THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 18, 1995 TAG: 9502180426
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 114 lines
Hampton Roads schools are serving as laboratories for educators from the Czech Republic who want to reform their country's education system after decades of communist rule.
``Change inside goes very slowly,'' Jitka Jilemicka, a lecturer for the Czech Center of Partners for Democratic Change, said while visiting Lake Taylor High School last week. ``I feel we need more global thinking.''
Before the Soviet-backed government was ousted in 1989, Czech teachers were intimidated by communist spies who used students to identify dissidents.
Now Czech educators are free to shape curricula and speak openly. It is a critical point in their history and a good time to experiment.
In four weeks here, the eight Czechs want to understand better how U.S. schools are run, and apply those lessons to Czech schools.
Looking very American - one history teacher wore his long hair in a ponytail - the Czechs almost seemed at home in Lake Taylor's hallways and classrooms.
The Czechs, given America's reputation for violence, had been prepared to see kids with guns and knives. So they were impressed, they said, by the relatively well-behaved students. Still, they were surprised to find security officers with walkie-talkies.
``We don't have them,'' said Ludmila Otmarova, an assistant principal in Prague, the Czech Republic's capital. Otmarova also teaches four classes of English every week.
The day before, the Czechs had visited Norview High to learn about a program that teaches students to resolve personal conflicts in non-violent ways.
For the past two years, Jilemicka has worked on a project to teach Czech teachers and principals skills in conflict mediation.
``We are very good teaching facts and dates from history, but we don't teach pupils for future life and communicating and talking about feelings and what you do with your feelings, like anger,'' Jilemicka said.
In particular, the Czechs want to learn how American schools involve parents.
``It's the thing we have to learn because we don't know much about it,'' Otmarova said. ``The parents who come to school are usually the grumbling parents.''
The Czechs are curious about the political and social pressures that drive local school reform in America. How, for instance, do school officials deal with differing viewpoints as they implement changes?
``It opens our minds,'' said Petra Svobodova, who teaches at a private school in Prague.
The emergence of private schools, which receive 80 percent funding from the government, is one of the biggest changes since the 1989 Velvet Revolution.
Svobodova's description of private schools sounds remarkably similar to Virginia Gov. George Allen's concept of charter schools. Even though the Czech schools receive state money, they are free from government rules and can create their own curriculum. But at Svobodova's school, unlike with Allen's plan, students also must pay - 1,000 crowns, or about $30 a month.
Like Allen's charter-schools concept, private schools in the Czech Republic have fostered resentment. Public school officials say it is unfair for private schools to receive state money and also charge students a fee. It puts public schools at a disadvantage, Otmarova said.
During an interview, Svobodova and Otmarova engaged in a spirited debate.
``There is a student in my school who was bored in public schools; she didn't like the school, she hated the teachers because they shouted at students all the time,'' Svobodova said. ``Her parents decided they could afford 1,000 crowns. Now, she's completely happy.''
``There are many families who can't afford it,'' Otmarova countered, ``and they have to cope with it.''
Public school students in the Czech Republic attend classes for 10 months, or about 200 days, a year, compared with 180 in Virginia. Education is compulsory for children 6 to 15.
At 14 or 15, kids wishing to continue must take entrance exams to determine which of three types of education they receive. One prepares students for a university and professional life; another equips them with vocational skills; the other offers apprenticeship training in a trade.
``The communists decided how many educated people they'd have and it was difficult to get into the university,'' Svobodova said. ``That has all changed.''
The Czechs' trip to Hampton Roads was engineered by Old Dominion University. ODU competed against colleges and universities nationwide to win a $63,096 grant from the U.S. Information Agency's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
Congress made the money available to help former communist countries in Eastern Europe learn how democracy operates.
``They're trying to bring in more voices from the community,'' said Alyce LeBlanc, an ODU research student who helped write the grant proposal. ``They are very interested in our efforts to involve parents. They didn't understand at first why parents would want to volunteer in their schools.''
The group met last week in Richmond with Virginia schools Superintendent William C. Bosher Jr. to discuss how the state has revised its ``standards of learning'' - what children in kindergarten through 12th grade are expected to know - in social studies.
On Sunday, the Czechs left on a five-day trip to Washington to talk to U.S. Department of Education officials and Rep. Owen Pickett, D-Va., and tour Fairfax County schools.
At First Colonial and Cox high schools in Virginia Beach, they will learn how schools deal with attendance and discipline problems. At Western Branch High in Chesapeake, they will review the range of subjects. At Churchland and I.C. Norcom high schools in Portsmouth, they see how American educators approach diversity.
``They are really fascinated by our system of checks and balances, that even though we have regulations it doesn't mean another group can't speak out against them,'' said Petra E. Snowden, chairwoman of educational leadership and counseling at ODU's Darden College of Education.
``Until 1989, freedom of expression and the press were not allowed. They've had to learn to be free.'' ILLUSTRATION: MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/Staff
Jitka Jilemicka, left, Jan Smantana, center, and Paula Krizova pore
over material in an English class at Lake Taylor High School.
by CNB