MSI Press Blog

    Official Work We did not have programs in Czechoslovakia even though we taught the Czech. My mission on this first trip to Prague was to acquire authentic materials for use in the classroom. (This pre-dated the Internet). Among these materials were textbooks used in the public schools, the purpose being to allow Czech language students in our content-based program to sign up for various subject matter courses, using real textbooks from Czechoslovakia with native speaker teachers from Czechoslovakia. This approach often led to classrooms that allowed our students to experience classes in physics, zoology, čítanka (reading – in this case, the fourth grade reader, which could be challenging enough for students learning Czech from scratch), among others, that closely resembled the experiences of their counterparts in Czechoslovakia. To get those books, however, meant meeting with the State Publishing House. A meeting had been set up, and I was hoping I would be able to u...

    A Long Preparation My preparation for most of my fly in-fly out trips was often as little as 24 hours and typically 2-6 weeks. My first trip to Czechia was different. I prepared for that trip in general for 15 years: 1976-1991. First, in grad school, I took a couple semesters of Czech language instruction but had to stop for Cold War reasons best discussed in a different kind of book. So, my Czech went on hold quite early and for a very long time while still at a rather low level of proficiency. I also took courses for a certificate in East European Studies and in one course got deep into “discovery” related to Czechoslovakia. I was particularly interested in the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia (known militarily as Operation Danube) in 1968 that followed the Prague Spring, when Dubcek was beginning to bring greater freedoms into the country (Williams, 1997), but I had to stop sharing some of the discovery for the same Cold War reasons best discussed in a different k...

  My relationship with Czechia was episodic for many years and covered my time in the military, my time in graduate school, and my time working at the Defense Language Institute. I never made it to Czechia until the early 1990s, but when I did, I was ready. I had the language, a sense of the culture, and a pretty good knowledge of the history. The story of Czechia begins with the Bohemian Crown lands — Bohemia, Moravia, and parts of Silesia — which entered the Habsburg monarchy in 1526 after the death of King Louis II. Under Habsburg rule, the Czech lands became a central part of a vast dynastic empire, shaped by religious conflict, noble resistance, and the long shadow of the Battle of White Mountain (1620), which ushered in centuries of tighter imperial control and re‑Catholicization. By the 18th and 19th centuries, the region was one of the most industrialized parts of the monarchy, and a vibrant Czech National Revival emerged — scholars, writers, and political thinkers reclaimi...