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Poland Eras of Repression
Partition challenged the work of the Commission on
National
Education because Germany, Austria, and Russia sought to
destroy
Polish national consciousness by Germanizing and
Russifying the
education system. During the 123-year partition, pockets
of
resistance continued teaching and publishing in Polish,
and some
innovations such as vocational training schools appeared.
In
general, the Austrian sector had the least developed
education
system, whereas the least disruption in educational
progress
occurred in the Prussian sector
(see
fig. 7).
Between 1918 and 1939, the newly independent Poland
faced the
task of reconstructing a national education system from
the three
separate systems imposed during partition. Although
national
secondary education was established in the 1920s, the
economic
crisis of the 1930s drastically decreased school
attendance.
Among the educational accomplishments of the interwar
period were
establishment of state universities in Warsaw, Wilno
(Vilnius),
and Poznan (available only to the upper classes), numerous
specialized secondary schools, and the Polish Academy of
Learning.
Between 1939 and 1944, the Nazi occupation sought to
annihilate the national Polish culture once again. All
secondary
and higher schools were closed to Poles, and elementary
school
curricula were stripped of all national content during
this
period. In response, an extensive underground teaching
movement
developed under the leadership of the Polish Teachers'
Association and the Committee for Public Education. An
estimated
100,000 secondary students attended classes in the
underground
system during the Nazi occupation.
Under communist regimes, the massive task of postwar
education reconstruction emphasized opening institutions
of
secondary and higher education to the Polish masses and
reducing
illiteracy. The number of Poles unable to read and write
had been
estimated at 3 million in 1945. In harmony with the
principles of
Marxism-Leninism, wider availability of education would
democratize the higher professional and technical
positions
previously dominated by the gentry-based intelligentsia
and the
wealthier bourgeoisie. Because sweeping industrialization
goals
also required additional workers with at least minimum
skills,
the vocational school system was substantially expanded.
At least
in the first postwar decade, most Poles welcomed the
social
mobility that these policies offered. On the other hand,
Poles
generally opposed Marxist revision of Polish history and
the
emphasis on Russian language and area studies to the
detriment of
things Polish--practices especially stringent in the first
postwar decade, when Stalinist doctrine was transferred
wholesale
from the Soviet Union and dominated pedagogical practice.
During
this period, all levels of Polish education were plagued
by
shortages of buildings and teachers. Capital investment
lagged
far behind the grandiose goals of centralized planning.
Education reform was an important demand of widespread
Polish
demonstrations against Stalinism in 1956. Under the new
PZPR
first secretary, Wladyslaw Gomulka, government education
policy
rejected the dogmatic programs of Stalinism and in their
place
began the first period of (fragmentary) postwar education
reform.
Religious instruction was restored, at the option of
parents; by
1957 over 95 percent of schools had resumed offering such
instruction. In the vocational program, agricultural
training
schools were added, and technical courses were
restructured to
afford greater contact with actual industrial operations.
By
1961, however, state doctrine followed the generally
conservative
turn of Polish politics by again describing the goal of
education
as preparing workers to build the socialist state.
The Law on the Development of Education Systems, passed
in
1961, established four formal principles that reiterated
the
goals of the pre-1956 system and endured through the rest
of the
communist era. The education system was to prepare
qualified
employees for industry, to develop proper attitudes of
citizenship in the Polish People's Republic, to propagate
the
values of the working classes everywhere, and to instill
respect
for work and national values. Education was specifically
described as a function of the state, and schools were to
be
secular in nature. Religious institutions could sponsor
schools
under strict limitations, however, and the church was
permitted
to establish a network of separate religious education
centers to
compensate for this restriction. In 1968 the return of
strict
communist dogma to school curricula was an important
stimulus for
a national wave of student demonstrations. Although the
Gierek
regime sought broad education reform when it took power in
1970,
the uneven progress of reform programs in the 1970s led to
further unrest and diminished the role of education in
state
control of society.
In the communist era, two levels of education
management
existed. At the central level, the Ministry of National
Education
was the chief organ of state administration. That agency
prescribed course content, textbooks, principles of school
operation, standards for admissions and scholarship
awards,
examination procedures, and interschool relations
throughout the
country. At the local level, superintendents established
personnel policy, hired and trained personnel, and oversaw
other
local institutions having educational functions. The daily
functioning of each individual school was administered by
a
headmaster and a pedagogical council.
Data as of October 1992
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