Travelling the Unpaved Road to Democracy from Communism: A Cross‐Cultural Perspective on Change

Abstract

The basic subject of this article is change, how one copes with it, how it can or cannot be guided. More specifically, the author, a Czech‐American scholar, examines the processes and the trauma of the post‐1989 transition in his country of birth with an eye to how education, particularly higher education, can contribute to a successful outcome to transition affecting all of society while undergoing transition itself. Crucial to the presentation and arguments of the author is his conviction that the period of communist rule in Czechoslovakia, as in the other central and eastern European countries, was intellectually and morally damaging. For the citizens of the Czech Republic as well as for those of the other central and eastern European countries who also experienced communism and who are now trying to recover from it, it is necessary that they develop a clear understanding of what communism really represented and what it did to them. For them to gain this understanding, the catharsis that goes with it, and the possibility of developing successful reforms that will move their countries forward in a constructive way, they must develop a number of cross‐cultural skills through familiarity with a number of social science and educational disciplines that were more‐or‐less closed to them. The author proposes ways in which these skills can be learned and education at all levels profoundly reformed.