Fundamental Pedagogy Jana Doležalová

15.6 Bending Nature to our Will: Pedagogy in the Hands of 
Totalitarian Ideologies 
Communism, the ideology that dominated East Europe including 
Czechoslovakia, had a vision of a better, classless society. Given the horrors of 
war, the communist idea appealed to many as the most rational alternative. Its 
ideology was based on dialectic materialism and later also by scientific atheism 
that was a rather vulgar heir of Marx’s slogan: ‘Religion is the opium of people’. 
Communist pedagogy still wanted to train man for life. Once again, it espoused 
a radically different idea of what life is. A person with communist education was 
supposed to have versatile skills and ideally was to become a perfect human 
being who is not attached to material wealth and lives in harmony with others. 
Given that communism is still in our living memory, perhaps the author is 
excused for adding a personal note. I can still well remember ‘agitation classes’ 
where our Comrade teacher explained to us, pupils of the first few grades of 
elementary schools, the meaning of the slogan ‘from each according to his 
abilities, to each according to his needs’. We were told that the then socialist 
system is only temporary. True communist would eventually take over, which in 
practice would mean that, for example, we could go to the supermarket where 
the products of the labour of our workers would be available for free to 
anybody and each person would take only what he or she needs or merits. 
There will be plenty for everybody. I remember the Comrade a song from a 
popular movie: ‘one knows something and another knows something else ... 
together they can achieve a lot ... and everybody will own everything 
together...’. In teleological terms, we could argue that it was an eschatological 
inversion of ultimate human goals. While in the pre-modern era, man aspired to 
supreme glory in the afterlife Communism promised paradise here on Earth. 
Communist education played a functional role in strengthening and upholding 
the modern faith in human progress through the power of reason and science 
6
See for example Průcha 2004.

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that would together build a better future. Yesterday we split the atom, today 
we sent Gagarin to space and tomorrow we will bend nature to our will.
Communist propaganda required a unified educational system, and unified 
socialist schooling was duly introduced. In the 1950’s, some aspects of the 
Soviet model were systematically adopted because an educated worker-
communist was ‘better’ than a complicated intellectual. The communist 
educational system was for the masses, collectivist, dogmatic, permeated by 
ideology, indoctrination and egalitarianism. ‘We are all equal’ gradually turned 
into ‘nobody is unique’. Being different was undesirable, laughed at and 
punished.
In didactic terms, this period was, to a certain degree, a return to 
Herbartism with all its accompanying problems: transmission of ready-made 
information, in some cases adulterated and filtered through the Communist 
prism; student passivity; encyclopaedic content of lessons; monologue-based 
methods; one-way communication; rigid form; teacher in the role of a worker 
‘processing’ the student, ‘filling’ or rather ‘washing’ his/her brain. Of course, 
there were numerous exceptional pedagogues who, within the constraints of 
the totalitarian regime, performed pedagogical work of high-quality. Still, these 
were exceptional cases.
The totalitarian educational system had its brighter sides, too: large-scale 
eradication of illiteracy, tolerable general level of education in the population, 
high level of factual and even encyclopaedic knowledge, absence of serious 
social problems (drug abuse, bullying, etc.), high level of discipline in some 
pedagogical institutions (pre-school, special institutions).
In terms of administration, educational reforms followed in quick succession 
but the new communist man and an advanced harmonious society were 
nowhere in to be seen. Purges of ‘reactionary’ teachers were a frequent 
occurrence. Intellectuals were put out of sight to archives and boiler room and 
suffered other forms of persecution. The flagrant failure of the communist 
project generated widespread dissatisfaction but the establishment maintained 
the pretence that everything was alright and that life in the socialist bloc was 
better than in the West. Manipulated figures served to demonstrate the 
sophistication of the socialist society. The totalitarian regime’s immorality and 
serious economic problems eventually culminated in the revolutionary events of 
1989.
It is still too early to judge the success of the post-communist period. A greater 
historical remove will be needed before we can say whether pedagogical 
practice benefited from the neoliberal paradigm. 

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