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History
THE UNDERGROUND UNIVERSITY OUT OF THE UNDERGROUND THE JAN HUS EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION TODAY BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE THE UNDERGROUND UNIVERSITY The Jan Hus Educational Foundation has its roots in a movement known today as the Underground University. Following 1968, when the so-called period of normalisation curtailed academic freedom in the classroom, a group of scholars organized a series of clandestine seminars on philosophy in apartments around Prague. Philosopher Julius Tomin sent a letter asking for help and co-operation to Oxford University in 1978. This request brought support and lecturers from abroad, which encouraged the organisation of seminars to spread to Brno and Bratislava. Jan Hus Educational Foundations were chartered in Great Britain and France to support the teaching of the Underground University, independent research, samizdat publishing, and independent cultural activities in Czechoslovakia. And later, Hus foundations in Canada, the United States, Benelux and Germany joined them. As the organisation of the seminars developed, their scope grew to include not only philosophy and social sciences but also ecology, literature, theatre, graphic arts, music and architecture.
OUT OF THE UNDERGROUND The democratic revolution of 1989 ended the underground nature of work for the family of the Hus Foundation, and it posed a dilemma: should the Foundation conclude its activities, or was there more work to be done? The answer was immediate. Repairing the damage from the past fifty years would take time and effort. The Hus Foundation, with its network of international contacts and supporters, could play an important role in that process. The newly-founded Czechoslovak Jan Hus Educational Foundation shared the same goals that its "parent" foundations abroad had followed: supporting education, freedom of information, and the free development of spiritual values. But changing times meant new needs and called for new ways of working. Instead of organising teaching, as in the times of the Underground University, the Foundation directed its services to Czech and Slovak educational institutions. For the first two years, the Foundation focused on assessing immediate needs and offering help where the situation was most critical. First, universities required information and contacts with the rest of the world. Then books, journals, teaching materials, technology and computers. Finally, help with the regeneration of teaching: introducing new subjects, and reintroducing quality in those fields which had suffered most, from languages and management to ecology and philosophy. Increasing demand for advisory and information services showed a need for the founding of an independent project, today's Academic Information Centre in Brno. Cooperation with educational institutions developed into two structured programmes, Support for Higher Education and Support for Civic Education.
THE JAN HUS EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION TODAY Immediately after 1989, our work was directed at filling the most glaring holes in libraries, knowledge, and basic material conditions necessary for scholarship. The Foundation quickly developed programmes of systematic expert help. Computers would not ensure long-term changes to improve education. But working with people would. The Foundation sought to encourage innovation of education in the humanities and social sciences. Our universities needed new disciplines and new departments, the introduction of new curricula, and radical change in the contents and methods of teaching. Teachers needed new knowledge and experience, access to new scholarly literature, and they needed to become part of the international academic community. Our motivation has always been to provide better education for students, and to achieve quality in education we need capable, motivated, and well-trained teachers. That is why the Foundation introduced two basic programmes as part of its Support for Higher Education: Cursus Innovati strives for a higher standard of teaching and better qualified educators, and Novicius seeks to develop scholarly and pedagogic qualities of a new generation of university teachers. The Cursus Innovati programme offers support to universities in the innovation of curricula, the purchasing of scholarly literature, and the creation of study materials. The programme offers teachers the opportunity to cooperate with top foreign universities and with the leading scholars in their fields. Through the programme, the Foundation supports the systematic development of university education and the long-term professional growth of university teachers, both to allow departments to meet the critical and changing needs of the students and to compete amid the demands of the international academic community. We founded the Novicius programme because we are convinced that the greatest hope for the future of our education lies with the new generation of teachers. Novicius is a programme of individual training of young university teachers through the supervision of experienced Czech and foreign teachers. It consists not only of preparation for teaching itself, but also essential training in scholarly work: participation in conferences, papers, research, etc. The system of higher education, its foundation eroded by decades of oppression and tyranny, is today only in the first phase of regeneration. Its real development will be the task of the decades to come. Institutions of higher education play a vital, long-term role in building and sustaining a civil society. But the Hus Foundation also recognises the need to foster grass roots community building beyond the walls of academia. To help meet this goal in Slovakia in particular, the Hus Foundation developed the Res Publica programme as part of our work in Support for Civic Education. BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE The development of an educational system is a constant process, even in an open society. A global economy that increasingly values knowledge means that education will influence more strongly the role our countries play in Europe and the rest of the world. Meanwhile, almost daily in our work we confront evidence of severe damage the previous regimes wrought on our system of higher education for more than fifty years. Is it possible in a few short years to undo that damage? Even a forest, which can be cut down in a few days, takes decades to grow again. We are at the beginning of a long and difficult endeavour. We have already repaired the worst effects of isolation and decline, and we have planted seeds for the future. The innovation of teaching remains our ongoing task. We need to develop teaching in traditional fields, but also to integrate new subjects and fields that develop with the changing needs of the world. We would like to strengthen and broaden the scale and scope of the Novicius programme - already a model for teacher training in other countries -because the preparation of a new generation of teachers is fundamental to the dynamic development of the educational system. The rapidity of change brought by sharing in a global economy also means that individuals will need to take responsibility for their own life-long education, and with our experience the Foundation is ready to aid in that task. Today, the Jan Hus Educational Foundation is one of the best known foundations in its field in Central Europe. We are a professionally managed organisation with expert background internationally, with branches in Prague, Brno and Bratislava. We do more than simply offer grants. Our activities employ a thorough system of support, based on the fundamental principle of our work - the principle of partnership. Cooperation is part of every step of any project: from identifying needs, preparing, implementing, and evaluating the project, then applying the new knowledge. With the experience the Hus Foundation has gained from working with partners in the Czech and Slovak Republics and internationally, we are working to help build broader support for other Czech and Slovak foundations and non-government organisations as we enter the new century.
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