked and pressed for time. The weekly program consisted of 40 hours of compulsory classes. The students had only minimal time left for self-study and rest. The teachers in charge were very demanding in their requirements for the students and set the bar very high for the fulfillment of their study obligations. As a result, many students were unable to fulfill their study obligations within the given deadlines, failed their exams, and had to repeat many subjects. The main problem was the small, even minimal, number of applications to study. Although there was high interest in studying among existing kindergarten teachers, only 0.6% of them had completed secondary education with a high-school diploma. Graduates of 2-year courses at teacher training colleges did not have a high school diploma, so they could not apply to university. As a result, only 10 to 20 students enrolled in each year at all preschool education institutes at teacher training colleges, which meant that from 1946 onward, a maximum of 80 students could obtain a university qualification each year in the whole of Czechoslovakia!

The government decided to address the shortage of female students with secondary education in a unique way. All four institutes or seminars for preschool education were tasked with organizing 5-week refresher courses during the summer holidays for unqualified kindergarten teachers. It should be added that these students had to have completed basic education and at least a 2-year course for kindergarten teachers at teacher training colleges, or be graduates of 2-year schools for women’s professions. After completing the 5-week intensive course, these teachers, who still did not have a high school diploma, could enroll in the so-called extraordinary study program in preschool education at the faculties of education. During this extraordinary study program, they would take a distance learning high school diploma exam at a vocational secondary school. They would then be able to transfer to regular studies at the faculty. This extraordinary measure sparked heated controversy in academic circles, which even spread to the government. Jaroslav Stránský, Minister of Education from 1946 to 1948, who represented the National Socialist Party and was very opposed to Nejedlý’s ideas, ordered the above-described experiment with special studies for teachers without a high-school diploma to be reviewed and stopped.

After the coup d’état in Czechoslovakia at the end of February 1948, when Zdeněk Nejedlý, a communist expert on education, became Minister of Education again, the government decided to establish secondary the so-called higher social schools from the 1948/1949 school year. These schools had two branches—a social and health branch (for future qualified nurses) and an educational branch (for kindergarten teachers). Graduates of the educational branch were to enroll in teacher training colleges to study preschool education after passing their final exams. The problem, however, was that the first graduates were not expected until the early 1950s, so it took several years to solve the shortage of proper students at teacher training colleges.

The communist regime ruled Czechoslovakia for 41 long years. Immediately after coming to power, the regime initiated extensive changes affecting all areas of the state and society. Education and schooling were particularly severely distorted. After the adoption of the so-called Unified School Act in April 1948, no schools other than those established and totally controlled by the state were allowed to exist in the republic. This meant the liquidation of all church schools, including kindergartens and elementary schools. The curriculum of all schools, from elementary to higher education, was indoctrinated with the dogmas of Marxist-Leninist ideology.

All education, including nursery school, was subjected to centralization, homogenization, bureaucratization, and routinization. In contrast, the regime sought to completely eradicate elements of individualization, democratization, and free thinking from education. During the 1950s, the regime also sought to eradicate the last remnants of religion from education.

Another feature was the strengthening of compulsory Russian language instruction. All these elements had a particularly strong impact on the training of future teachers, including kindergarten teachers. Another characteristic feature was the blind copying of Soviet models of education, regardless of proven domestic practices and traditions.

Within 2 years of coming to power, the regime had managed to completely take control of all universities, removing inconvenient professors and all teachers who refused to cooperate with it. Unfortunately, the purges did not spare preschool education either. In 1950, fanatical Stalinists and careerists among the teachers at the Faculty of Education in Brno organized a smear campaign against the head of the pedagogical seminar, Tesařová. She was accused of promoting Western, that is, bourgeois, pedagogy, and of lacking respect for Soviet pedagogy. She was expelled from the faculty and had to remain in the care of psychiatrists for the rest of her life [11]. This was just one of hundreds of similar cases that took place at universities in Czechoslovakia during the late Stalinist period. In addition to the labor and social persecution of hundreds of prominent figures in Czech science and education, library collections were also subjected to revision, with objectionable titles of older Czech literature and contemporary Western, that is, bourgeois literature, being removed. The discarded titles were replaced by Soviet writings by Lenin, Makarenko, and Krupskaya. In the field of educational science, the publication of the Czech translation of Pedagogy by Kairov was considered the biggest event of the year in Czechoslovakia. For preschool education, it was mandatory to study books written by Vetlugina, Sorokina, and especially Flerina.

The Ministry of Education became a mere tool that obediently carried out orders and instructions from the highest circles of the Communist Party. The field of education, starting with kindergartens, was to serve the development of the economy. The regime needed as many women as possible to enter the workforce as part of the industrialization and collectivization of agriculture. As we have seen above, since teacher training colleges produced a maximum of only 80 preschool education graduates each year, it was decided in 1950 to abolish the program and transform secondary social schools—the educational branch—into the so-called pedagogical high schools [12].

Pedagogical secondary schools, which began teaching on September 1, 1950, were established in each of the 20 regions of Czechoslovakia at that time. There were 14 in the Czech part of the republic and 8 in Slovakia. In some cases, they were created by transforming former social and health schools—educational branches. With a few exceptions (Ostrava), social and health schools were not established in regional capitals, but in much smaller peripheral towns. In the Czech lands, for example, Stříbro, Prachatice, Boskovice, and in Slovakia, Turčanské Teplice or Spišská Nová Ves. Despite partial organizational changes, which involved a formal change in the name of these schools or a temporary reduction in the length of study from 4 to 3 years, this type of secondary school was the dominant (i.e., 95%) provider of teaching staff for kindergartens until the 1990s. The course of study lasted 4 years and was completed with a regular school-leaving examination. The curriculum set by the Ministry of Education was binding for all schools, so the only opportunity for independent activities was in the form of extracurricular clubs. Some pedagogical high schools gradually began to focus more on music, others on art. The Ministry of Education strictly stipulated that each year could have one class with a maximum of 36 students. This meant that 20 teacher training colleges would “produce” 720 graduates each year. However, the District National Committee had to provide them with accommodation in the form of a state or municipal apartment. At the same time, it was stipulated that teachers and nursery school nurses in active service could study at these specific secondary schools while working so that they too could subsequently pass their school-leaving exams.

An analysis of the curriculum for the first year of full-time study at the Pedagogical Gymnasium in Přerov shows that approximately two-thirds of the teaching content consisted of the so-called general subjects: Czech, Russian, civics, history, geography, mathematics, and natural history [State District Archive in Přerov, Secondary Pedagogical School fonds]. In the second year, the curriculum included one hour per week of physics, and in the following year, chemistry was added. Overall, however, social sciences and humanities subjects were preferred over natural sciences in terms of the number of teaching hours. The communist regime took great care to ensure that future kindergarten teachers were educated in the spirit of Marxist-Leninist ideology. The admission process served to ensure the correct political profile of the students, as the relevant District National Committee, as the main administrative body for primary and secondary education, thoroughly examined the so-called class origin of the applicants. If the parents were religious and the students attended voluntary religious education in primary school, it was almost impossible for them to be admitted to the teacher training college. One of the most powerful tools of indoctrination in the curriculum was compulsory Russian language instruction, which students had to pass in their final exams. Textbooks on civics, history, and geography were also heavily influenced by communist ideology. The curriculum also included a compulsory subject on the theory and practice of the Pioneer movement. Female students were required to spend several weeks during the summer holidays “voluntarily” helping to organize Pioneer camps for children. After completing their studies, female students could be assigned to a primary school to lead a school pioneer group as part of extracurricular activities.

School principals often stated in regular reports and communications to higher authorities, such as the school inspectorate or the education department of the District National Committee, that most female students were not interested in general subjects. Grades on report cards were therefore rather average, with usually 2 to 3 students having to repeat their final exams in the fall. The same was true for the school-leaving exam. On the other hand, students greatly enjoyed music, art, and physical education classes. Here, there was considerably more scope for the freer and more creative expression of teachers, who were often outstanding musicians and artists, indifferent to communist ideology and active in regional cultural associations outside their teaching duties [13].

After completing their studies, they were directly placed in kindergartens by order of the District National Committee. Unless they married a husband who was assigned to work in another city, teachers usually settled permanently in the place of their first job. However, the District National Committee had to provide them with accommodation in the form of a state or municipal apartment. It can be said that from the mid-1950s onward, the profession of kindergarten teacher enjoyed very solid social prestige not only among parents, but throughout society as a whole. However, social respect was not accompanied by appropriate financial remuneration, as kindergarten teachers were placed in a lower salary category than primary and secondary school teachers.

During the 1950’s, the communists undertook a series of nonsensical and chaotic school reforms, which had a particularly severe impact on primary, secondary, and higher education. In 1953, a new education law was passed, reducing the age of compulsory schooling to eight years. At the same time, the method of training primary and secondary school teachers underwent radical changes. In the same year, all teacher training colleges, which had been painstakingly built up since 1946, were formally abolished. Fortunately, these nonsensical reforms only partially affected the training of kindergarten teachers. The 1953 law merely formally renamed teacher training colleges as schools for the training of kindergarten teachers. The duration of study was reduced to 3 years, but after 3 years, students had to complete a compulsory one-year teaching internship. Nothing significant changed in the curriculum, except for the new subjects of polytechnic education and the basics of agriculture. Importantly, the subsequent Education Act of 1960 again changed compulsory schooling to nine years, so that students who enrolled in kindergarten teacher training at secondary vocational schools were a year older and therefore more mature. In addition, the duration of study at secondary vocational schools was again extended from 3 to 4 years, which remains in effect to this day.

In the early 1960s, when the new education law came into force, the number of newly established kindergartens began to increase rapidly again. The state allowed socialist enterprises and agricultural cooperatives to establish preschool facilities in addition to municipalities and cities. In agricultural areas, agricultural cooperatives could also establish the so-called children’s shelters. These differed from traditional kindergartens only in their permitted capacity of 10 to 20 children, while kindergartens had to have at least 20 children. In addition, classes for children aged 2–3, known as nurseries, could be established at kindergartens. In 1960, there were over 6600 kindergartens in Czechoslovakia, with over 17,500 teachers caring for children. In 1963, just two years later, there were already 7060 kindergartens with 20,050 teachers. Approximately 20 of them still did not have the required qualification, that is, a high-school diploma. On the other hand, the Ministry of Education was extremely satisfied that 80% of teachers were well-prepared graduates of secondary pedagogical schools. In addition, there were over 1620 small-capacity shelters in Czechoslovakia. There, children could be cared for by the so-called foster mothers, but even they were required to complete their secondary education through distance learning. Through the Ministry of Construction, the government did its utmost to build modern school infrastructure for young families as part of the mass construction of new apartments (30,000 to 40,000 new apartments per year). In addition to large-capacity so-called pavilion schools, multi-class kindergartens and nurseries were designed and built, especially in new housing estates, which met high standards in terms of safety, hygiene, and catering. The new kindergartens usually had large outdoor areas with sandboxes and playground equipment. The government’s economic technocrats were satisfied that this high-quality infrastructure enabled the majority of young women of working age to participate in the economy [14].

By 1957, however, some experts at the Ministry of Education and at certain specialized state research institutes (the Institute for Further Education of Teachers at the Ministry of Education and the Research Institute of Pedagogy in Prague and Bratislava) and at humanities faculties began to realize that the complete abolition of preschool education studies at the university level was becoming a major problem. For the first time since 1950, the matter was discussed at a meeting of the collegium of Minister of Education František Kahuda in April 1957 in connection with the preparation of an international conference on preschool Education in Prague, which was organized by the ministry in September 1957. A total of 61 experts from Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the German Democratic Republic were invited to the conference. Representatives of the Institute for Further Education of Teachers, the Pedagogical Research Institute, some district school inspectors, and one or two knowledgeable kindergarten teachers from each region spoke at the conference on behalf of Czech pedagogical science [15]. The conference prompted senior officials at the Ministry of Education to revisit the issue of the impossibility of studying preschool teaching at university level during 1958. Two officials from the preschool section, Marie Bartušková and Marie Fottová, played an important role in discussing the proposal. As already mentioned, Bartušková established the Department of Preschool Education at the Faculty of Education in Prague between 1946 and 1950. After the department was abolished, she worked at the ministry as an official in the nursery school department. The first sign of change was the ministry’s decision in the fall of 1958 to open a distance learning program in pedagogy and psychology with a focus on preschool education. The program was organized at the Pedagogical University in Prague, which had separated from Charles University in 1953. A second Pedagogical University was established in Olomouc in the same year. Both universities prepared future secondary school teachers at two faculties—social sciences and natural sciences. Although the first-year study group in this field of study numbered less than 20 students, it was a great success, helping to break down the barrier between the levels of education in nursery and primary schools [16].

A key milestone in stabilizing the system for training future teachers was 1964, when the government decided to reestablish teacher training faculties. The faculties were established on the basis of the former Pedagogical Institutes founded in 1959. In four cases (Prague, Brno, Olomouc, and Bratislava), the faculties of education were integrated into universities, thus returning everything to the state prior to their abolition in 1953. Outside of universities, completely new independent faculties of education were established from pedagogical institutes in some regional cities (Ústí nad Labem, Plzeň, České Budějovice, Hradec Králové, Košice, Banská Bystrica). The faculties gained a monopoly on the training of all teachers for 9-year elementary schools. However, none of the faculties regained the possibility of studying preschool education, as was the case in 4 university cities before 1950. During preparations for the reestablishment of the Faculty of Education at Charles University in Prague in 1963, the Pedagogical Institute in Prague opened the possibility of studying a dual major in special education and preschool education through distance learning. A year later, this program was transferred to the reestablished Faculty of Education. Until 1966, the program lasted 3 years, but after the new Higher Education Act was passed in 1966, it lasted 4 years [14]. This was undoubtedly a step in the right direction, but from the perspective of the needs of the kindergarten segment, the few dozen students were merely a drop in the ocean.

The reforms of the so-called Prague Spring in 1968 brought a strong breath of fresh air to the stiff socio-political conditions in Czechoslovakia. In January 1968, the highest representative of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was replaced. Alexander Dubček, a communist official from Slovakia who was little known in the Czech lands, took his place. Dubček and his like-minded colleagues from the Czech part of the Communist Party wanted to correct the distortions of socialism from the 1950s and initiate profound economic reforms. A breakthrough moment was the abolition of censorship, which allowed people to launch spontaneous initiatives in all areas of society.

The period of relative and temporary liberalization in 1968 was too short for Czechoslovak society to fully understand the scope and significance of the protests of the new social movements in Western Europe and the United States. It is true that the Iron Curtain was not completely impenetrable at that time, and echoes of events in the West stirred up unrest among students in some university towns in Czechoslovakia [6]. On the other hand, Czech mass media reports featured images of local students with emblems of Marx, Mao Zedong, and Che Guevara, which, after 20 years of hard life under communism, evoked feelings of skepticism and disgust in most citizens.

The Czech and Slovak intelligentsia became very active, including universities and teachers at all levels of lower education, including kindergartens. After the death of Prof. Chlup in 1965, Prof. Václav Příhoda enjoyed the greatest authority among experts in preschool education and among the vast majority of kindergarten teachers. In May 1968, in Učitelské noviny (Teachers’ Newspaper), he expressed his deep regret that after the restoration of pedagogical faculties in 1964, no concept for the higher education of kindergarten teachers had been prepared [17]. In June 1968, the professional journal Učitelské noviny (Teachers’ Newspaper) published a proposal for an “Action Program of the Ministry of Education.” One of the points clearly called for the development of a model for the renewal of higher education for kindergarten teachers [18].

The Ministry of Education began discussing a fundamental reform of kindergarten teacher training at a day-long meeting on December 21, 1968 [14]. Coincidentally, this was exactly 4 months after the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops. Nevertheless, despite the military occupation, there were still good prospects that at least some of the reforms prepared during the Prague Spring would be implemented, albeit in a moderate form. One of the arguments for resuming the study of kindergarten teachers at pedagogical faculties was the experience of the GDR and the USSR. The meeting materials mention that Humboldt University in Berlin had already launched a preschool education program in 1956. In the Soviet Union, future kindergarten teachers could study at the Department of Pedagogy of the Gercen Institute in Leningrad and at the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences in Moscow. All or almost all participants in the meeting concluded that it will be necessary to resume preschool education studies at teacher training faculties as soon as possible. At the same time, scientific centers for educational research will be established at the faculties, where a new generation of scientific aspirants will be trained.

In April 1969, with Moscow’s support, Dubček was replaced as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia by another Slovak communist politician, Gustáv Husák. This was followed by a rapid end to reforms and a tightening of the dictatorship, which did not collapse until November 1989. The most visible change compared to the period before 1968 was the new federal constitutional arrangement. The year 1968 brought autonomy to Slovakia, which in the field of education and training meant the establishment of its own government ministry. A separate Ministry of Education was also automatically established in the Czech part of the republic. As far as the prospects for nursery education are concerned, it must be acknowledged that some of the partial efforts of the reform period of 1969–1970 paid off. In February 1970, the Ministry of Education of the Czech Socialist Republic announced that, with effect from September 1970, teacher training for nursery schools would be reinstated, but only at the Faculty of Education of Charles University in Prague and the Faculty of Education of Palacký University in Olomouc [19]. Full-time study lasted 4 years, while part-time study while working lasted 5 years. Priority was to be given to graduates of secondary pedagogical schools who were to be prepared for management positions in the kindergarten hierarchy or for work in the school inspectorate. The Czech Ministry of Education considered a total of 40 graduates per year to be sufficient for the Czech lands. In July 1970, the ministry issued guidelines to both faculties on how the study program should be structured.

Studies at both faculties in Prague and Olomouc were very similar. There was no need to establish separate departments of preschool education, as teaching was provided by teachers from other departments. Specifically, these were the departments of pedagogy, psychology, and special education, plus three departments of education (music education, art education, and physical education). In addition, some subjects were taught by visiting specialists from other faculties, such as medicine (child biology, hygiene) or philosophy (psychology). In the winter semester of each academic year (except the last), students had to complete 29 to 32 hours of direct instruction. The curriculum included compulsory Russian language classes (up to 4 hours per week) and Marxism-Leninism (up to 6 hours per week). In the latter case, however, it was a complete waste of time. In the summer of 1974, the Ministry of Education specified the form of the state final exam. It consisted of an oral exam and the defense of a thesis. The oral exam consisted of three parts—pedagogical disciplines, psychology, and methodology from music education, art education, and physical education with a practical demonstration of a teaching lesson. In addition, all students were required to pass a state exam in Marxism-Leninism. This extremely unpopular exam consisted of four questions, one of which concerned the history of the domestic and international labor and communist movements [20].

Two groups of female students (twenty each), who began studying preschool education in Prague and Olomouc in 1970, could rightly consider themselves the future elite in their field. This was true for all subsequent years until the end of 1989. As part of the admission process, the regime authorities thoroughly checked whether the applicants were reliable in terms of their parents’ class and political background. Religion or undesirable political or social activity on the part of the parents during the so-called crisis years of 1968–1969 was an obstacle to admission. If the students managed to complete their studies properly, they usually followed a three- to five-year internship at a nursery school. They could then be appointed as directors or head methodologists at the education department of the District National Committee or Regional National Committee. Alternatively, they could join the district school inspection authority. In total, during the twenty years of the so-called “normalization” period, there were a maximum of 800 graduates, as the capacity of the program remained permanently limited.

5. Conclusion

Czechoslovakia experienced 40 long years of communism. Originally, a spontaneous and radical social movement, after 1948 the communist movement quickly established itself as a monolithic communist regime.

This period can be roughly divided into two halves, with the Prague Spring of 1968 in the middle. During its founding period (1948–1953), the communist regime initiated the so-called reforms in virtually all areas of the economy and society, which had a literally devastating effect, especially on education. Higher education in preschool education, which began in 1946 at four faculties of education at universities in Prague, Brno, Olomouc, and Bratislava, was abolished in 1950. The regime decided that a secondary school education completed with a school-leaving examination would suffice for kindergarten teachers. From 1950, this education was provided first by pedagogical grammar schools and later, from 1953, by pedagogical schools for the education of kindergarten teachers. Studies at these schools were strongly influenced by the mechanical adoption of Soviet content and teaching methods and were generally heavily indoctrinated with Marxist-Leninist ideology. The problem of the unavailability of higher education in the field of preschool education was first highlighted at an international conference in Prague in 1957, organized by the Ministry of Education. The participation of experts from the USSR, East Germany, and Poland contributed to the Ministry of Education’s decision in 1958 to approve the opening of a study program in pedagogy and psychology with a focus on preschool education. The program was open to one group of 20 students per year at what was then the Pedagogical University in Prague. However, the economic technocrats in the government were essentially satisfied with the status quo. In the mid-1960s, there were over 7000 kindergartens in Czechoslovakia, employing over 20,000 teachers. Ninety percent of them were graduates of secondary pedagogical schools with a high school diploma.

After approximately 10 years of existence, the regime stabilized internally by establishing a new system of institutions and bureaucracy. The education system also stabilized relatively. From the mid-1960s, pressure grew from experts in the field of preschool education for the Ministry of Education to once again address the issue of the minimal availability of higher education for kindergarten teachers. These experts were supported by various voluntary organizations of active kindergarten teachers. In May and June 1968, in the free and stimulating atmosphere of social and political reforms of the so-called Prague Spring, the ministry finally promised to address the issue and that university studies in preschool education would be resumed at pedagogical faculties. Fortunately, the end of the reforms, associated with the accession of Husák to the leadership of the Communist Party in April 1969, did not completely thwart the ministry’s plan. In 1970, preschool education studies began at the faculties of education in Prague and Olomouc. The program lasted 4 years, or five years in the distance learning format. Each faculty could accept a maximum of 20 female students per year.

As in the case of secondary education at secondary teacher training colleges, this university education was also marked by indoctrination with Marxist-Leninist ideology. Each student had to memorize basic information about Czech Hussitism, which communist ideology espoused because of its revolutionary and egalitarian nature. She also had to know all the major milestones in the history of the domestic and international labor and communist movements. In the 20 years since the restoration of this type of education, a maximum of 800 female graduates have obtained a university degree. These graduates had the opportunity to gradually rise to leading positions in the hierarchy of preschool education. However, secondary pedagogical schools remained the main backbone, stabilizing well during the 1970s and 1980s, with their graduates accounting for up to 80% of all kindergarten teachers.

The rigid and immobile system of training kindergarten teachers functioned routinely throughout the 1970s and 1980s, without opening up the slightest space for innovation in content or methodology. The effort to preserve this state of affairs forever did not prevent the regime from exploiting the rhetoric of the originally revolutionary and spontaneous social movement from which it had emerged. This situation continued until the end of the 1980s, when the communist movement was in decline not only in Czechoslovakia but throughout Europe.