Student declaration on the 20th anniversary of the velvet revolution
Preamble
It is the 20th anniversary of our democracy. Huge street parties have been planned long in advance – probably they will take the same form as usual: pop stars of the last forty years will cavort onstage, politicians will congratulate themselves and each other on how well they led us through the pitfalls of our new freedom, while the bulk of the population will take advantage of the long weekend and disappear off somewhere.
If we leave it at that, the November anniversary will be another missed opportunity. A twentieth anniversary is an out-of-the-ordinary opportunity not only for the usual retrospective overview, but especially to take an inventory.
We have existed for twenty years as a democratic country. Even after twenty years we’re still telling ourselves that we’re somehow still at the beginning, that we’re not a mature democracy yet. This is how we explain away a whole lot of abuses, almost all of them. But the main problem is not slow development. The fact is that our democracy has not grown at all, nor become stronger. The events of the last year can even be considered a decline. We have cause to be concerned about our democracy.
The following student declaration is an expression of these concerns.
A reflection on our Communist past
We are the first student generation of whom it is often said that we’re not marked by Communism. Insofar as we did not experience the time before November 1989 and know nothing about it, then it is thought that we have escaped its influence. The truth is the opposite; the less we know about the past, the more we are in thrall to it. A whole twenty years has gone by – and a proper reflection on our Communist past has not even been started. And we believe that’s why we’re in such a mess.
All that slightly disturbs Czech society from time to time are the random brushes of our celebrities with the secret police. Our Communist past is being made use of quite deliberately: in the struggle for power, to dispose of political opponents and to sell more newspapers. Nothing of this can be considered a reflection on the past. We should not be satisfied with simplistic labels, and scandals revealed in the manner of “did he sign or didn’t he?”.
Up to and including today there has been no clear identification of the principles by which totalitarian power functioned and how it deformed both society and individuals. We haven’t even begun to map how many habits and attitudes of that time we all carry with us without knowing it. We may be right in feeling that it’s more than a few.
Why for example do we so comfortably resign ourselves to the feeling that “someone up there” makes decisions for us and there is nothing we can do about it? Why are we regularly afraid to champion something we consider worthwhile? Why does every struggle with an arrogant power seem to us pointless and eccentric?
We can go on: how is it we so easily think it’s socially acceptable to lie? Where did our tolerance for evading the law and cheating the state come from? And when did we start happily believing that material security comes first and everything else is icing on the cake?
We don’t know how much of this is the direct result of Communism, but one thing is certain: even our generation, considered to be free, has not been liberated from any of this. The past influences us through our parents, teachers, institutions, and the atmosphere in society. And that is why we want to know what that past really was.
Once we begin to know what it was that made our pre-November ’89 society unfree, we will have a better chance of recognising similar risks today. We have to be just as capable in today’s situation of perceiving slight shifts from freedom to non-freedom. Even today it’s important to be sensitive to manifestations of non-freedom around us. Even today we have to expose new and stealthy forms of totalitarianism and react to them appropriately.
Education
In few countries are academic titles regarded with such reverence as in the Czech Republic. In spite of the fact that people are talking all the time about the decline in educational standards, a title endows someone with a sort of elevated aura. As though till now it had been valid that people with titles were somehow of a higher quality.
Only – the whole process of education in our country is a hypocritical game. We all play it: students, teachers, parents, society in general. Hardly anyone admits how low today’s educational standards are: a working knowledge of English, a facile ability to copy from Wikipedia and a somewhat more advanced knowledge of how to Google; as a rule that’s all that’s required from a student. More demanding schools insist on regular practice in the skill of mechanical memorising, while the truly elite establishments equip graduates with a list of useful contacts which is not infrequently regarded as the most valuable academic prize of all. Hardly anyone makes any effort to study, or actually enjoys it. The only point of education is to enable the graduate – the would-be labour unit – to command a slightly higher price on the job market.
You can read about the importance of education in government documents and party manifestoes. But nowhere does it tell you what that education should be.
It shouldn’t be about becoming a highly productive “human resource” whose primary purpose is to generate profit. Education should be the means through which a person gains the ability to recognise what lies around them, and to make decisions about it. Education should also make one aware of alternatives to the ubiquitous pragmatism which for most people becomes the only available credo. Only this is where our contemporary educational system has dropped furthest behind. Our schools guide us neither to knowledge nor to a better orientation in the world, and as for wisdom, forget it. On every level of our educational system we lack the courage to search for and hold in esteem a value system. Emphasis on character is similarly absent.
It is right now that our present democracy urgently needs people capable of coming to grips with the world around them – and with themselves – and guiding others to that point. Our present democracy also needs individuals who would know how to make the right decisions and to act in completely new and unexpected situations – those for which we don’t yet have a handbook.
But do we know how to support such individuals? In our schools emphasis is put on materials and techniques and especially on well equipped classrooms. What we miss far more is live contact with high-quality teachers. The sort of teachers who would not only show how much they know but above all provide guidance in a meaningful way: how one can be useful in the world, how one can be a point of reference for others, and how not to be afraid of implementing even those things which – to put it simply – are not “sexy”.
Only that today’s teachers keep their own opinions hidden. There is a feeling that they shouldn’t influence students – that this is unprofessional or even manipulative. But we need teachers who have the sense and courage to guide us towards critical thinking, to shape, to influence – and even to educate us, which doesn’t have to be a prohibited word. And they should have space for all of this.
It is completely wrong to think that teachers can recover this space themselves, maybe with the help of the Ministry of Education. If we want our country to be inspiring, self-confident and free in the future, education has to be a theme not only for teachers, students and politicians. It has to be at the top of the list for all of us; more important than the Beneš decrees, more important than new highways and being charged to visit the doctor. If we are going to be preoccupied with those things, we can expect to remain on the cultural periphery of Europe.
The role of the Czech Republic in the world
It goes without saying that we are the first generation to be operating in an open world, and that this is something we can take for granted. We regularly go abroad to study, often remain there to work, we have a bunch of friends there and have no problem in understanding each other. We can see our country from a different perspective. And as students, we can only be ashamed of the current image of the Czech Republic abroad.
We have a president who thinks he can indulge himself in the most bizarre opinions on the European Union, on climate change, on the universe and its surroundings – and all that in our name. Yet we have no one else who presents such a high profile: our politicians behave in such a confused and inscrutable way that hardly anyone abroad can take us seriously. With whom do we in this country really want to have an alliance? With Europe, with the United States – or with Putin’s Russia? And what does our country actually want? The integration of the EU, the break-up of the EU – or do we just want to go on being a nuisance?
Unfortunately, we are guilty of supporting our politicians in this. What interests us most abroad as citizens is how much a holiday at the sea costs and how much snow there is in the Alps. We seem to think that the coexistence between people and states is normal when everyone minds their own business: “You don’t take care of us, we don’t take care of you.” Not even the six-month EU Presidency persuaded us to look further than our own back yard.
The end of all this is that we are simply insignificant – no one can be bothered with us. As far as the world is concerned we’re neither interesting nor dangerous. No identity, no decent role can emerge from such shapelessness.
If we were at least able to show we can use our unique experience in an international setting: we lived for forty years under totalitarianism, so we could therefore be more sensitive to issues of human rights. We could be capable of easily recognising the unobtrusive rise of authoritarian regimes or the gradual corrosion of democracy. Maybe we are better able than the Western states to figure out Russia.
Except that we have problems of quite a basic nature: not only do we not know what role we want to play, but we have no will to look for it together, to agree over it and to keep that agreement long term. And so all this points to the probability that we’ll remain eternally stuck in the role of embarrassing and querulous jokers.
A fragile democracy
Our generation is apparently expected to sort out at last all the mess of contemporary democracy. We hear from our elders that a new culture will enter political and civil life with us. That at last the good times will roll. It’s yet another of the many gambles on the younger generation. We’re certainly pleased with the trust put in us, but – to be frank – to imagine we’ll know how to do such a thing on our own is naïve – or maybe just a search for an alibi.
Insofar as our generation is distinctive in any way, it is exactly in that it isn’t distinctive in any way, least of all as far as values are concerned. We’re not very interested in public affairs and politics angers us – and mainly we simply don’t understand it. The fact that an occasional protest demonstration takes place now and then, or even a whole wave of demonstrations organised over the internet, makes no difference. We don’t want to get involved in public activities – especially not systematically. We’re no different in that from all the older people around us. And we have no deeply buried need to be in opposition to them. We don’t want to change the world.
No one ever is born with such a desire and it isn’t something young people are gifted with; simply, it has to be learned. But from whom? Those who should be our authorities and teachers are accustomed to ignoring the public sphere and living their own private life. That’s been picked up by us easily. We too unhesitatingly value our own private interest higher than the common interest, and it seems perfectly natural. It never occurs to us that it could be otherwise.
We too rely on the fact that the public sphere will get on all right without us. It suits us best when we don’t have to take any notice of it: ideally, it should just be some sort of non-intrusive background to our self-realisation and enjoyment of life.
Only – it has been demonstrated several times that the public space cannot be left alone to fend for itself. Surprisingly soon it will spoil – like everything else no one takes any care of. In addition, there are always people around who will skilfully and unscrupulously adapt it for their own benefit.
In this way an unobtrusive process sets itself in motion: participation in the public sector becomes more and more distasteful, the feeling grows that we have no influence on public activities, and we think ourselves all the more justified in not participating. It becomes more and more difficult to enter the public space, and soon it will be completely closed to a decent person. That is the point when our freedom will be directly threatened – but by then it will be too late for us to do anything.
To put it bluntly: our democracy is fragile and easily lost. If it functions at all, it is not because it is guided by some invisible hand of historically inevitable democratic principles. Democracy is built on the concrete efforts of specific individuals. It only has a chance if we take it on, urgently, as our own personal concern.
Otherwise, ten years down the line we may be commemorating something that never reached its 30th anniversary.
