Petr Novotný & Milan Pol (eds.). SELECTED CHAPTERS OF SCHOOL EDUCATION.

Brno: Masarykova Univerzita, 2002. ISBN 80-210-3020-8

FROM EDITORIAL:

Dear readers,

We are presenting to you a study which we hope will be a useful tool for a better orientation in some basic questions of school education. In various thematic sections we have tried to emphasize what we consider to be essentially important. Nevertheless, it is obvious that our book is not, and cannot be, more than just an outline of selected spheres and issues significantly related to people at schools and to their work.

            What can then be found in this publication? First, Milada Rabušicová presents a complex image of secondary education in both the Czech Republic and the international context. The current state and trends are indicated as necessarily influencing the Czech secondary schools, now and probably even more so in the future. The following text deals with the teaching process in its wider sense. Based on certain tensions and opposites in school didactics, Petr Novotný tries to explain the basic theses of the current concept of teaching. A series of other texts comment on the main actors of school life. First, Kateřina Emmerová deals with teachers and their profession. Petr Novotný then points out some specific features of adolescence as a period essentially linked to secondary schools. Vlastimil Čiháček completes the views on important actors of school life with his contribution on the world of handicapped individuals, analysing the specifics of working with them. Following to this block is a contribution written by Jiří Zounek, commenting on the use of information technologies in the work of secondary school teachers, with some useful tips on how to get around in this area. Finally, a text by Milan Pol takes the reader’s attention to the topic of schools as institutions. A conclusion like that is not accidental: a properly controlled and managed school is a precondition for a proper functioning of the entire educational system, and a meaningful school milieu necessarily represents the key condition for a satisfied (and hopefully successful) operation of teachers.