Exploring the Verbal and Nonverbal Messages of Children Through Janusz Korczak’s Lens

ABSTRACT

Janusz Korczak (1878?–1942), an outstanding Polish pedagogue, theoretician and practitioner, conducted systematic research on the language of children, as evidenced by their verbal statements and the description of nonverbal behaviour included in his pedagogical works. The article presents the results of the analysis of the most important pedagogical text by Janusz Korczak, i.e. How to Love a Child. The Child in a Family (1919) in which he descried how a child communicates with an adult (mainly mother) from birth until reaching adulthood – initially, among others, by shouting, vocalizing and then babbling, single words, and finally utterances, and all this to build a relationship with an adult who often does not understand the child’s speech and is not their ally in the process of communication. The article also discusses the polyphonic nature of the monograph of the great educator, in which the voice was mainly given to the child.

KEYWORDS:

• History of education
• child language
• body language
• scientific language of education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Bibliographies combining his publications, as well as studies on his legacy amount to hundreds of items (cf. e.g. Bronikowska 1978; Bieńkowska 1978; Falkowska 1989), Janusz Korczak. Bibliografia 1896–1942 (Janusz Korczak. Bibliography 1896-1942) … cf. also e.g. bibliographies (in:) Gąsiorek (1997), Bartkowiak (2013).

2 During the lifetime of the educator, this work was published three times, with two versions of the title: 1/ Jak kochać dziecko. Dziecko w rodzinie (How to Love a Child. The Child in the Family) (1919) (in fact, the book was published in 1918; cf. Cichy 1993); 2/ Jak kochać dzieci. Dziecko w rodzinie (How to Love Children. The Child in the Family) (1920) and again with the singular word Child; 3/ Jak kochać dziecko. Dziecko w rodzinie (How to Love a Child. The Child in the Family) ver. 2 (1929). The monograph with the sentence Jak kochać dziecko (How to Love a Child) in the first part of the title has grown over the years into a tetralogy consisting of such parts as: (Dziecko w rodzinie. Internat. Kolonie letnie. Dom Sierot) A Child in the Family; Boarding School; Summer Camps; Orphanage. The first part of the tetralogy, i.e. Jak kochać dziecko. Dziecko w rodzinie (How to Love a child. The Child in the Family) is most often reprinted and translated into foreign languages.

3 The number in parentheses throughout the article refers to one of the 116 chapters of How to Love a Child. The Child in the Family (1929).

4 J. Korczak referred to the work of W. Preyer published in Poland in 1895: Rozwój umysłowy dziecka od pierwszego dnia życia oraz wskazówki do czynienia obserwacyi dla rodziców i wychowawców (Mental Development of a Child from the First Day of his Life and Instructions for Observations for Parents and Dducators) translated from German into Polish by M. Flaum.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bożena Sieradzka-Baziur

Bożena Sieradzka-Baziur, PhD hab. is a professor employed at the Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow, Poland, and is the author of several books and about 100 scientific articles. She deals with historical semantics, lexicography, concepts and terms in pedagogy and the evolution of the scientific language of pedagogy. She is also the editor of the Słownik pojęciowy języka staropolskiego (Old Polish Conceptual Dictionary http://spjs.ijp.pan.pl) and the book Pedagogika rodziny na początku XXI wieku w świetle pojęć i terminów (Pedagogy of the Family at the Beginning of the twenty-first century in the Light of Concepts and Terms) (2018) and co-editor (together with Ilse Somavilla and Carl Humphries) of the book Wittgensteins Denkbewegungen (Tagebücher 1930-1932/1936-1937) aus interdisziplinärer Sicht. Wittgenstein’s Denkbewegungen (Diaries 1930-1932/ 1936-1937). Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2019).