Brno, South Moravia - The Czech Education Ministry has approved the establishment of a primary school in Brno that will teach children according to the method of scientology founder Ron Hubbard, the weekly Tyden writes in its issue out on Monday.
The school opens in September. The education is allegedly to be completely non-religious, Tyden adds.
Yet a couple of years ago the Education Ministry called scientologists a dangerous sect.
In some countries they are even monitored by intelligence services on suspicion of illegal activities, Tyden recalls.
The primary school in Brno will be opened by the Basic company that is one of the scientologists' branches and is represented in 13 Czech towns, Tyden writes.
The school will have three classes so far with eight to 15 children in each. Parents will pay monthly tuition fees of 3500 crowns.
The school is to use "applied scholastics" as its major teaching method, that is an individual approach to children and a patient explanation of all phenomena, Tyden writes.
"The education will be entirely non-religious. We just like Mr Hubbard's method," Jana Tomasova, from the Basic company headquarters in Prague, stressed in Tyden.
"I had no idea they were scientologists," Svatopluk Spurny, a ministry clerk who registered the Basic school in the school registry in the Czech Republic in March, told the weekly.
The ministry warned against scientologists visiting Czech schools to offer an anti-drug programme in 2004.
The Church of Scientology twas founded by Ron Hubbard, writer of science-fiction books, in the United States in 1954.
It is based on the belief that people are immortal spiritual beings who have forgotten their true nature. Scientology promotes spiritual rehabilitation through a type of counseling referred to as "auditing.".
The church focuses on clerks, managers and people having free professions, such as artists. A number of U.S celebrities follow scientology, for instance, famous actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta.
Its opponents criticise the Church of Scientology as a sect that is adversely affecting people's mind and a merciless economic organisation.
