Articles by P. Janowicz and P. Danuta Maślnicka (G. B. No. 9/93) aroused readers’ interest, and, referring to the statements of the aforementioned authors, they sent in their own comments and reflections. They are very long, however, which not all readers—those less interested in the subject—accept. Therefore, in consultation with the authors, today we are publishing these statements in installments.
Very important and significant articles by Jerzy Janowicz and Danuta Maślicka (G.B. 9/93) prompt deeper reflection on education and culture “here and now”—among us.
We have been accustomed to treating the school as a kind of institution providing services to the public.
It is supposed to equip the student with a specific body of knowledge enabling them to pass an exam and continue their education at a higher-level school. It is good if, along the way, they become winners of subject competitions, which will make this task much easier. Reduced to this role, the school will find itself somewhere on the periphery of the interests of the local government overseeing it. Matters that seem far more important will be at the center.
Yet despite everything, at a subconscious level, we sense that school should be something entirely different from an ordinary service institution.
And a teacher—as Kazimierz Gawron, Wójt of Gmina Bolesławiec, agreed at one of the pre-election meetings—is not merely a state official blindly carrying out directives from above. Their role is much more complicated and entails great responsibility. We must radically change the way we “look at school.”
Ours, because everyone is connected with school for almost their entire life. They attended it, they are a student’s parent, a student’s grandparent. And we teachers spend our entire school and professional lives in it.
In one of his sermons, Dean Priest Władysław Rączka said beautifully that a seminary educating future priests is the heart of a diocese.
Can we think of school as the heart of a village, housing estate, or town? Most often, we notice it when something is not working properly.
After Poland regained independence in 1918, teachers played an enormous role in its reconstruction and renewal. The authorities of that time also clearly appreciated the teacher’s role and their “irreplaceability.” After 1945, education was developed on a grand scale, but the teacher was reduced—whether consciously or not, I do not know—to the role of a very low-ranking state official.
Some more enlightened minds are also beginning to recognize what school is.
“...And yet the real battle for Poland is fought only to a minimal extent in the parliamentary arena, on the stock-exchange floor, or in editorial briefings, as well as in ministerial offices, or—as some believe—in the archives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This battle is won or lost every day in the classroom...” So says the well-known Wrocław physicist, now a Dominican, author of several books and many significant articles, Maciej Zięba—someone who describes our reality perceptively and knowledgeably. We teachers, but also we parents, we councillors, we politicians, must find our identity. We teachers know that this will not come easily or without effort. We hope that the Association of Creative Teachers is a good beginning, where it will no longer be “us,” but each of us, who can develop our individual, teacherly “self.”
Andrzej Ostrowski, teacher in Ocice