For child and social justice: radical approaches in education and care for young children in interwar Poland

Abstract

The article focuses on selected educational developments in early twentieth century Poland. It begins with an overview of the changes in the organisation of education and care for young children during the pre-independence and interwar periods. The authors discuss social and political challenges as reflected in educational realities as well as attempts at reform and innovations towards child-centred pedagogies inspired by the New Education Movement. Two examples are presented in more detail: the pedagogical approach of Janusz Korczak and his collaborators, Stefania Wilczyńska and Maria Falska, in Warsaw childcare institutions, and the Workers’ Society for the Friends of Children (Robotnicze Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Dzieci), which rooted its educational system in broader efforts aimed at advancement of the working class. Both initiatives formulated their task as educating new generations of citizens conscious of their rights and capable of taking active part in the struggle against injustices in society.

Keywords:

• Children’s rights
• Janusz Korczak
• orphanage
• Robotnicze Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Dzieci (RTPD)
• social justice

Notes

1. For a selective guide to texts in English see Freeman (2015). For Korczak’s biography: Lifton (2005). For recent studies, including comparative ones, see e.g. Engel (2008), Shner (2015), Silverman (2017) and two issues of Dialogue & Universalism (2001, no. 9/10; 2003, no. 6).

2. We draw on Wallerstein’s (2004, 52) notion of the ‘trinity of ideologies that emerged in the wake of the French revolution – conservatism, liberalism, and radicalism.’ The radicals positioned themselves as proponents of national liberation or social revolution, often combining both, as was the case with Polish socialists prior to 1918. Educational developments and focus on children were seen as integral part of struggle for national progress (political and cultural) and social justice (abolishing old forms of economic oppression and social domination, such as peasants’ serfdom, and tackling the new ones, especially capitalist exploitation of workers and devastating living conditions it produced).

3. A prominent example of this intellectual formation is Jan Władysław Dawid (1859–1914), a student of Wilhelm Wundt, and a pioneer of paedology and early-education studies in Poland.

4. Writing in the socialist daily Robotnik (The Worker), Stefania Sempołowska (1934) condemned shut-downs of overpopulated school-buildings, limitations on the number of teachers in elementary schools and the shortage of preschool institutions.

5. The Polish term is wychowanie państwowe, which roughly renders as state-oriented education in English. Wychowanie, the central concept in Polish educational science (currently being ‘deconstructed’ by a more general term edukacja), refers to all practices in formal and non-formal settings. Sometimes translated as upbringing, it has a deeper theoretical-pedagogical significance, and relates to shaping, acquiring and learning of dispositions, views etc. rather than merely to instruction or didactic methods. English term moral education seems close, but still wychowanie can have its moral aspect, as well as aesthetic, technical, physical, health ones etc.

6. A radical vision of the ‘social school of creative work’ outlined by a non-partisan Marxist, Spasowski (1933), seems distinct for his attempt to transgress pedagogical reforms of ‘Montessori, Decroly, Parkhurst, Kerschensteiner, Dewey, Ferrière and other bourgeois individualists with idealist-philosophical views, socially very vague, proponents of religious education’ who ‘defend necessary school reforms within the boundaries of the ruling capitalist system, and by virtue of their own education are unable to reach more deeply to the matter of things’ (reprinted in Wołoszyn 1966, 394).

7. Kazbińska (2002, 360) claims that Western pedagogical ideas were usually borrowed ‘as a whole’ and verified ‘in comparison with Polish innovative experiences.’ Lorence-Kot and Winiarz (2000, 183) mention popularity of Montessori and Decroly specifically, but argue that: ‘The Poles selected only some elements of Western ideas because they had to meet local needs but primarily because they were unwilling to relinquish those elements which reinforced the Polish aspects of education.’

8. Korczak, sometimes dubbed ‘Polish Pestalozzi’, was enamoured both with his educational ideas and his way of living. Particularly influential for him were Pestalozzi’s views on the importance of family, his devotion to the poor and desire to ameliorate their fate (Lewin 1999, 180–1; Silverman 2017, 71–2).

9. The child’s right to die or, more literally translated the right to death, is perhaps the most mysterious, potentially controversial or misinterpreted idea in Korczak’s writings. Often interpreted as the right to die in dignity (e.g. despite devastating conditions of poverty), it might as well be understood as a call for respecting the child’s autonomy and self-determination as a human being ‘here and now’ with various existential risks involved. Not surprisingly, this aspect of Korczak’s approach happens to be left unelaborated, vague or simply omitted from pedagogical discussions. For some hints on this issue, see Silverman (2017, 83, 152). See also Korczak’s How to Love A Child (Korczak [1919] 1967, part ‘Child In the Family,’ sections 37–41).

10. Korczak’s views were certainly left-leaning, and during his university years he was influenced by socialist activists, including people such as Marxist-sociologist Ludwik Krzywicki and fighters of the 1905 revolution. While supporting the Polish Socialist Party, Korczak never became a party member and distanced himself from political agitation.