After 1945, not only Czechoslovakia but also Europe found itself in a socio-political "new world". Interwar ideas of social and school reform were in many ways undermined by the catastrophe of war and could no longer help to support the formation of a "new" post-war modernising and more socially sensitive Europe. The political and economic division of Europe by the "Iron Curtain" after 1945/48, the socio-geographical and cultural transformation of Europe due to the "transfers" of population after the Second World War dissolved" the cultural and economic symbiosis of interwar Europe. Its central and south-eastern part was geopolitically in the totalitarian grip of the Soviet Union and in the "experiment" of the communist world order, with all its consequences for political, cultural and social life, not excluding the fields of science and education. In general, Europe has "fallen" into the competition between "East" and "West", with all the tactics of "victory".

For this struggle and rivalry it was necessary to offer an ideologically and emotionally charged concept in Czechoslovakia after 1948, transforming or negating the "old" world of education and promising a "new" model of education based on pedagogical science (Kasper 2020). To make the victory "lasting and solid", tasks were defined in the scientific research plans of Czechoslovak educational research institutions and universities. The answer was the concept of polytechnic education, which linked school with life and offered an educational model leading to the "victorious" and successful implementation of the communist economic-social experiment (Mincu 2016). This was similar in other "Soviet satellites" (Tietze 2012).

The paper reconstructs the discourses, practices of "discrediting" the interwar view of the concept of generally education in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s from the position of polytechnic education as a model of "new" generally education. In the second part, the paper traces the successes and failures of the promotion of this concept in Czechoslovak educational and scientific policy (the concept of the scientific revolution), in educational theory and in the reform of educational practice in the 1960s in the socio-political 'revival' process of the so-called Prague Spring (Sommer 2017). The third part reconstructs the processes of 'rehabilitation' and practices of the new legitimation of polytechnic educational concepts in overcoming the economic 'weaknesses' and failures of the so-called 'perestroika' in 1980s Czechoslovakia. The theoretical foundations (with reference to Marx's theory of the alienation of man), goals and practical implementation proposals of the "new" educational model and its transformations in different periods will be analysed. The strengths and weaknesses of its implementation in the practice of school and out-of-school education in the different "stages" of time will be reconstructed.

The transformations of the concept of general polytechnic education will be contextualized and discussed within the socio-technocratic and rationalizing control efforts of the "new" society (Sommer 2019). The issues of the theoretical definition, practical promotion and implementation of the "new" general education model are viewed within the dynamics of cultural transfer and circulation from the "model" Soviet Union (Behm/Drope/Glaser/Reh 2017).

We ask what were the background and specifics of the polytechnic educational concept in Czechoslovakia in the second half of the 20th century? What methods and emotional practices were used in the Czechoslovak debate to justify and advocate the concept of polytechnic education supported by the arguments of the scientific and technological revolution? Why did the concept of polytechnic education in Czechoslovakia not weaken or be completely destabilized after 1868, when in other countries of the socialist bloc its legitimacy was shaken seriously?

We view the topic of polytechnic education in Czechoslovakia as an example of a "past future". In this educational model, there were extraordinary aspirations, desires and hopes for a "new" beginning, which was to finally displace the "failed" model of the interwar educational reform and the "mistakes" of the university pedagogical debate. The concept of polytechnic education in the Czechoslovak debate, on the one hand, used the tradition of the technocratic view of goals and practices in education, building on the interwar rationalisation aspirations in education, using the tradition of the activity school "for life" and, on the other hand, using the discursive practices of the "new" beginning in educational science and practice to facilitate the socio-economic-political reform of society directed by communist ideology. The concept of polytechnic education interests us in the dynamics of continuity and discontinuity of educational discourse (Caruso et all 2013) and as part of the construction of pedagogical knowledge (Oelkers, Tenorth 1991) and its "political instrumentalization" (Gentile 2006). The paper draws on representative texts from both educational policy and pedagogical theory published in the scientific journal Pedagogika, published by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, during the time period under review. Other bases for the discursive analysis (Sarasin 2017, Keller/ Hornidge/Schünemann 2018) are published monographs and collective proceedings on the topic of polytechnic education.

The paper reconstructs the pedagogical and socio-political goals of polytechnic education in the Czechoslovak debate of the second half of the 20th century. We point out the practices that were designed to help establish this educational model in the educational discussion of the "revolutionary communist transformation" of Czechoslovak society in the 1950s. We reconstruct the argumentative models that legitimated the polytechnic model of education in the socio-political and educational discussion of the reform of science and socialism during the Prague Spring and the economic and social reconstruction of the so-called perestroika. We highlight potential explanations as to why the concept of polytechnic education did not lose its legitimacy in Czechoslovakia when in neighbouring socialist states its position in educational theory, school practice and wider socio-political debate was significantly weakened.

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