Profesor Klonimir Škalko

Abstract

Professor Klonimir Škalko came from a family of teachers so that he also decided upon a teaching profession. He was born in Olib in 1895 and after completing elementary and preparatory school which in those days was equivalent to the lower grades of high school, he enrolled at the Male School of Teaching in Arbanasi near Zadar, this being the title by which the school went at that period. He graduated in 1914 and bis first teaching post was in the village of Ba- njevci, the Benkovac district. He remained here from October 1, 1914 to September 30, 1919. Because the threat existed of being arrested when the Italians occupied Dalmatia after WWI, he left for Zagreb where he worked in the publishing-informative department of the People’s council in Zagreb. After a short while a letter arrived from Ivko Radovanović, who had become the provincial school supervisor in 1920, informing him to return to Zadar and assume the teaching duties in the School of teaching. Although to return was difficult he took over the the duties of teacher in the school and of prefect in the pupil’s dorm. After the Rapallo agreement of November 12, 1920 he departed with the other teachers of the school for Dubrovnik, enrolling afterwards at the Higher School of Pegagogy in Zagreb. For a certain period of time he worked in Vis and upon graduating from the Higher School he received a teaching post at the School of Teaching in Šibenik. He went on with his studies in Zagreb — College of Pedagogy — and after graduating became the professor for the pedagogical group of subjects at the School of Teaching in Šibenik. Before the outbreak of WWII he became the principal of this school, but when the Italian forces entered Šibenik he was arrested and sent off to a prisoner’s camp where he remained till the end of 1943. After the liberation of tire country he took up residence and worked in Zagreb where he passed away in 1961. Professor Klonimir Škalko did literary work and, as an excellent pedagogue, he wrote a number of prominent pedagogical monographs and treatise. According to his convictions he was liberal and democratic, as well as being a great patriot, while he was also active and engaged in the social realm up to the time of his death.