Dalibor Svoboda

I like very much this idea put forward by Juan Carlos. I do remember that we did discuss this European framework of E-HELP at this Forum and at our two last meetings or didn’t we? So there should not be many obstacles to rally behind this idea. Let say that we divide 20th century into decades or five periods of 20 years length and than look at them from the European level ( this should be defined by us …. which kind of European look out we would like to apply) rather then from national level. Thus historical successes, inventions, setbacks, progresses, cultural achievements etc. could be described, evaluated and compared with other continents (which do have different “culture” and different set ups of successes, inventions … etc).

The meeting of Virtual school board on 31st of January came after lengthy debate to this conclusion about Virtual school. “The possible scenarios for the future of the Virtual school were discussed. Problems that have all along been a part of the Virtual School experience (lack of funding, lack of focus, disparate agendas) have not been able to be solved in a satisfactory way and no such solution is foreseeable in the near future. The project has, in spite of different problems, been extremely successful and has been a core provider of content to the European schoolnet. The network of teachers that have worked under the Virtual school umbrella has also been instrumental in the carrying out of other projects that have been of strategic importance to the European schoolnet. However, the time has come to scrutinize the project and critically take into consideration the possibilities for a successful continuation of the project in its current form. From that evaluation the board has come to the conclusion that it’s time to close the Virtual school, end all ongoing projects and gradually take the website offline. In this process it’s important to secure gained experience, gather lessons learned and identify clues for future activities in the field of collaborative online learning.” The board will organise a closing conference of Virtual School during the spring 2005.

(2) What would you like to be able to do in future with ICT to improve the quality of teaching/learning, that is currently impossible/difficult to achieve? During a lot of years of debates and discussions between Swedish pedagogues and people involved in educational matter (to whom I always counted myself) we always dreamed about a possibility to change the pedagogical environment with the help of ICT. And some of us did not only debate, they also actively involved themselves to make these changes. At their schools within their day to day teaching or as participant of different networks or institutions trying to create friendlier atmosphere for ICT and find the ways to fund these changes. The basic three questions we tried to answer were: What to teach? How to teach? and Where to teach? Many of us dreamt about breaking the curriculum structure dividing students days into separate subject without very little connection to other subjects taught. Support for cross-curriculum teaching and learning was our battle cry. Of course this teaching and learning should be done altogether inside and/or with the help of computers connected to internet. Multimedia textbooks with abundance of pictures, movie sequences, music, speeches and text were expected to be doing the pedagogy in the near future. Altogether supported by huge amount of interactivity! Was it then necessary to teach and learn in schools? No! Internet connection should allow anybody to find his own learning environment; at home, at libraries, far away in isolated houses at the north of Sweden ……. Some of these dreams (or shall I write expectations) have been fulfilled. Internet is indeed a powerful tool ……… but I’m hesitant if the basic of education had been helped by ICT use, namely: Are our today’s students equipped with bigger and better knowledge when they leave our schools where the ICT have been used? In comparison with yesterday’s students who left educational institutions without being helped in their learning process by ICT? If a student make a wonderful oral presentation in front of the class with the help of a piece of chalk and blackboard is it pedagogically defendable to force him to make next presentation with the help of Power Point or webbing? Aren’t our ultimate goals as a teacher to help our students to obtain knowledge of hidden things and connections, to learn them to critically evaluate and also to be able to use the obtained knowledge in the future? I personally always hoped that ICT would help us to achieve these goals in better, faster and easier way. But this hope is growing slimmer for each year ……. Nevertheless when reading contributions on this thread it seems to me that most of the debaters are more hopeful then me. Therefore by joining E-HELP I hope to be better equipped with skills (and optimism) when using ICT in my classes in the future.

(1) What have you done (or seen done) with ICT that has improved the quality of teaching/learning, that would have been impossible/difficult to achieve without ICT? Together with a small group of dedicated teachers did we around 1990 start international communication with the help of one and only computer at our school; Fredrika Bremer Upper Secondary School. At first our students participated in AT&T’s Learning Network. The connection was made by telephone cable at the bottom of Atlantic ocean AT&T owned. Within this network students exchanged papers dealing with pedagogical issues created by 2 teachers employed by AT&T. Each year around 100 schools (mostly American school situated in and outside US) participated. From this early international cooperation The Learning Bridge developed. The Learning Bridge is a subject which can be chosen by any student at our school in second or third year of the studies. Throughout one school year students are involved in doing pedagogical exchanges (participating at debate forums created together with particular American school, writing papers on common issues together with American students, papers which the group later orally present……) with the help of internet as a carrier. At the end of every school year Swedish students visit their American friends. The Learning Bridge is today a 15 years old project still attracting around 40 to 50 students each year. One of the pedagogical issue this year is cooperation with Digital Storytelling workshop situated at lower Manhattan. This year our students are waited for by students from Maryville High School, Maryville, Tennessee. Hopefully we will meet them in April. Of course all these activities could be done by faxes and snail mail. Nevertheless the new technology provided much faster access and swift exchanges which appeal modern internationaly minded students of today. The Learning Bridge could be visited at: www.learningbridge.nu MIT (in English "Environment and Internet") was another project developed at our school. I was one of the two teachers in charge of this project which took place in late nineties. Around 32 students from natural and social sciences which choose this subject as individual choice received notebooks computers from the school. Inside these we created "a classroom" with the help of Cold Fusion program. In these classroom the teaching and learning at distance was conducted. Small groups of students were expected to work from their homes investigating and writing papers about environmental issues. The project was at the same time a cooperation between our school and Royal Technical College of Stockholm. Beside working inside the classroom students have been given evening lectures at the college in order to break a barrier between upper secondary school level and college level. The professors of the college were also involved in evaluation of students rearch plus helping with suggestions and aide during the research. This project is the one which resemble most “Ask the expert” at Education Forum. The “Peace of Europe” is still another internet based project I was involved in. You can view the outline of this project at: http://www.fredrika.se/utbildning/erika/sa...eace/peace.html At the Knowledge and Competent Foundation I have been working for three years with funding and than supervising the production of multimedia educational textbooks. We were altogether three former teachers which together with a help of around eight outside expert made twice a year a selection of around 20 worthy projects (from about 1000 applications each time), then followed the chosen project throughout production. Most of these multimedia textbooks were supposed to be placed directly on internet or produced as CD:rom. They span over different subjects like chemistry (students could make laboratory experiments direct in their computers at home, medicine (how different functions inside the human body works could be shown in a pedagogical way), foreign languages (most of these textbooks tried to learn students glossary or translations) or math (the results of students calculations could be seen in graphical representations thus helping students to understand better). History textbooks were supported too. “Meeting of Sovereignties” is a fine example presented at the old History department at: http://vs.eun.org/eun.org2/eun/en/vs-histo...lang=en&ov=4711.

Many years ago I, together with history teachers from my school met a dedicated history teacher from downtown school of Stockholm. At the meeting we have been shown in depth research he conducted with his oldest students during a last half year of their studies. At that time history had been taught all three years at Upper Secondary Schools in Sweden. The students of his class simply went to City of Stockholm archive and made a research about a single old house and its inhabitants they individually chose. These researches went back for decades and centuries depending on how old the house was. The products of these researches have been nicely written booklets filled with facts and curious stories plus a 15 minutes oral presentation. By working in this way there had been any need for a huge group of history teachers to create a useful data base. Historical documents are already in archives and right now these documents are being digitalized. My question is: Do we want the ICT to be breaking a new pedagogical territory allowing teachers and students to do something that haven’t been done previously or: Are the techniques of ICT only here for allowing us to do the “old” pedagogy but do it faster and easier than before?

"Do you now think, Dalibor, that the invasion of Iraq has had a detrimental effect on the Middle East peace process?" wrote Chris McKie a few days ago ....... Former president Bill Clinton answered the similar question, namely “ … whether the Iraq war was worth the cost” in this way: “It’s a judgment that no one can make yet. I would have not done it until Hans Blixt finished his job. Having said that, over 600 of our people have died since the conflict was over. We’ve got a big stake now in making it work. I want it to have been worth it, even though I didn’t agree with the timing of the attack. I think that if you have a pluralistic, secure, stable Iraq, the people of Iraq will be better off, and it might help the process of internal reform in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. I think right now, getting rid of Saddam’s tyranny, ironically, has made Iraq more vulnerable to terrorism coming in from the outside. But any open society is going to be more vulnerable than tyranny to that.” (Time Magazine, June 28, 2004) I’m supporting these kinds of arguments and analyses of the fighting in Iraq. Besides that you can compare Clinton’s statement with my arguments I used when debating you almost a year ago …….

The future (in small steps) is here, Cris McKie. We did move almost 10 months in time now from our last debate exchange. Yasser Arafat is gone. George W. Bush has been reelected for four more years. (No Kerry around, to mend the situation in the Middle East he promised to do in his speeches and you was so much hoping for.) The war in Iraq is more unpredictable now than last time we had a debate exchange on Middle East. Newspapers reports about assassinations, suicide attacks and bombings in Saudi Arabia. Is there any hope for peace and better living for the people in the countries of Middle East? Do you have any opinion on the situation in Middle East of today? Do you have any new opinion on the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis right now? Are you more skeptical then before? Or are you more hopeful?

...... mike tribe this is a short letter I could not let to be unwritten. Since you posted your contribution two more posting were added. I just hope it won’t be confusing to address a few words to you ………. Thank you for your last posting. I quite often read your viewpoints on different matters at this forum. They make me to feel stimulated, I do not feel that by reading them I did thrown away my time. You seem to be profoundly humble and human in them. And your words deliver quite often a kind of nice distance to the subject you write about. All this makes your postings worth to read.

You obviously don’t know very much about me. If you had asked me, I would have told you. Yes I did protest about the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe. Yes I did protest against the Soviets having nuclear weapons? Yes, I did protest against Soviet crimes in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Do you really feel that it is right and normal when debating your postings, that one have to go to your web page in order to obtain more specific information about your thinking in these questions since let us say 1960 ….? I asked you, in a careful way, about the demonstrations against nuclear weapons and you suddenly answer me that I do not know very much about your fight against evil ideologies and therefore I should not criticise you. Read the URL pages of mine you advice me …… Do you think that it’s the answer to my questions? It happens very often in ordinary life that people mix facts and dreams, expectations and convictions. Are you one of them? My posting was not about you personally ….. I was just wondering about the peace movement of the West during the cold war …….! How was they thinking, the people, who were part of it?? Why did they take all these decisions they actually took? After all we are now sitting with answers to the period of the late 50 years which was so devastating to my country and to Czech people. And also to all other peoples from Eastern European hemispheres. …. Don’t you agree about that? Did you contributed to their misery with your demonstrations? Do you believe that you were fighting for humanity? (Why than, not fighting for a simple decent living for us, Eastern European people, too?) Or were you fighting for some other goals?

What a lot of propagandistic nonsense Dalibor! I cannot speak for John, but I of course demonstrated against all nuclear weapons and had no sympathy for the foul state capitalist dictatorships of Eastern Europe. Neither did the vast majority of fellow CND members and supporters at the time. It was a classic cheap 'debating' trick of the extreme right at the time to suggest that opposition to total madness governing one's own country's affairs meant that you were in favour of exactly the same mad policy from one's "enemies". I am surprised and disppointed to see you repeat it here. I do not know very much about any propagandistic nonsense. I do not know anything about any “CND members” (who are they? What were they fighting for or against ……?) Furthermore what is actually “a classic cheap 'debating' trick of the extreme right” when one is asking questions which disturbed me and my Eastern European friends (when debating these issues) for decades? Is it so that you in this posting continue a debate you probably have during 70th or 80 th in your country? Do you think that you should bring that debate right into this forum where the core of the debate is: A student in my College asks: "Why in the 70's and 80's were those who opposed nuclear weapons portrayed as naive rather than those who believed having lots of them would make the world safer?" To my knowledge I never saw you ("western demonstrators for peace and freedom") fight for any of our (peoples of Eastern Europe) rights and against any of our evils. Never! Therefore I asked my question. Was it so disturbing?

You try to explain your disdain for nuclear weapons and the reasons behind to demonstrate against them. Nevertheless your posting feels disturbing and disappointing. To my knowledge you never demonstrated against nuclear weapons of Eastern Europe countries. Why? Did you thought that the communist nuclear weapons were an instrument of peace and understanding (so were they always described by the press of Eastern Europeans countries), while the nuclear weapons western democracies possessed were a devilish imperialistic invention threatening the humanity and worthy to demonstrate against at will?

All Swedish members of Virtual School received a letter from Angela Andersson the former Head of Virtual School now working at Swedish National Agency for School Improvement. Angela Andersson is informing us that: 1. Swedish National Agency for School Improvement will terminate its support and funding to History department (which we, the members of History department knew about from information given to us previously). 2. Swedish National Agency for School Improvement will also terminate its support and funding to Civics and Media department. 3. On top of that Swedish National Agency for School Improvement will terminate its support and funding to Swedish teachers who are members of other departments of Virtual School. 4. Swedish National Agency for School Improvement shall together with Danish school authority continue to support and fund Special Needs department. 5. Swedish National Agency for School Improvement will continue to debate at the meetings with Virtual School Boards in January and thereafter how to proceed with recreation of the “new” Virtual school which main task in the future should be to cooperate closely with eTwinning (www.etwinning.net) project. I hope that I will have more information about History department fate when we meet in Toulouse.

Dobrý den, je dobře když se vedou diskuse. Ovšem je však třeba dát také nějaký řád, rám, osnovu ... a tady už začínají obvykle potíže. Jsme nějak více zvyklí prosazovat svůj názor a méně umíme naslouchat a chápat to, co druhý říká. Vystudovala jsem pedagogiku a psychologii, po revoluci dějepis a školský management. Třicet let učím, nejprve v dětském výchovném ústavu se zvláštní školou, pak dvanáct let na základní škole na prvním i na druhém stupni a teď posledních deset let učím na střední škole a posledních pět let ji řídím. Úroveň českého školství rozhodně nevnímám jako katastrofální, ve srovnání určitě naše školství obstojí, vím o mnoha emigrantech, kteří se vrátili do Čech proto, aby svým dětem poskytli vzdělání na Českých školách. Jako největší problém našeho školství vnímám neúnosný encyklopedismus. Ale tento problém není nový, celých třicet let existuje, diskutuje se o něm atd.... Myslím, že nová reforma se jej pokouší řešit. Ve škole jsme celou věc probrali a projevili jsme zájem stát se pilotní školou a nový projekt zkoušet a pripomínkovat. V zásadě se nám nový projekt líbí. Myslím, že připravenost na nové, je věcí každého z nás učitelù. A tady máme možnost nějak modifikovat to, co budeme učit, řekla bych, že se blížíme švédskému modelu. Nevím, netroufám si říct, zda započatá cesta je dobrá, či ne. Ale zkusila bych ji. Žádnou jinou novou lepší neznám. Jinak dějepis na škole učí jen dějepisáři, jsme na škole čtyři aprobovaní a i když jsme čtyři nebyli, dějepis byl vždy učen aprobovány. Složení pedagogického sboru /tedy rovnoměrné/ je vždy záležitostí ředitele a koncepčnosti jeho práce. Navíc je kontrolováno českou školní inspekcí. Dnes vidím spíše problém ve financování školství. Zatím končím a přeju hezký den. Ivana Mědilkova Tento dopis jsem dostal od paní ředitelky již před rokem. A i když mě v dalším dopise k mé prosbě aby jej uveřejnila v debatě odpověděla, že to tak učiní, nestalo se to. A tak jsem se sám rozhodl jako opožděný příspěvek ho do naší debaty dát teď. Jak se školni reforma v České republice vyvíjí nyní? S odstupen jednoho roku? Je to úspěch anebo zklamání? Dalibor Svoboda

At the end of last week did I open a new section at History department called Historical places around us. The text of invitation to participate goes as this: There are historical places all around us. Some of them helped to shape the country or the town where we live. Others tell us about the past and forgotten times. Are there any such places in your neighbourhood? Please tell us about them. The first contribution written by me is named “Bomarsund, the Gibraltar of Baltic Sea”. The article is situated at “Activities” section and could be reached when using: http://vs.eun.org/ww/en/pub/virtual_school...s/bomarsund.htm At the end of each article there will be few questions attached which are supposed to activate readers to a small research of his own. Right now I am writing yet another article to be published at this section this time about Olympic Stadium in Stockholm. I also plan to attach pictures to each article (this is yet not done with Bomarsund). I hope that some of you will contribute to this section with similar articles about a less known historical places. For example about catacombs in town of Maastricht or the places with connection to Spanish Civil War we visited together in south of France not long time ago.

The deadly fight against the Hitler’s Nazis Germany required “all hand on board” to achieve the victory. And then ……. after the victory it was discovered that not all the victors have been so much better when thinking about a democracy, human rights, free debate etc. than Nazi Germany. I think that it was a deep disappointment and soul searching when the Americans and British discovered whom they cooperate with when fighting Nazi Germany. And than the division came and the Cold War started....

Individuals fighting for their conviction can be sometimes seen as odd. They have to be prepared to debate and defend their positions all the time. Was Martin Luther attacking the Catholic Church completely wrong? Was Christopher Columbus talking about the west bound way to India wrong? You see, I’m using examples that are easy to take a position at. Were the people opposing the nuclear armament in fifties and later on right or wrong? It was a fight between two ideologies. One monolithic, with answers to all questions human being could possibly ask, guided by the philosophy of Marx and Lenin. The counterpart society was much more diversified and searching for answers and goals. The Marxist Leninist society was at this time of bitter fight actively searching for the weaknesses of the diversified society in order to destroy it. The Marxists believed that this way was a scientific proved development of social movement throughout the history of mankind. From this point of view it was questionable tactic to help the monolithic society of communism when acting as “fellow travellers” and by this way weaken the democratic diversified societies in their ( as it was perceived by many) uneven fight. At the other hand not many people in the West perceived that many A-bombs would guarantee the liberty. The history, when moving forward will give us maybe better answer in let say 50 or next 100 years. You know, as with Columbus and Martin Luther, we are bound to receive better answers after a while.......

As probably everybody else in our History department group I'm happy about the grant we received from Comenius. The hope is that we achieve during the following three years something really good. I think that there are good conditions for that. Meanwhile during September and October did I some publishing of pedagogical material with the help of Content Manager System. Most of the material did I take from the "old" History department. On the other hand I could not publish Pilgrimage project which was already placed at the new History department but yet unpublished. I asked Chui for help. John added too freshly made material about Cold war and is now creating material about Olympic Games. The earlier idea was not to publish more material about Olympics then what was written by me and Anders prior Olympic Games in Athens. Therefore a large amount of text about Olympics written by me went into the dustbin. Instead we asked for contributions from students, teachers and people interested of sports. Of course we didn’t obtain any contributions. Therefore it seems to be right to contribute to our own project with contributions written by ourselves. John started and I hope that others of us will help him or develop further the project with their own contributions. These activities rendered us and History department appreciation which is published at: http://vs.eun.org/ww/en/pub/virtual_school/index.htm I try to visit History Community at least once a fortnight. I leave short notices about our activities at History department or Educational Forum after me there. Right now I do write two articles for the section I would like to create at History department. The name of this new section will be "History places around us". I hope that I can publish this section and my articles together with photos there soon.

I was born in communist Czechoslovakia 1948. In 1968, after the occupation of my country by Warszawa Pact countries suppressing the “Prague spring” I moved to Sweden. After five years of studies at University of Stockholm and different petty jobs I started to teach at Fredrika Bremergymnasiet, an upper secondary school situated in a suburb of Stockholm in 1980. During the 1990s I worked with information technology and pedagogical issues first at Knowledge and Competence Foundation then at National Agency for Education. Now I’m back at my old school teaching the subjects of History, Civics and International Relations. I have been engaged in activities of Virtual School since its start. I have been Head of History department since 1998.

Despite all the troubles you did have with publishing “The Cold War: Living in a communist state” it was worth it. I do like the approach. And I do think that it couldn’t be done better. The Education Forum had been helpful very much when creating this project. Thank you.

I agree with this idea. Which kind of themes, when put together could make a main theme, which would best mirror European history of 20th century?? "Ask the expert" is a good platform for creating interesting content for the start but which other sources are needed to create content amount we actually need to put inside?

It depends on who is answering the questions. Relatives of executed person will deliver one sorts of answer; the persecuted persons with experience of doing time in “Gulags” (there are large amounts of books written by people who have been there and came back) will deliver different kind of answer. Elder people with an experience of pre-communist democracies would tell yet another story. People living in Soviet Union will tell a quite different story than people who lived in communist Poland or Ceausescu’s Romania. I was a kid and then teenager during fifties and sixties so what was bad and what was good seeing it with my eyes in my country, communist Czechoslovakia? The good thing was the sense of equality. There were no rich people around with posh cars living in luxurious houses. There didn’t exist “boulevard press” dominated by articles about scandals, high society, love affaires between singers, actors and supposedly rich. There was no Oprah Winfrey show or any other glamorous television programs dealing with curious but non-essentials details of life. There were only us, ordinary people believing that we were altogether striving for the bright communist future. We believed (with a help of the propaganda) that we were a part of strong and just movement reshaping the future of mankind. This believes was a powerful force that make as proud. I think that this feeling was rather common in Czechoslovakia in the fifties. What was bad? Dictatorial countries are always keen on young people. They believe that young people are the future and that they will if properly guided guarantee the continuation of the particular political system. So I actually became first aware of the bad things as an older teenager. I do believe that the worst thing with communism was these two separate lives all of the citizens were living parallely. On one side flag waiving and demonstrations for “world peace” and “world communism, the best and friendliest political system in the mankind” and on the other side retirement into a private life where everybody knew that what I do say and feel in school or at my work where I’m supervised and what I’m doing at home (and possibly with closest friends) are two very separate and different things. This reality created a slave mentality inside us. We were smiling when we have been asked to smile, cheering for the unprecedented communist achievements when we have been asked to cheer and then privately expressed disappointment and despair after returning home from hours long waiting in a queue for a small piece of meat. Or a box of matches. Or half a pound of salt. Or a pack of tissue paper. “Those who are not stealing at their jobs are stealing from themselves” was a most fanny joke I heard grown up people repeat all the time with a roguish smile in their face. At the boarders people were killed when trying to leave. Human lives seemed to be a cheap commodity. To overcome these situation citizens tried to create a network of protections and connections, which would enable them to come around shortages and beat the system. (Who can help my son to get at University? Who can help me to obtain and install telephone at home? Who can help me to get coal for heating now when winter is approaching?, were the kind of questions everybody was wrenching with all the time). This situation helped to spread atmosphere of bribery and dishonesty throughout the whole society. This schizophrenic situation also left deep wounds inside the society and hampered normal relations between people for a long time.

I was born in January 1948 in a small town of Bohemia district in Czechoslovakia. Soon after did I together with my father and mother move to Brno in Mähren. After compulsory school I studied for four years at Agriculture Upper Secondary school then after taking exam in 1968 I moved to Prague for university studies. I left occupied Czechoslovakia for Sweden in November 1968. During the seventies I study for five years at University of Stockholm and at the same time making my living by doing different petty jobs. I start teaching History, Civics and Politics at the beginning of eighties at Fredrika Bremer Upper Secondary school situated in a suburb of Stockholm. During a couple of years in nineties I worked at Knowledge and Competence Foundation later also at National Education Agency in Stockholm.

Throughout the first part of sixties. Dalibor Svoboda, 12 to 14 years old. I loved my grandfather. He was the nicest person around at the time I was on my way to discover the mysteries of life. He was carefully educating and lovingly caring for me like no one in my surrounding. This went on probably because I was his first grandson. But there were moments when he suddenly left me alone brooding and quietly asking myself what he was after. Once we met at the corner of the street near our house a tall and strangely opulent man with distant air on his face. His eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses. My grandfather engaged in conversation with this never before seen stranger letting my hand he kept in his go. Who was this man? They talked in whispers and I in the meantime once again admired the text written in the Cyrillic alphabet at the wall of the building: “Mines NJET. The building searched through 24th of April 1945” The man was a former RAF flyer just returned home back from Czech prison: “They beat him awfully there. He lost most of his sight in Jachymov.” said grandfather unhappily. “Why did they put him there?“, did I inquire eagerly. Most of the RAF pilots together with other political prisoners ended in the concentration camps around Czech Republic. The one situated near the small village of Jachymov was the most horrible one; dangerous uranium ore was mined there by forced labour, after the communists came to power. Well, we all learned about all kinds of heroes who bravely fought Hitler’s Germany in school but we were never told that there were heroes that ended in prison instead after the war. Why were their lives interrupted in this way? My grandfather tried to explain but I wasn’t prepared to accept his explanations. Indeed, I do remember that I was inpatient and rather angry with him that day. Only later did I discover that there were cherished Czech heroes who fought together with Red Army on the east front and forgotten and silenced and strangely enough often punished (for what?) heroes who fought on the west front during the Second World War. Or, the moment he surprised me in our dark bathroom showing me like contraband a book he called “the turning point of history”. The book had the name “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch” and was written by never heard of writer with the name Solzhenitsyn. He urged me to read it but it was a boring book. The plot of the narrative was boring. Actually nothing special happened during the day of this hero. Ivan Denisovitch woke up, went to work as a bricklayer, ate fast his meals worrying that criminal gangs could steal it from him and went back to his barrack happy that he made through yet another day. That was it. Quite impossible to get through this story compared to others adventurous books we were given at my school to read at that time. Like the books about Zoja Kosmodemjanskaja or Pavel Morozov, the cherished heroes of communism. Or book about our own Julius Fucik, a communist caught and executed during the war by fascist. Why was grandfather so keen to introduce the rather boring Denisovitch´s life to me? But yes, there was a slowly fading enthusiasm and growing feelings of despair everywhere around us. Kids like me weren’t so sophisticated in their understanding of the life in the country where “tomorrow was already yesterday”. But the inconvenient reality came nearer and nearer. On one hand we were waiving red flags and portraits of Marx, Lenin and our own domestic leaders on communist holidays, on the other hand there have been growing shortages of common goods, fear of secrete police and unwillingness to talk about matters which debaters thought could harm them if listened to by informers. We were always whispering when sitting around the kitchen table at Fanny’s family “flat” in Prague. When anyone of us raise the voice during our talks there was always someone else pointing his index finger at the floor thus reminding us that bellow with his family now lived an officer of “Statni bezpecnost” (“State Security police”). Did he or did he not install a listening device there in orders to spy at us? Nobody knew for sure, but it was a threatening thought to think. And the tiny swimming pool in the garden outside was not filled with water for many years. Just think about the possibility to be reported as one who indulges in the bourgeois pleasures not accessible to ordinary workers building socialisms. In this way many of us ordinary citizens adapted to lifestyle which helped us to navigate trough everyday life in order to avoid problems and confrontations with the “comrades” who demanded that they were for the first time of history in position to “command the wind and the rain” as they so nicely put it in their propaganda.

Richard Congratulations for all hard work you put into E-HELP/Comenius. I will closely follow the debate at this tread to keep me inform about your suggestions and decisions. Right now I do not have any ideas of my own about the first meeting but web placed meeting sound o.k. for me right now.

Dalibor Svoboda, child, 8 years old. The fifties in Czechoslovakia. I was walking with my father and grandfather down the street at my hometown, Brno. They were quietly discussing news from Budapest. Mostly it was grandfather who was talking. My father posed questions here and there or made short comments. I wanted to show them both that I was clever enough to follow their debate. Suddenly when they made a pause I said: “Yesterday six Russian armoured cars were hit and destroyed. And one Russian tank, too.” This was something one of comrades from my school class told me. Few of us friends discussed news from Hungary not actually understanding what was going on. One day our headmaster sent by schools radio circuit a speech about counterrevolution, which will not succeed. “The steel fist of the working class will crush the enemies of socialism”, he said. But we didn’t keep our fingers crossed for Red Army. My grandfather looked down at me: “You talked about this in school? You must be careful not to debate these things with strangers.” I was eight years old when the Hungarian uprising took place. My grandfather listened regularly in the evenings to Radio Vienna. At six o’clock they send news and comments, which he afterwards described, for us at dinner table. The Vienna news was always different from the news sent by Prague radio. My grandmother wasn’t happy about grandfather's comments: “I do not think that you should talk about this in front of the child”, she had stern expression on her face when saying that. Grandfather usually stopped immediately despite me trying to persuade him to continue. We lived together, my mum and dad, grandfather and grandmother in a three room flat near the downtown. My father worked as cartographer, which meant that he was often away from home measuring some new pieces of landscape. My mother worked too. It was often my grandmother who took care of me when my parents were working. I went quite often with her to visit her married sister, Marie. At her flat two of my older cousins, Vladimir and Jiri often waited for me with old scout books, forbidden in the same way as the scouts movement were forbidden. We were supposed to be red pioneers instead. I liked scouts more. I liked to read about all the adventurous things they did. The red pioneers wasn’t bad but I wasn’t allowed to become one because I was a churchgoer. These two things were incompatible. Later I succeeded in becoming a red pioneer when I refused to go to church anymore. My grandmother was very unhappy with my decision. Around that time cousin Vladimir, twelve years older than me began his two years military service. He was placed with border troops guarding the West German - Czech frontier. Several times I heard his mother talking about how unhappy he was. “He is often bursting into the tears now days, he wrote us in his letter.” Vladimir was a sensitive soul. Rest of his life he played violin in different symphony orchestras in Czechoslovakia. One of the most unpleasant chores during his military service was to take care of the human bodies blown to pieces in the minefields. And they were quite a few! These unfortunates trying to escape from the communist regime seldom succeeded. My mother’s family came from Prague. I was always keen to visit them together with her. It took five hours by fast train though the distance was only 200 kilometres. The relatives consisted of old aunts and uncles who were quite successful before communist party came to power in 1948. One of them was proprietor of coffee shop and patisserie, which was so well known that it delivered regularly their delicious cakes to Prague castle for the president. Another of my uncles had a printing shop with four employees. When nationalization of industry by the Communist party took place they lost everything. They received no compensation. My uncle with printing shop was with his entire family forced to leave Prague for a small village far away. They weren’t allowed to take much with them, just few personal things and some clothes. Their car, some furniture and other valuables were confiscated. When they was allowed to returned back to Prague some years later they discovered that the whole ground floor of their villa was taken over by a police officer with his family. Luckily their villa did have two separate entrances. They moved to the upper floor, made bathroom to combined bathroom and kitchen and tried to repair their lives. Uncle, though he was quite old, was forced to work in Prague sewage system. He died after a few years as a broken man. Their daughter, Fanny was not allowed to study at the High School because of her “capitalist background”. She too was to be re-educated by harsh labour. It was many years later she got permission to take exam at vocational distance High School in Brno. It was at that time when she stayed with us for a few days taking her exams I learned more about her and her family’s plight in the fifties. There have been shortages of consumer goods now and then but life wasn’t bad for a kid, who yet didn’t discover that the life could be lived differently.