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Letter from PragueThe international lingua ceca
While English resounds in the offices of Prague’s hoity-toity, Czech is
the international language in the halls of Radio Prague. Here you’ll find
a Spaniard deep in discussion with a German and a Frenchman with an
Englishman in Czech. Sometimes this occurs to the mingled delight and
anguish of native listeners. Czechs are not yet accustomed to their
language going global.
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Current AffairsElementary school using scientology teaching methods to open in Brno
Czech authorities have officially registered the first elementary school
that is to teach children according to the methods designed by L. Ron
Hubbard, the founder of the controversial Church of Scientology. The
school
management says the facility will be non-religious but experts fear that
the school become a recruitment centre for new members of the church. More
MagazineMagazine
A Czech jeweller has created a replica of the Imperial Crown of the Holy
Roman Empire, a team of enthusiasts is building a miniaturized model of a
town which was razed to the ground to make way for coal mining and, a group
of Czechs have held a non-stop reading of the entire Lisbon treaty to prove
that it is readable. Find out more in Magazine with Daniela Lazarová.
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Current AffairsGovernment moves to stamp out homophobia in schools
Research conducted by the Czech charity People in Need two years ago
suggested that nearly three-quarters of school-age boys in this country had
a ‘negative attitude’ towards homosexuality. A recently published
European study indicates that that situation is not improving, and that
homophobia is still a widespread problem in Czech schools. In light of the
findings, the Czech government is producing a teachers’ manual to tackle
the problem. Earlier, I spoke to Lucie Otáhalová who is behind the
project. I asked her first about the scale of the problem faced:
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Current AffairsEducation minister says ten years needed to improve situation for Roma children in Czech schools
In 2007, the Czech Republic was condemned by the European Court of Human
Rights in Strasbourg for the way its education system treated the
country’s Romany minority. The court found that Roma children were
frequently discriminated against and sent to schools for the disabled, when
they did not show signs of learning difficulties. On International Roma Day
this Wednesday, the Czech Education Ministry released the results of two
studies it commissioned to determine how Roma children are faring in the
country’s schools now. I spoke to Education Minister Ondřej Liška and
asked him whether it wasn’t controversial to split Czech children into
Roma and non-Roma for the purposes of these studies:
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Current AffairsCzech and German preschoolers reach across borders
There are many ways to bring people together, but perhaps the most
expedient is when children of different countries can learn each other’s
language and culture from an early age. That is exactly the aim of a
project taking place in kindergartens along the Czech-German border.
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Talking PointCommunist era plagues history teachers
The communist regime in Czechoslovakia crumbled in 1989, and 20 years on, a
caustic debate still smoulders over how to interpret it – not among the
staunch mindsets of those who enforced the regime and those who suffered
through it – but rather for the nation’s grade school students, none of
whom were alive yet when the Berlin wall came down.
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Current AffairsGovernment backs radical school reform plan
On Monday the government backed wide-ranging reforms in the education
sector, which could radically change how universities in the country are
run. Among the most marked proposals: the introduction of student tuition
fees, offset by a new system of student loans. The idea? To improve the
quality of education students can expect while helping them get on their
own two feet. But not everyone, so far, is happy: critics of the reforms
say there are grey areas that have been left unaddressed. More
Current AffairsMinistry takes steps to deal with “cyber-bullying” in Czech classrooms
The use of mobile phones in classrooms schools has become a serious issue
in the Czech Republic, with ever more children recording their classmates
and even teachers, and posting the footage on the web. The Education
Ministry has now, for the first time, recognized the issue of
cyber-bullying, and has come up with guidelines to help schools control
the
use of mobile phones and other technology. More
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