How to Teach about the Vanished World of the Socialist Dictatorship. Museums of Communist Party as an Impulse for School Teaching
Abstract
The study enters the discussion about teaching about socialism at Czech high and elementary schools. With special regard to the workings of the socialist dictatorship in its initial stage, the period of Stalinism, the authors consider how, at the didactization of historical sources and fi ndings of current historiography, it would be possible to step out of the deep-rooted interpretative scheme according to which historical participants are distinguished as either victims or perpetrators.
As a solution, they off er a turn to the cultural and ideological production of the Communist Party which will help to better contextualize the experience of revolutionary and social transformations. As a set of such sources, the authors present relics of social realism and its memory in public space together with artefacts that are part of the defunct museum collections of the Museum of Klement Gottwald, the Museum of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and the Museum of Julius Fučík.
A broad context that will emerge by introducing these materials into teaching is considered functional by the authors in relation to the officially declared aims of history education. On the basis of case studies, they off er approaches how, by means of pupils' own activity at work with historical sources (inquiry based learning), it is possible to pass on basic information included in the ideology of the socialist dictatorship, clarify sources of its persuasive force and, at the same time, build the competence of critical reading enabling the refl ection of ideological appeals.
The contribution interconnects the perspective of history didactics with museum studies and public history.