International Education Day 24th January 2022

Yesterday was International Education Day so that started me thinking about the role of education in our lives and, indeed, the whole world. Even more so given the last couple of years of disrupted education due to the pandemic. Not only has this affected school children but also university students. The damage may last a long time. This is true of richer nations but also across the world where girls, in particular, may never have the chance to return to school. 

My education was never interrupted, thankfully. Had the pandemic happened then I would have seriously struggled. We had many books at home but they were all Czech classics. Czech literature was something my mother, Alena Kaucky, was obsessed with and that's how I learnt about famous Czech authors and their writings. Her favourite literature was poetry and instead of a bedtime story she would recite Czech poetry to me, off by heart, and with great emotion. I was impressed and loved listening to her. But there were very few English books at home so my brother, Josef Kaucky, and I relied on school to provide all our reading material and textbooks. And because we only spoke Czech at home, my English would also have suffered especially since contact with others has been severely restricted during this pandemic. Both my parents could speak English. My father, Jan Kaucky, was fluent and spoke many languages but, nevertheless, both had an accent when speaking English which they were worried I could catch off them and they didn't want me to have that disadvantage.

Thinking back to my school days made me realise how many children have been seriously disadvantaged as a result of C19 restrictions and regulations. All well and good if you come from a wealthy family that can provide you with all you need educationally. Better still if they have been through the English system themselves. However, for those from less privileged backgrounds or from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds where their first language isn't English, it becomes impossible to maintain the same level of education as a school provides.

Therefore, when I had a daughter (Liba) she was in a much better position. Both myself and my then husband (English) were university graduates. Indeed, I have three degrees in total with a Masters in Education and was a fully qualified teacher with experience before she was born. What's my point? Well, it's just this. By the time the next generation is born, their lives are very different from their parents and even more so than their grandparents. My daughter was very close to my mother and learnt a great deal from her in many ways from Czech to cooking and more. They adored each other. But my mother did not speak English with her for the same reason we didn't speak English at home when I was a child. She left that to me and because my then husband was English we only spoke English at home. So my daughter understood Czech very well, could speak the language on a simplistic level, but was not fluent until her latter 20's (post her degree and post my divorce) when she wanted to learn the language and take advantage of my fluency.

Unlike me, my daughter Liba Kaucky was never part of the London-based Czech society/community. And I only became involved in it because the Czech dissident Rev. Jan Lang, needed a teacher for his Saturday Czech school. My father worked on Saturdays, as was quite common in those days, so when my mother was asked by him if she would consider taking the job of teaching Czech she said yes on the understanding it was short term. In the end, it was very long term. She stayed for over 30 years! I, together with my brother, had to attend the school, which took place in a state primary (later it moved to Velehrad in Notting Hill Gate) because neither parent would be at home. Luckily, I was in my mother's class. There were quite a few children at the Saturday school compared with later, especially, once the Iron Curtain came down in 1990 and many Czechs returned to their country. At which point, I left the school having been the teacher responsible for music and 2 concerts a year for the last 20 years. I started early having been asked to step in at the last minute as piano accompanist for a Czech Christmas concert that the school performed every year. Fortunately, I was already one of the pianists for school assembly (in my private secondary school; I previously attended a state primary school) so I was able to jump in at short notice. However, come January (aged 15), I was asked to take over the music because the teacher who had been responsible for it had to leave suddenly. Again, it was only for a short time but I stayed two decades. I helped my mother with the children whose Czech was either poor or non-existent. In addition, I taught those wishing to do Czech O Level. Nevertheless, my main responsibility was music 🎶both singing and musical instruments.

My daughter, Liba, took her first steps in singing at the Czech Saturday school when only two years old but by the time she was three she started group Suzuki violin classes and when rising four she went to a private school (kindergarten). At the same time, she wanted to start tap and acting classes having already started ballet at school. So between me working, her wishing to pursue music, dance and drama, my contact with Czech society all but ceased. My mother carried on teaching Czech there alone but when the numbers dropped too low she equally stopped.

Neither my mother nor myself taught any religion whatsoever during our time at the Czech Saturday school. My mother never talked about religion, we never did anything Christian at home, indeed, my father never attended church. When I first attended the Saturday school as a child Rev. Lang came in to teach a lesson on religion but we didn't understand him and, like all kids, spent our time flicking paper across the room out of boredom. He gave up teaching religion and only, on occasion, might take a child for religious instruction if the parents wanted him to do so. Since we were not a religious family once we were not teaching (and being paid to do so although very little) apart from a short blip, we tended to have less to do with Czech society especially since my mother was still working at a private school.

My mother had a variety of jobs starting by working for Josef Josten (Stein), who was of Jewish origin, and who ran a weekly paper/newsletter, which she typed up, and which reported on life behind the Iron Curtain. I also did odd jobs for him during school holidays and was paid. Josten worked with Rev. Lang on the plight of political prisoners and anti-Soviet campaigning in exiled communities. Later, my mother worked in a college and two schools, in admin, since she had attended business school as a teenager before the Nazis took over and interrupted her studies! 

Of course, my mother kept up some contact with Czech society in London because she was more well-known, especially because of my father's role as a RAF pilot in the Battle of Britain. Having been born in Prague, she needed that Czech connection but I, being younger, was not quite as bothered. I was equally at home in both English and Czech communities. I had, after all, grown up in London, had all my education in London and become a secondary school teacher of English (with Drama), R S and History with middle school Science. But that's a topic for another post.

Nevertheless, I didn't want my daughter growing up in both societies. English is her first language and I wanted her to be extremely proficient in it and highly academic. I also did not want her to grow up in a religious environment. At home, we didn't engage in any religious activities neither did we attend religious institutions for worship. Rev. Lang did drag us in, on occasion, for special cultural events but I didn't allow many of those because they always took place around a church service. Since I explicitly did not want Liba indoctrinated into any religion I didn't want her attending masses. I wasn't the only one who thought like this. Many Czechs we were friends with stayed away for that very reason and we would also have done so had we not been drawn in to teach and my father, being considered too old (in his early 40's!🤷‍♀️) to rejoin the airforce in England and be a pilot, had to rely on The Czech Refugee Trust Fund for help. This fund was set up by the British government.

We saw the Czech community based at Velehrad, Notting Hill Gate, as a cultural, political organization not a religious one. The fact that it was run by a priest was incidental, as far as we were concerned. Nevertheless, many of us were vocal in preferring a secular Czech society which would be more inclusive since not everyone was a Christian or keen on religion. And to a certain extent, Rev. Lang had to respect this so religion was not as promoted as it seems to be now. He was tolerant of people who were not of the same faith which is what my mother liked about him. Rev. Lang was at the hub of the Czech community which was focused on maintaining the Czech language and culture as well as freeing Czechoslovakia from communist rule. In this way, he united all Czechs and Slovaks irrespective of religion. Therefore, it's important to note that Rev. Lang was not a parish priest, he was there if people wanted a priest but he was at the centre of a political movement which we could all get behind. It was this political aspect that engaged my mother and myself. And to a certain extent, my brother. My father, whom I was very close to, died when I was only 15.

Neither I, nor my daughter, have any contact with the Czech community in the UK (or anywhere else in the world). We receive no newsletter from them, no letters or email correspondence of note. My daughter has never been, nor is she now, involved in the Czech community neither has she belonged to any Czech groups or subscribed to any newsletter etc. She has merely visited a few times, usually when the wearing of Czech national dress was needed, for a cultural event and, even then, not beyond the age of 11-12. I have also ensured that she does not partake in any religious activity which would make her 'in communion with' the Catholic church, hence, for instance, she never attends mass, has never made 'confession' (sacrament of penance required before taking First Communion and later before Confirmation, usually around the age of 13+) nor has she ever received any instruction in the Catholic (or other Christian) faith from anyone formally or informally, as a result of all of these (and more) she is ineligible to receive the sacraments and she doesn't wish to either! This is important since the Czech community has become even more heavily Catholic. It would, therefore, be a mistake for them to think that she is in any way interested in being involved in their religiously Catholic-based community. She doesn't follow and, indeed, rejects Catholic teaching. (Both of us follow Judaism.) Added to which, she is a genderfluid lesbian, so it would be even more awkward and irrelevant given Catholic views on LGBT+. For her, Czech is one of many languages she can speak and she is justifiably proud of her cultural inheritance.

So what's my point? It's this: There are different forms of education which take place in different contexts, in different places, at different times. Students have different backgrounds, and so different educational needs. How far these are met is crucial to the wellbeing of a nation. The pandemic has disrupted all of these except those who are already home-educated anyway, pre-pandemic. 

Author: Jana Kaucky

Proofread, edited and IT: Liba Kaucky