Tomáš Čakloš

I live in Prague and run Otevřeno, a movement helping to change Czech education through teacher training reform. Above all, I focus on how intrinsic and extrinsic motivational approaches support human’s freedom or oppression. I have tried it on my own as a Scout leader and reflected on it as pedagogy magazine Skauting’s editor-in-chief. Now I look for educational ways to empower society to be more free. I studied education, psychology, sociology and informatics. Text me via tomas@caklos.cz.

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My way

When I took over the leadership of children in the Scouts at the age of 15, my concern for virtue evolved into an interest in education. I worked with adolescents, attended courses, read manuals and then books. I have found myself in a respectful approach towards children. Running Scout trips and activities, I tried to transform the competition into cooperation, but it was hard! How can we change outdated norms, I asked myself. I decided to study it. Within our Scout community, I began writing and after seven years of working with children every week, I served, for the following five years, as editor-in-chief of Skauting, the national educational magazine for all our leaders.

At Masaryk University, I started with studying Social Education and Social Informatics (that is Sociology, Applied Informatics, and their joint aspects). In my second year, I added Teaching of Civics and Geography and in my third year I added Psychology, and Experiential Reflective Learning. Five programs at once proved too challenging, so I graduated in Social Informatics and Experiential Reflective Learning, while discontinued Teaching after the first year and Social Education and Psychology after three years mostly completed, but unfinished. Finally I attended one semester of Information Studies, with specialization on Technology in Education.

My focus shifted from leisure education to schools. Right in them I have seen the greatest need for change in order for the world to improve. But my teaching training brought on some apprehension in me. It seemed to be lacking the understanding of learning and concluding in an unintended breeding ground for teaching that suppresses student needs, prevents open cognition and conserves society. I was not alone in my frustration and sense of national tragedy, so we came together and founded Otevřeno, a nationwide initiative, organization and movement of students, teachers and educators striving to transform Czech teacher training from within.

Since 2015, as founder and chairman of Otevřeno, I have met hundreds of people who have been making teacher education more open, professional and human. Together, we have reached out to tens of thousands of future teachers, implemented dozens of innovations across the schools of education and helped launch a nationwide system reform. Now we continue our work to ensure its success. Focusing on leadership, strategy and relationships, I hardly get to work with children in recent years. However, as a member of the Teacher Training Reform Council and of the National Convention on Education, experiencing the education policy with both hope and despair, I keep trying to remind us that we run this whole system for them.

All my life I have been puzzled by how indifferent people can be to themselves, to others, to nature and to all the beauty in the world, immensely fascinating and stimulating. My own awe and horror at how we as humans can behave drive my efforts to figure out how to transform education and society towards more freedom. That is also the area in which I focus my further research attention. And I try to live free as well. It may be my Scout soul that brings me back to nature, in which I find joy and balance. I love mountains, cycling and ultralight travel. I am still not very good at guitar. And I still keep buying more books than I can read, but I am trying.