The chapter introduces homeschooling in the Czech Republic, Europe, from the perspective of an anthropologist, who herself had both observed the phenomenon scientifically, as well as practiced it with her four children. The author introduces homeschooling as an important social topic, that may be regarded as a barometer of state power and control over its citizens. The text takes the reader onto a historical journey through various regimes that have governed the country, from the dawn of compulsory schooling under the Habsburg dynasty in the 18th century, through to two World Wars, onto socialism, communism, and finally, democratic government and its various turbulences over the last 30 years. Based upon participant observation, interviews, autoethnography, and secondary sources analysis, the author shows nuances and niches of homeschooling within the state compulsory education system, its battle for recognition, inclusion, and sustainability, which is achieved not only by law itself but also by five pillars of successful homeschooling, noted at the end of the chapter.
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The Czech Republic – a 10 million head country in the heart of Europe, best known for its historical capital Prague, Jaromír Jágr´s ice hockey skills, Václav Havel´s humanistic politics, Antonín Dvořák´s classical music, Škoda car brand, Pilsner Urquel bier and few discoveries such as that of contact lenses or the word Robot also has a large, and growing home education population. The heart of a continent, that has been divided into enemy segments over the whole 20th century – first by two world wars, later by differing cold war ideologies. It is a small country, where borders, vernaculars and blood ties still matter, where history is the source of national pride and traditions are seen as a direct bridge to it. And at the same time, it evidences a parade of resistance, resourcefulness, and bricolage (Lévi-Strauss 1962) on the side of those who want to resist them and to see or live their lives differently.
This chapter is not an attempt to illustrate a Czech national character, as this was done elsewhere (Holý 1996). Rather, it aims to describe the topic of this book - homeschooling – from the region-bound historical and cultural perspectives of the Czech Republic, giving it new and different dimensions, meanings, and agencies. It views learning and teaching not only as a pedagogical and philosophical challenge but through the anthropological lens, all the above as well as a political instrument of power, which – if left out – blurs the understanding of its relations and consequences that stand out from them.
The Czech compulsory school system has a long history, reaching as far as 1780´s, when the country was still part of the Austrian empire, ruled by the Habsburg dynasty. Historically, the most typical attribute of Czech schooling is uniformity, standardisation which is said to promote an idea of equity. The peak of this approach was experienced during the Czech communist era (1947 – 1989), when all knowledge and learning became centralised, the syllabus documents (even those of university education level courses and units) had to be approved by the central communist ideological apparatus, mandating both the content and method of learning, what was constituted as knowledge, all in the name of égalité, fraternité, liberté1. Education at all levels was promoted as a right, thus free, just, and available to all, where necessary selection2 was achieved though standardised tests and (less openly) due to family adherence to communist party ideology and the family’s social capital and personal connections that identified these agents as having an aptitude to an education that is superior. In order to succeed, if the child was not from a prominent communist family, then they had to comply with strict school laws, didactic and memory-based learning methods, frequent daily standardised testing, borderless authority of the school and the teachers and number-based, five-grade-scale, abstract school reports.
Since the Velvet revolution and the fall of the communist regime in 1989, many changes have taken place while many region-bound specificities continue to hold true. This chapter will introduce the ideal of homeschooling in Central Europe, with a specific focus on the case study of the Czech Republic (see also Kašparová 2019). As this chapter will attempt to show, its legalisation in 2005 was not only a challenge to school system per se, but also a challenge to conceptions of the philosophy of knowledge, learning and information, family structures and the political and religious beliefs that were long been promoted within this geographical region.
The text is based upon an anthropological longitudinal study of homeschooling families. As a mother of four, I became interested in homeschooling in 2008, when my eldest son reached his school age. At that time in the Czech Republic, homeschooling was legal only for primary school3 level. Less than 0.05% of all school children opted for this way of learning, where actual numbers of homeschoolers in the country counted in tens, rather than in hundreds of thousands. At that time, it was principally perceived as a rejection of all norms, traditions, and standards.