Defektologie učící? Formování české speciální pedagogiky v letech 1953–1964

In 1953, Miloš Sovák, a physician and university teacher, published the theoretical foundations of defectology, a science focused on individuals with physical, mental and sensory disabilities. Some contemporaries consider Sovák’s presentation to be the beginning of modern Czech special education. Sovák treated social relations as the most important component of an actor’s environment in which they find themselves through upbringing and education and in which they sustain themselves. In simple terms: through the work performance in the context of the building of socialism in 1950s Czechoslovakia. After the advent of the communist dictatorship, defectology was to replace interwar remedial pedagogy and paedopathology, although Sovák developed earlier views published during the 1930s and 1940s, including the period of Nazi occupation. Although defectology was firmly rooted in current socio-political contexts and represented a time-contingent social practice, the reproduction of its expert knowledge was limited by a number of external circumstances, including the closure of an independent university department, the absence of a departmental journal, or the reduction of its curriculum in undergraduate studies.