Fundamental Pedagogy Jana Doležalová

136 
Appendix 1: 
ASSIGNMENT FOR CREDIT AND EXAMINATION:
1. Summary of literature 
2. Observation 
a. during a lesson 
b. school visit 
Interest activity at school 
Extracurricular education 
3. Reading of literature: 
a) on philosophy of education 
b) on psychology of education 
c) on comparative pedagogy 
d) on moral education 
e) popular educational literature (e.g. for parents) 
f) on alternative schooling (one selected school). 
4. Visit a school (lesson at an alternative school) and describe the 
difference from the school you experienced. Read about its theoretical 
foundations and educational objectives and the manner they want to 
implement them.
 
 

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Appendix 2:
 
ESSENCE OF EDUCATION 
 
Education is part of everyone’s life and everyone encounters it both as the 
educatee and the educator. It is undertaken in family, at school, in a psychiatric 
hospital; it accompanies work, leisure time as well as cohabitation of spouses.
It is the function of life and has a variety of goals, contents and means. 
Although education has manifold forms, they have one thing in common: 
education cultivates one’s relation to the world. Jiří Kyrášek saw the essence 
of education in the shaping of one’s relation to the world
7
. If education forms 
one’s relation to the nature, society and one’s self, we must ask a question 
about the kind of this relation because we can understand it in many different 
ways depending on one’s and the society’s condition. Human beings definitely 
change the world with their very existence and activities but this is also what 
other animate beings do when they do good to their environment but may also 
destroy it. Human beings are different from animate beings in the extent to 
which they change their environment. Humans have developed means which 
can be of immense benefit for the society and themselves or totally destroy 
them.
This is why the relation of humans to the world is the crucial question of 
philosophy and pedagogy. We can simplify it by naming two, currently co-
existing extremes. According to the first extreme approach, humans are a part 
of the nature and are subjected to its laws, to the forces which are above, as 
expressed by the will of gods in antique Greece or Christianity or oriental 
philosophy. According to the other extreme, humans are the master of the 
nature (and hence, also of other people). We could see this in the philosophy of 
Francis Bacon and René Descartes as well as in the exact science developed 
since the 17
th
century and built on objective observation and experiments, freed 
from prejudices and human errors and thus from human subjectivity and ethics.
A science based on the methodology of direct cognition of reality and induction 
and resulting in the knowledge which is not doubted should have given humans 
the power over the nature. However, it also opened (especially in the 19
th
century), Pandora’s box of wealth and devastation of humans and again raised 
the question about the relationship of the man towards the nature, society, 
one’s self. This is now reflected in the opinion of J. Zelený who says that the 
previous approach taken by Galileo, Descartes, Bacon and Lock perceived the 
world as a book: ‘There could be disputes over in which language the book 
where we play the role of readers was written. A major part of cognitive 
objectives of modern sciences has something to do with the world where we 
7
In: Chlup, O.- Kopecký, J. Pedagogika. Prague: SPN, 1967, p. 16. 

138 
primarily are not in the role of readers of the book, but rather in the role of 
producers and products’.
8
However, this proposition raises doubts because 
producers who do not read in the book of the nature produce their arbitrariness 
and are themselves products of this arbitrariness and the resulting errors.
Therefore, if humans do not want to become victims of their activities, they 
must first read the book of the world. 
Understanding the relation of man towards the world is basically about 
man’s cultivation in all of his stages and forms. Teaching at kindergarten, basic 
and secondary schools and at institutions of higher education is only a special 
case of man’s cultivation on his path towards nature, other people and one’s 
self. The more complicated this path is, i.e. the broader the cognition is, the 
more diverse the activities are and the more dependent interpersonal relations 
are, the more important schooling is with its intensity and productiveness, 
which may be seen in the entire history of school education. Education takes 
over man’s position in the world, reproduces and co-creates it. The opinion on 
this relation forms the basis of specific objectives, contents and means of 
education. 
It is evident that the deformation of man’s relationship towards the nature, 
society and one’s self endanger his life and chances to survive. A child who 
does not learn the rules of family cohabitation poses a threat either to 
himself/herself or his/her parents. Therefore, the only thing that family 
education does (despite all opposing theories including anti-pedagogy) is that it 
cultivates the behaviour of parents and children so that their cohabitation 
satisfies the needs of life of all individuals and the family line. Ideas and 
standards such as respect for parents and children, mutual assistance, 
diligence, unselfishness, willingness to share food and cooperate are not innate. 
They must be fostered since very childhood as the basis of cohabitation and 
develop from one generation to another. They keep reproducing and cannot be 
destroyed unless they are destroyed by the family itself. 
The form of the rules of family cohabitation and roles of family members 
may change – and they do change – but the basic norms cannot be removed 
should family keep on in its existence. For instance, physical punishments are 
justly slowly diminishing from education and a greater emphasis is placed on 
praise than on punishment, or new forms of collaboration are developing amid 
the changing roles of family members, but the rules of cohabitation remain the 
same. No family can tolerate arbitrariness, enviousness, selfishness or 
aggressiveness towards other family members if it does not was to be 
threatened. 
8
Zelený, J. Afterword to Husserl, R. Krize evropských věd a transcendentální filozofie. Prague: 
Academia, 1972, p. 567. 

139 
Likewise, a school class just as any other social group develops rules which 
enable purposeful cohabitation and performance. 
(Pařízek, V. 
Základy obecné pedagogiky. Prague: PF UK, 1996, pp. 6-7) 

140 
Appendix 3: 
REFLECTION on the study text 
Answer the following questions:
1. What new and important aspects about education have you learned? 
2. Which topic did you find the most interesting? 
3. Have you found an answer to any of your problems or do you now know 
where to find it?
4. Which books have made you think over them? Describe their importance 
for you.
5. Read the questions at the beginning of this study text (p. 10). Try to 
answer them. 

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