“They Would Imprison Us Both!” – The Matura Exam at Secondary Technical Schools During the Normalisation Period in Socialist Czechoslovakia (1969–1989)

ABSTRACT

The study focuses on matura exams conducted at secondary technical schools in Czechoslovakia during the so-called normalisation period (1969–1989). It describes their form, organisation and course. At the same time, however, it also presents the practice (including the reasons for this practice) that the communist regime in Czechoslovakia used to influence the exams. The text is based on the recollections of eyewitnesses – secondary technical school teachers, obtained through the oral history method within the historiographical approach of the history of everyday life, as well as on the study of historical archival sources, period legislation and periodicals. In addition to the actual form, organisation and course of the matura exam at secondary technical schools, the study shows how teachers and students coped with the challenges posed by the communist regime in relation to the exams.

KEYWORDS:

• Matura exam
• secondary technical schools
• socialist Czechoslovakia
• history of everyday life
• oral history

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Kristýna Balátová and Lenka Kamanová for cooperation in data collection and partial analysis of the transcripts of interviews.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Melton, Absolutism and the Eighteenth Century; Cvrček, Schooling under Control.

2. Turner, “The Bildungsbürgertum,” 130.

3. Skalková, Pedagogika a výzvy nové doby, 94.

4. Anderson, “The Idea of the Secondary School,” 95.

5. Turner, “The Bildungsbürgertum,” 131.

6. Cohen, Education and Middle-Class Society, 28.

7. Ibid., 72–3.

8. For more, see e.g. Cohen, Education and Middle-Class Society.

9. In this context, these include texts focusing in general on the form of education in communist regimes, such as Mincu, “Communist Education,” 319–34; Kudláčová and Šebová, “Illegal Confessional Education,” 481–502; Kestere and Kalke, “Controlling the Image,” 184–203; Rahi-Tamm and Saleniece, “Re-educating Teachers,” 451–72; Somogyvári, “Political Decision-Making,” 664–81. Or, texts focusing on the primary school environment, such as Zounek, Šimáně, and Knotová, “Primary School Teachers,” 480–97; Zounek, Šimáně, and Knotová, “You Have Betrayed Us,” 320–37; etc.

10. I can mention, for example, the study of von Engelhardt, “The Abitur as a Bureaucratic Phenomenon.” For a study which deals with the issue of testing in secondary schools, in general, and especially in the first half of the twentieth century, see Roach, “Examinations and the Secondary Schools,” 45–58.

11. According to the ISCED11 international classification, these are schools that offer a complete secondary vocational education ending with the final exam (ISCED11 level 354).

12. That is a project of the Czech Science Foundation called Secondary Technical School in Socialist Czechoslovakia from the History of the Everyday Life Point of View: Oral History Interviews with Teachers (no. 19-24776S).

13. Eckert and Jones, “Historical Writing about Everyday Life,” 5–16.

14. For more, see e.g. Smith, Oral History; Thompson, The Voice of the Past; Vansina, Oral Tradition.

15. I am aware that a deeper understanding of the studied issue would be provided by the perspective of former students (or other actors of school life) of secondary technical schools; however, due to the size of the research team and the need to narrow the focus of the project, I focused my research only on former teachers or the management of the schools. That is because of their current age, which is higher than that of possible former students, with whom interviews on this topic can be conducted in later years.

16. Each of the narrators agreed to conduct the interview and their consent is included in the recording.

17. For the sake of clarity, I continuously draw attention in the text to the specific approbations of the interviewee when mentioning a particular witness and his/her memories of the described phenomena.

18. Thompson, The Voice of the Past, 248–53.

19. See e.g. Flick, An Introduction.

20. Zounek, Šimáně, and Knotová, Normální život, 60.

21. Disman, Jak se vyrábí, 166–70.

22. See e.g. Zwettler, Vaculík, and Čapka, Úvod do studia.

23. McDermott, Communist Czechoslovakia, 123–32.

24. For more, see e.g. Bischof, Karner, and Ruggenthaler, The Prague Spring; McDermott, Communist Czechoslovakia, 134–51.

25. For more about the Velvet Revolution, see e.g. Fawn, The Czech Republic; Vaněk and Mücke, Velvet Revolutions; etc.

26. See e.g. Zounek, Šimáně, and Knotová, “You Have Betrayed Us,” 331–4.

27. Cf. e.g. Šimáně and Kamanová, “Developing of the Secondary Technical Schools,” 276–81.

28. Růžičková, “Výchova a Program,” 3.

29. It was the first congress of CPCZ organised after the 1968 events.

30. “Rezoluce XIV. sjezdu KSČ,” 2–4.

31. He was a Czechoslovak scientist, an expert in cybernetics, chairman of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, a member of the CZCP, and during the normalisation period a member of the Chamber of People of the Federal Assembly; for more, see Kostlán, Věda v Československu, 151.

32. Archive of the Central Committee of the CPCZ, “Referát soudruha Jaroslava Kožešníka.”

33. See e.g. Richta and Filipec, Vědeckotechnická revoluce.

34. Štrougal, “Programové Prohlášení,” 2–3.

35. According to the ISCED11 international classification, these are schools that offer secondary vocational education without direct access to tertiary education (ISCED11 level 353).

36. For example, in the school year 1976/77, the number of students in full-time study at secondary technical schools was 204,722, and in the school year 1983/84, 228,991. In secondary vocational schools, the number of students in 1976/77 and 1976/77 was 331,962 and 411,371, respectively. For the record, the number of students in grammar schools in the same school years was approximately 123,000 and 143,000, respectively. In other words, the majority of the adolescent population attended a purely vocational type of school. See Československé školství.

37. Polytechnická výchova, 73–4.

38. In the early years of normalisation, it was an experimental introduction of four-year apprenticeship courses ending with the matura exam as a new type of secondary vocational education, see Office of the Government of the Czechoslovak Republic, “Zásady právní úpravy soustavy základních a středních škol,” 13–4.

39. Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CPCZ, “Informace o dosavadním plnění,” 14.

40. It included working with specific tools and materials typical for the field, laboratory work, various measurements, creating a preassigned product, etc.

41. Specifically, the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic regulated the form of the matura exam through decrees, directives and regulations published in the regular Bulletins of the Ministry of Education and Culture of the CSR.

42. “Směrnice pro maturitní zkoušky,” 1969, 13–36.

43. “Maturitní zkoušky,” 349–53; “Maturitní řád pro průmyslové školy,” 353–54; “Maturitní řád pro podnikové školy,” 133; etc.

44. “Směrnice pro maturitní zkoušky,” 1969, 14–15.

45. Ibid., 14.

46. There were exceptions if the school provided a specific and unique field of study, i.e. a so-called monotypic school. In such a case, the chairman of the matura board was appointed by the Ministry of Education, see “Směrnice pro maturitní zkoušky,” 1971, 42–65.

47. Between 1981 and 1987 seven years of teaching practice were even required.

48. “Směrnice pro maturitní zkoušky,” 1971. There were also further guidelines in 1972, 1976 and 1981.

49. The exam in vocational subjects was divided into practical and theoretical parts. The practical part (with the exception of art programmes) could not last more than 24 hours (eight hours per day) and could also be written or graphic, depending on the topic chosen. In the theoretical part, only the student’s knowledge of the selected topic and information related to the practical part was tested. At the same time, the portfolio of work produced by the student during his studies was also assessed, see “Vyhláška ministerstva školství,” 85–9.

50. There were some programmes in secondary technical schools where neither a final project nor a practical exam was required, e.g. in some fields of transport operation, leather production or horticulture, etc. See “Směrnice o maturitních zkouškách,” 108–10.

51. Typically, these were, for example, art or art-technology programmes. See “Směrnice o maturitních zkouškách,” 113–17.

52. Ibid., 96.

53. Ibid., 97.

54. Ibid., 113–17.

55. See ibid., 96.

56. See ibid., 113–17.

57. One written exam in a vocational subject was rather an exception. That concerned, for example, clothing and linen production, knitwear and several subjects in agriculture and forestry, etc. For more see ibid., 105–17.

58. The specific dates of the days, of course, varied during the years of normalisation, but the hour was regularly set at 8.00am. See the individual guidelines and decrees above for more details.

59. After 1987, when written exams in vocational subjects ceased to be written, the written part took place on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in the third week of April, see “Vyhláška ministerstva školství,” 86.

60. “Směrnice pro maturitní zkoušky,” 1969, 14; “Směrnice školství ČSR,” 82.

61. Ibid., 82.

62. The worst possible result. There were five classification levels in total. The best grade was a 1.

63. That was the action of a former American helicopter pilot, Vietnam War veteran Barry Meeker, who managed to transport emigrants from former East Germany by helicopter three times during 1974 and 1975 from the territory of socialist Czechoslovakia, specifically from the area of the Lipno reservoir. See Vaněk, “Pokusy východoněmeckých občanů,” 257.

64. “Vyhláška ministerstva školství,” 86.

65. “Směrnice o maturitních zkouškách,” 97.

66. That was explicitly stated in each of the above-mentioned guidelines.

67. State Security was the infamous political police and intelligence service under the control of the CZCP, whose task was to liquidate political opponents and generally combat activities against the socialist establishment and the then Czechoslovak state. For more, see e.g. Žáček, Přísně tajné.

68. Milan Kundera, Pavel Kohout and Ludvík Aškenazy, to name but a few.

69. Cf. Zounek, Šimáně and Knotová, “You Have Betrayed Us,” 331–2.

70. In Czech student slang, then and now, it is a desk with a chair where a student can prepare written notes for an oral exam. The basis of this expression comes from the verb potit se [to sweat].

71. More on this issue, see e.g. Šimáně, “Socialist Egalitarianism,” 129–51; Stonkuviené, “The Equal,” 124–42.

72. Coufalík, “Specifické problémy,” 101–2.

73. de Benoist, Totalitarismus, 93.

74. Žídek, Centrally Planned Economies.

75. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 193.

76. Nečasová, “I Couldn’t Live.”

77. Cf. Kestere and Kalke, “Controlling the Image,” 185; Zounek, Šimáně, and Knotová, “You Have Betrayed Us,” 325.

78. A similar story happened in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia during the so-called Heydrichiad in June 1942. Antonín Stočes, a student of the grammar school at the time, was executed together with his father and the principal of the grammar school for simply tearing a picture of Adolf Hitler out of a magazine and then throwing it in a rubbish bin. The story itself was already in 1945 artistically elaborated in the Czech Republic in the well-known short story (and subsequently film) The Higher Principle by Jan Drda, where the real reason for the execution was replaced by painting a moustache on Reinhard Heydrich’s picture in a newspaper. See e.g. Drda, Němá barikáda.

79. See e.g. Stokker, “Heil Hitler,” 187–8.

80. Gruner and Kluchert, “Erziehungsabsichten und Sozialisationseffekte,” 859–68.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Czech Science Foundation [grant number 19-24776S]; Grantová Agentura České Republiky.

Notes on contributors

Michal Šimáně

Michal Šimáně  is currently head of the Department of Social Sciences at the Institute of Lifelong Learning of Mendel University in Brno (Czech Republic) and deputy director of this Institute. He is specialising mainly in research focused on Czechoslovak history of education in the nineteenth and twentieth century. His research is mostly based on history of everyday life approach and oral history method.