Pedagogy has always been considered a key science in socialist societies. The paper views pedagogy in socialist Czechoslovakia as a complex discourse, containing a great number of diverse fields, media and genres such as academic pedagogy, education advice books, documentary films and children´s literature and explores the emerging dynamics and interdependencies. How successful was the very concept of a scientific pedagogy, both developed and implemented by experts? How did this pattern work along or possibly in tension with "romantic" traditions of childhood and family? Ever since the 1940s, North American advisory books for parents have been written in an ambivalent mode, trying hard to balance the expertise of doctors and pedagogues (legitimized by "science") against the expertise of parents (legitimized by "nature" or "common sense"). Czechoslovak material depict a similar pattern which will be analysed in depth within the frame of the "vědeckotechnická revoluce". Against this background, the paradigmatic concept of scientification in modern societies can be reconsidered and specified.