sekcija

(Translation, Yugoslavia)

It would be called a club, or a circle, anywhere else. It would be a group of students, mostly in elementary schools (high schools not having enough time nor money to engage in such extracurricular stuff), and would be a place to learn and/or practice stuff beyond and above the curriculum. Zmaj was rich in that respect - apart from the sections for almost all sciences, there were many technical ones and even arts (accordeon orchestra, choir, painting, sculpture). The technical guys did naval and aeronautic models (including tiny electric motors and remote controllers with joysticks, yeah, even before 1970), electronics, amateur radio, photography, moviemaking (I attended the latter two, plus maths, sculpture and accordeon). And then in may/june there were well organized competitions all over the country, up to the federal level.

Later, when I was teaching, I have founded a computer section (in MPSŠC, 1984-86), and in that time I was in a jury for the competition (as my guys weren't competing) at municipal and province level (I'd say in 1985, perhaps 84).

I guess the "tehnika narodu!" slogan (technics to the people) movement was taken seriously for quite a long time, and this approach of poring money into technical education through schools paid off handsomely. Many kids got their hands on technical stuff and learned how to use tools and some of them took to study things with which they played as teenagers. But the overall technical knowledge had spread.

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Mentions: december 1965., december 1967., october 1968., 16-IV-1969., 22-IV-1969., 28-IV-1969., 04-V-1969., 13-XII-1969., 05-VI-1970., 19-IX-1970., and the rest of the month, 18-XII-1970., 15-V-1971., june 1971., 19-VIII-1972., 27-X-1972., Sound system, 29-XI-1973., 31-XII-1973., Doček at Mariška's, 06-V-1978., august 1986., 23-V-1991., 09-VI-2001., 05-II-2005., MPSŠC, Zmaj, in serbian