{"id":418,"date":"2012-11-20T14:01:23","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T14:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=418"},"modified":"2014-02-12T19:28:35","modified_gmt":"2014-02-12T19:28:35","slug":"home-education-in-the-post-communist-countries-the-czech-republic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=418","title":{"rendered":"HOME EDUCATION IN THE POST COMMUNIST COUNTRIES: the Czech Republic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Record:<\/strong> Yvona Kosteleck\u00e1, \u201cHome Education in the Post Communist Countries: Case Study of the Czech Republic\u201d in International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education<\/em>, 3, no. 1 (October 2010).\u00a0 Available Here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Summary: <\/strong>Kosteleck\u00e1, a member of the education faculty at Charles University in Prague, here tries to get purchase on homeschooling in the wider world of post-Communist Eastern Europe by looking in detail at the Czech Republic.\u00a0 Her conclusion?\u00a0 It\u2019s legal but rare and heavily regulated.<\/p>\n

Kosteleck\u00e1 begins with a survey of changes made to education law in the various post-communist European countries.\u00a0 Poland, Russia, Estonia, and Hungary all made provisions for some form of home-based instruction in the early 1990s.\u00a0 The Czech Republic, Romania, and Slovakia would do the same over the next two decades.<\/p>\n

In 1998 the Czech Republic, responding to the activism of parents and some well-placed experts, created a five year experiment, allowing a target group of children in grades 1-5 to be educated at home to see how it went.\u00a0 Eventually 5 schools (two religious and 3 public) were designated as part of the experiment, and parents interested in joining it had to ask the school for permission to keep their kids at home.\u00a0 Kosteleck\u00e1 notes that several other post-communist countries similarly tied early homeschooling oversight to the local school.\u00a0 In the Czech Republic, local school directors decided who could do it and compiled lengthy annual reports of the experiment and its results.\u00a0 62 children were enrolled in the experiment\u2019s first year.\u00a0 By year five there were 307.<\/p>\n

Study of the reports filed has revealed two basic types of homeschoolers in the Czech Republic during these years.\u00a0 One kind had been led to the practice by necessity given their children\u2019s negative experiences in school.\u00a0 For them, homeschooling was a last resort.\u00a0 Many of these children had special needs.<\/p>\n

The other kind were committed in principle to the concept of homeschooling, eager to exert a more complete influence on their child\u2019s upbringing and avoid some of the perceived negatives associated with institutional schooling.\u00a0 Most of these families were devoted Christians and had larger than average families.\u00a0 Kosteleck\u00e1 explains how this dichotomy has been found in many post-Communist countries.\u00a0 Some have even enshrined it into law, making different provisions for students homeschooling because of a behavioral or learning disability than for students homeschooling by parental choice.<\/p>\n

Each school involved in the study had its own approach to homeschooling.\u00a0 The religious schools were more hands-off, while the public schools created elaborate and, to the parents, quite invasive policies and procedures that had to be followed.\u00a0 All children were evaluated twice a year, though it was left up to the school how to do it. Again, the religious schools tended toward softer forms of evaluation like discussion between a teacher and the entire family, who presented a portfolio.\u00a0 The public schools tended toward testing.<\/p>\n

The year after the experiment concluded, in 2004, the Czech parliament adopted a new Education Act.\u00a0 The act basically extended to all elementary schools the same rights accorded to the 5 experimental schools.\u00a0 Parents could submit to the school an application to homeschool their child.\u00a0 So long as the parents have completed secondary education and have obtained a letter of support from an accredited psychological counselor, the school has the authority to grant their request.\u00a0 Children permitted to homeschool must be evaluated twice a year.\u00a0 Kosteleck\u00e1 notes that other post-Communist countries have similar or even more restrictive laws.\u00a0 Slovak law, for instance, requires that the primary educator be a certified teacher.<\/p>\n

In the Czech Republic parents can send their children to any elementary school they want, so schools who have developed a reputation for being home education-friendly have become popular havens for Czech home educators.\u00a0 Though current law still only allows the practice through the fifth grade, another experiment is currently underway with a few 6th to 9th graders to see if an extension of the home education provisions is feasible.<\/p>\n

Appraisal:<\/strong>\u00a0 This was the first piece I\u2019ve ever read about homeschooling in these countries, and I found it fascinating and accessible.\u00a0 It will be interesting to see what the future holds in these regions\u2013whether these early experiments with home education will lead gradually to fewer regulations and more homeschooling or not.\u00a0 I was particularly intrigued by the two types laid out.\u00a0 They\u2019re very different than the two types most commonly described in the American literature (pedagogues and ideologues, inclusives and believers, or, to use my own terms, open and closed communion).\u00a0 In the Eastern European reckoning, both the conservative religious homeschooler and the liberal unschooler are one type, and the other is homeschooling by necessity.\u00a0 The most recent NCES data<\/a> found that 11% of American homeschoolers reported a child\u2019s special need as a motivation for homeschooling.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s time to think of these homeschoolers as a different category than the religious or pedagogically radical homeschoolers.<\/p>\n

Milton Gaither, Messiah College, author of Homeschool: An American History<\/a>\"\"<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer<\/strong>:\u00a0 The views expressed in reviews are not the official views of ICHER or of its members.\u00a0 For more information about ICHER\u2019s Reviews, please see the \u00ab\u00a0About these Reviews \u00bb Section.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Record: Yvona Kosteleck\u00e1, \u201cHome Education in the Post Communist Countries: Case Study of the Czech Republic\u201d in International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 3, no. 1 (October 2010).\u00a0 Available Here. Summary: Kosteleck\u00e1, a member of the education faculty at Charles … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10,19,17],"tags":[366,415,342,367,365],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","category-parental-motivation","category-special-needs","tag-charles-university","tag-czech-republic","tag-international-electric-journal-of-elementary-education","tag-nces","tag-yvona-kostelecka"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1136,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions\/1136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}