MOTHER TONGUE TEACHING IN THE CONTEXT OF NATIONALIZATION OF BLIND SCHOOLS OR WE WARMLY THANK ALL SINCERE "THANK GOD"
Abstract
The first uniform Czechoslovak syllabus for blind pupils was originally introduced in blind schools in 1928 for a period of three years, however, with minor modifi cations respecting the peculi-arities of the language teaching of blind people, it was valid until 1949 (Vencová, 2003). In this article we will deal with the curriculum immediately following, i.e. historically the second central curricu-lum, which came into force on 1st February, 1949 and was led by an eff ort to be as close as possible to the curriculum of ordinary national and secondary schools.
Th e reason for this central amendment was a regulation resulting from the wording of Act No. 95/1948 Coll., on the single school system. For schools for blind people, the implementation of the law meant the nationalization of all educational institutions in Czechoslovakia, where the education of blind people had been carried out so far, and their reorganization into national and secondary schools diff erentiated according to the degree of visual impairment of their students.
In this form, they were included in the newly unifi ed system of schools for youth requiring special care. The article brings a historical look back at a dramatically diffi cult time around 1948 through the prism of language teaching.
Methodologically, we proceeded from the analysis of available primary and secondary sources and their subsequent comparison, which showed that teaching Czech in the original institutions also served as an ideological tool for power authorities in the liquidation of ecclesiastical (in our case blind) education.