Extreme Reactions

With neo-Nazis getting ever more vocal in the Czech Republic and the Communist party making its presence felt in parliament, the ministry of education under the current caretaker government recently decided that history teaching in both primary and secondary schools should focus more on modern history, in particular the periods 1939-45 and 1948-89, when the country was ruled by totalitarian regimes. Consequently, the ministry has produced a guide on how political extremism should be explained to students studying history. The guide urges teachers not to lecture to children but to discuss extremism with them and let them ask questions, to take students to museums and galleries and to teach them how to read and understand propaganda texts. But teachers’ reactions to the publication have been mixed: ‘Everything in the guide is either already wellknown to us, including a précis of the work by British author Robert Stradling which appeared here in the Czech Republic five years ago, or is just pure theory,’ says Helena Mandelová, until recently chair of the country’s Teachers of History Association. ‘Instead of telling us that we should be taking children to museums ...