Educator Marian Dancso wins prestigious Learned Society of the Czech Republic award for his work in excluded localities
The Learned Society of the Czech Republic (Učená společnost České republiky), a prestigious institution supporting education and science, issued many medals and prizes for contributions to the development of scholarly work at its 30th general assembly. The awardees included eminent educators, intellectuals, scholars and talented students.
The Award for Education was received by Marian Dancso, a primary school teacher on the Janov housing estate in the town of Litvínov. He has long dedicated himself to education and to working in excluded localities such as Janov.
As Dancso says, his main subject is inclusion and the implementation of inclusive approaches in educational systems. “I do my best to draw attention to those approaches which contravene inclusion. That is one of my main aims – to draw attention to the inequalities that can appear in the education system. My areas are the socially excluded localities,” Dancso said in an interview for ROMEA TV.
The Learned Society of the Czech Republic‘s Medal of Merit for the Development of Science was awarded to the psychiatrist Cyril Höschl, the mathematician Jaroslav Nešetřil, and the lawyer Petr Pithart. The Young Scientist Award was bestowed upon mathematician Lenka Slavíková from Charles University’s Faculty of Mathematics and Physics.
The Jiřina Michlová Prize for doctoral students was awarded to chemist David Dunlop from Charles University’s Faculty of Science and to biochemist Barbora Rudzanová from Masaryk University’s RECETOX Faculty of Science. “The Learned Society of the Czech Republic awards a number of prizes, and one of the prizes I am very proud of is the prize for teachers, because we believe that teaching the next generation is absolutely crucial. We are always looking for a person who does something above and beyond the call of duty,” said Pavel Jungwirth, a physical chemist and university lecturer who served as the president of the Learned Society of the Czech Republic from 2020 to 2022.
Dancso said receiving the award was one of the greatest days of his life, an occasion on which he stood side by side with people of the caliber of Professor Nešetřil or former Prime Minister Petr Pithart. “This is an indescribable feeling, because I appreciate this award immensely. I recommend young Romani people never give up on what they want to achieve, because giving up is the first step toward failure, and we can’t allow that,” he told ROMEA TV.
