The Prague Post Online: Opinion: Editorial Review

September 7th, 2008

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Editorial Review

From the opinion pages of the Czech press

September 7th, 2005 issue

"School is big and noisy, the cafeteria stinks, I can't go to the bathroom when I feel like it, I am closed in the classroom where I have to do useless and boring things, everything I do is wrong and if I do not behave well the teacher will punish me." This is how Ludvík Hradílek sums up the feelings of a Czech youth in school in Hospodářské noviny Sept. 2. We have been hearing about the necessity to change Czech schools regularly for the past 15 years. The myth that Czech schools provide high-quality education was demolished by tests that compared the knowledge and abilities of Czech kids with other countries' students. These findings helped to introduce a new law on education that will bring great changes to the school curriculum starting this school year. In the past, the curriculum strictly defined what to teach and when. For example, in the first week of October, all 9th-graders in the country had to learn the Mohs scale of mineral hardness by heart. After realizing that simple memorization does not guarantee better education, two years ago the Education Ministry offered the chance to Czech schools of creating their own educational programs. Out of 4,000 schools, only 50 attempted to do so, and only 10 actually started to teach according to their own curriculum. "It turned out that some teachers do not know what to teach; some do know but do not want to; and others want to but do not know how," says Hradílek. Therefore, it is evident that teachers and their attitudes have to be changed first. They have to learn how to stimulate interest in their pupils instead of killing their natural desire to learn, concludes Hradílek.

Until now, U.S. President George Bush has been losing to water. Maybe our trust in the United States is exaggerated, writes Stanislav Drahný in the Sept. 34 edition of Mladá fronta Dnes. The idealized picture of the dauntless leading economy changes as Czechs are confronted with apocalyptic scenes from New Orleans, suffering from lack of drinking water, food, gas and means of transport for the victims of the tragedy. George Bush is being accused of hesitation or even inaction by the local press as well as his Southern political opponents; the mayor of New Orleans claims Washington, D.C., barely knows what the city looks like. Most of the critics point to the fact that New Orleans' vulnerability has long been known. The calls for federal financial backing for new flood-protection dams have been ignored. The "responsible" majority of the city population listened to recent catastrophic prognoses and left in time; the remaining fifth is now waiting to be rescued. A large part of the much-needed National Guard, which would have probably handled the critical situation and prevented most of the looting, is engaged elsewhere — in Iraq. The war in Iraq is also the reason New Orleans received but a fraction of the money it requested for the flood-protection precautions. On the other hand, maybe the critics are too harsh on Bush and the size of the catastrophe is simply beyond human comprehension. And it is still possible that Bush could launch an effective aid program and surprise the world as he did after Sept. 11, concludes Drahný.

— Compiled by František Šístek and Kristina Mikulová

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