Bozena

The Russians invade us

I woke up at one in the morning, because I heard the relentless sound of passing tanks. “How is possible,” I thought, “that there are so many tanks passing tonight?” In fact, large airplanes were landing every two minutes at Prague’s Ruzyne airport. They were army aircraft transporting tanks - from somewhere? I had never seen so many tanks before. Unmarked tanks, rumbling from the airport to Prague. Were the first visitors to see the beauty of our new road coming in tanks?

We did not know what was going on. After half an hour our neighbour rang on our door and said, “`Listen to your radio! We are threatened with occupation!” 

Occupation. I knew about this concept from Second World War but I had never heard this word used in the context of my country. But occupation was a word that I heard many times after that morning. But who was occupying my country? Who were my enemies? 

Shortly after half past one in the morning I heard another message from the radio: "Dear Listeners, keep your receivers on,” said the radio announcer to residents of Czechoslovakia. Normally the radio closed down at two o'clock in the morning, but this time it was different. At five to two in the morning we heard words that, for many people, were forever etched in their memory: "The troops of the Soviet Union, the Polish Peoples’ Republic, the German Democratic Republic, Hungarian People's Republic and Bulgarian Peoples’ Republic have crossed the state border ”.

After the first few sentences the announcer’s voice disappeared on the major broadcasting channel because the director of the Czech radio commanded the operators to switch off the microwave transmitters. The entire statement was heard only on radios that were on cable.

I remember every minute of the first day of occupation on 21st August 1968. But I did not understand on that day what was going. Everything was strange, weird, unbelievable...everything was changing.

The sixties in Europe and in Czechoslovakia were very special years when I was a young adult. We believed freedom was coming. We thought we would soon be living a normal life in a Czechoslovakian democracy. The Czechoslovakian New Wave was mainly visible in culture - so many very special films, theatres, books. Indeed, we still did not have much in the shops and there were still queues for bananas, quality clothes, and fashion of course. There were also long queues every Thursday for books. We were buying books, reading books, searching for books, borrowing books and reading, reading and reading. There had not been such an exciting time in my life before. 

As you know, you only realize the value of things at the moment when you lose them. Only after 21st August 1968, that fateful year, did we look back and realize that sixties were very special years for Czechoslovakia. But from the time of the Russian occupation in 1998 we lost our intellectual freedom again.

The lens of computer education

In this book we are focusing on how the state gains influence on the populace through the lens of computers in the schools and universities. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you how I have coped through a series of political upheavals that I did not necessarily agree with.

People in Britain will find it difficult to understand how frequently Europeans have had to assimilate the impact of political upheaval by acknowledging the changes in place names. For example, the reason that I had first hand experience of we lived on the main road in Prague that led from the airport to the center of town. In those days the road was called Lenin Street. It was created under the socialist government as a showcase for those coming to Prague from the airport. It had only been opened just few weeks before 21st August when the occupation began. But politics impacts on street names again and again.  Today the Russians are gone and the road is called European Street. 

Indeed, although I have never left Prague District 6, there have been many political changes sealed with a newly coined name. For example, I have lived in Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, then, I lived in Czechoslovakia, Czechoslovak Peoples’ Democratic Republic, Czechoslovak Socialistic Republic, Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, Czechoslovakia again, and finally in Czech Republic or Czechia. These different names are one of the visible impacts on ordinary people of the fight for supremacy of different political extremists. We are clearly short on politicians from the centre of politics.

A ‘mere’ woman 

My story will help to illustrate the rate of political change in mainland Europe in my lifetime. I was born during Second World War in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia during Hitler’s occupation of Czechoslovakia. Our educational system was badly affected by the Nazi ideology: Czech universities were closed and Czech children were offered a very limited education, sometimes going to school only once a week. Such is war.

By the time my education started under the communist regime, our country was called the Czechoslovakia Peoples’ Democratic Republic. I was the oldest daughter of a father who was a teacher of mathematics and physics. But I was a girl: my father wanted a son, because he would like for him engineering education what he never achieve, as he was from very poor family. At the time I felt I had to imitate the boys, in the way I approached technology, at least. But today, I am grateful to him because he insisted on a ‘boy’s’ education for me. So from the very beginning I took part in the technical and mathematical competitions at schools where I was successful. I do not ever remember my father saying: “You cannot do these competitions, you’re just a girl.” He taught me that I was entitled to do anything I want to do. All the time he said to me,” Do not say this or that is impossible: just say that you do not know how to do it, yet”. 

From the age of ten, my father impressed upon me that I should study at the best university for engineering in Prague, the Czech Technical University. He even specified the Faculty of Radio Technology. Indeed, it was the best fit for my future profession in computer science. Of course I had was from very poor family, no idea what he was talking about when I was ten. But I am grateful to him as all the literature tells us now that family and society have a great influence on positive attitudes.

Our country’s name had already changed again when I started at university to the Czechoslovak Socialistic Republic. The influence of the communist regime on the curriculum was very pronounced overall, but this did not greatly impact on mathematics and technical education because these subjects largely involve incontrovertible facts. I was admitted into the technical faculty without problem. There were one hundred and fifty boys and only five girls in my year. I tried hard to be equal to the boys and, honestly, this was not too difficult. 

So at school I studied subjects that turned out to be very useful later on during my study of computer science and graduated in 1967 with a radio engineering degree.  After university I started to work in Aritma Company at the Czechoslovak plant producing Czech computers that used punch cards. At that time Czechoslovakia computer design was beginning to be recognized. My country was not only buying our first main frames computers from West, but designing our own as well. Later on we had to take step backwards because after the Russian occupation we were prevented from buying the best from the West to learn from. Believe me, working in computer science without decent computers was somewhat difficult. Russian copies of Western computers were poor. We were happy if we could just keep them going.

Politically motivated changes in education

After we had suffered the Russian occupation, a normalization process was evident in Czechoslovakia. Instead of being a socialist republic we were now under the Soviet Communists. Many Czechs felt deeply that, during the normalization process, the character of the Czechs had been sublimated. 

Amongst all the questionable changes that were taking place in the country the worse were the changes to the Czech education system. Again, all this was under strong ideological supervision of Czech Communists who were already running the country, aided and abetted by the Soviet Union. 

The many different political systems we have lived through inevitably have had an impact on state education. Of course this is always be true in all countries where state education is seen as a way of passing on the current cultural and political ideas to a new generation. For the last one hundred years, all Czechoslovak and now Czech children have had some kind of state education. Indeed, there have been thousands of very good teachers during those years. 

A key reason for the excellence of our system was our heritage from the Austrian Hungarian Empire. Before 1774 there was virtually no organized school system in Bohemia. Private education was designed exclusively for the rich, indigenous class of society. But the majority of the population was illiterate. Bohemia was, at that time, part of the Austrian Empire. Empress Maria Theresa introduced compulsory school attendance for children from 6 to 12 years of age. 

In addition to compulsory schooling, the Empress introduced so-called Upper School Patronage, transferring responsibility for the construction of schools and the selection of teachers to rich burghers. These larger schools were better equipped; the first school libraries were founded; and, the status of teachers was improved. After 1848, financial patronage was taken over by the municipalities.

The School Act of 1869 that introduced compulsory eight-year schooling also set up teacher training for four-year as well as maximum teaching time of thirty hours per week. These conditions were possible because of the weakening of the church's authority and oversight. School directors appointed a city council or rural council although the ultimate authority was the emperor himself.

After the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, directors began to be appointed on the basis of selection. During the selection process, not only the qualifications of the applicant, the length of their practice were considered, but also scientific activity were evaluated????

In Czechoslovakia we have good reason to remember the years 1938, 1948, 1968 and 1989 which each bought in new kinds of political restrictions on our freedom. The first three dates are not very happy ones for the Czechoslovaks, because they bought in totally different governmental and educational systems. Firstly the 1938 occupation was by Hitler. Then after a short period of democracy the Communists took over in 1948. The Russian occupation came in 1968. Modernization at all levels of Czechoslovak education occurred in the beginning of eighties. In fact, a new school law that was adopted in 1984 was valid with amendments up to 2004. According to this law the school system was absolutely centralized: children were taught the same curricula using the same textbooks. This suited our totalitarian overlords whatever the new systems were actually called: communism, socialism, Soviet or Russian.

So people like me who wanted Czechoslovak to be ruled by the native Czechs could not influence the fundamental changes were made in the Czechoslovak education in 1948. All legislative standards on education had been abolished and the schools were governed by regional national committees of Communist party in the pedagogical, personnel and administrative spheres. School directors were no longer appointed on the basis of selection procedures, but on the basis of the decision of the relevant National Committee, which was ruled by the Communist Party. At this time, school principals had virtually no competence in school management, administration, education, or personnel issues. All of these areas were governed by government, the ministry and national committee regulations.

In 1977, the duties of the head teachers, responsible for the ideological, pedagogical and vocational aspects of the work of the school, were defined by law.

1938 to 1989 covers 50 productive years. 

The political situation in education in Czechoslovakia after the Russian occupation in 1968 was a cause for concern. Many gifted Czechs emigrated, many of whom were computer scientists. In fact, many experts had seen the writing on the Wall, literally, and had emigrated for the USA before 1968 - well-known people like the Czech, Antonin Svoboda who was member of team designing computers in US during the Second World War. He returned after the war to Czechoslovakia and started the development and design of Czech computers. He created a team of numerous experts in Prague and they worked at the most sophisticated level. But it was impossible for them to do top level research, not just because of lack of Western technology, but mainly because of crushing supervision from communists. The last members of that group emigrated after 1968. 

But not everybody can emigrate. Somebody has to stay at home to prepare the population for a post-communist era, even if you have the awful sense that this regime will last forever. 

In terms of computer science, at the beginning of seventies, a group of people emerged from those who were advising schools with the idea of creating master classes focusing on different subjects. Technical disciplines were at the center of this move and algorithms and coding were key topics. The reason why technical disciplines were promoted was because these were not a danger to communistic ideology as cultural, historical and literary studies would be. The Russians, in fact, supported these master classes. In 1971, the first classes were started with a four-year curriculum of coding and other computer science topics that started in six gymnasiums (grammar schools) in Czechoslovakia. Of course they needed computing teachers and went to the universities to find them.

A lucky accident

Sometimes life chances happen by accident – and this is exactly what happened to me. 

Dr. Vorlickova, headmistress of Arabska, one of the best gymnasiums in Prague 6, in. decided that she would like to institute a class focused on programming. She started with her own teachers of mathematics, but they did not have enough knowledge and experience. Also she needed some computers on which students could test their programs. Her old classmate from The Faculty of Mathematics, Professor Konicek, was also the head of Department of Computer Science on Czech Technical University in Prague which is considered to be an equal to Imperial in London. In fact, it was the first department of computer science in Europe and celebrated 50 years in 2014. The Headmistress asked Professor Konicek if he could find somebody at the Department to help her to teach computers. I was asked to do it.

I was little afraid. I had no experience of teaching adults, never mind school children. But I was a member of Computer Centre at the department, had a degree in Computer Science from University of Waterloo in Canada. Most importantly, I wanted to teach but because of my lack of support for the Russian invasion in 1968 I was not allowed to teach at University. So teaching part-time at the high school in Arabska looked like an attractive substitute. The 40 years I have spent there gave me a wonderful experience in teaching just when computing sciences were entering Czech classrooms. I prepared many students for their profession by opening up to them the world of computers and, after the changes in 1989, opening the doors to the world. I am grateful for that. 

In September 1973, my first class was first year students. I was at that time, if I may say so, an attractive, young woman with fashionable long hair. But do not imagine that communism breeds equality between men and women. I had my first real taste of inequality when I entered the secondary school classroom for the first time. A boy in first row said with a sneer to his neighbour: 

“What, that WOMAN will teach us programming!”

“Yes I will,” I answered politely.

And I did.