Poland’s new education minister, the self-declared feminist, pacifist, pro-abortion, and LGBTQ activist Barbara Nowacka, in consultation with Prime Minister Tusk, has announced a comprehensive reform of the Polish school system, the essence of which has already come into force this year. The program is shocking, albeit painfully familiar to a Western European—and the goal, namely a massive left-wing reshaping of the youth in order to make any possibility of conservative parties returning to power impossible, is hard to miss.
The central lever is the abolition of graded homework, which will come into force for children under the age of 15 as early as April; the plan is to completely abolish graded homework for secondary school pupils in a few years’ time—and anyone who believes that ‘graded’ homework can be replaced by ‘voluntary’ homework has probably never set foot in a school in the last 30 years. The reason? Homework is discriminatory, as children from socially better-off families receive support at home that is not available to others—a typical socialist (bogus) argument, the failure of which became apparent in the Western part of the continent 20 years ago. Since the relevant material has to be shifted back into the classroom accordingly, a massive reduction of the entire curriculum is required, which is to be slimmed down by 20 percent. This measure is disguised by assertion, also familiar from the West, that the aim is to replace ‘dull memorization’ with ‘critical thinking”.
If you then look at the new curricula created by ‘experts.’ it quickly becomes clear which way the wind of this ‘critical thinking’ is blowing: National classics such as Pan Tadeusz are only to be read in excerpts, the level of English proficiency is to be lowered by one mark compared to the present (from B1+ to B1) at the end of school, central elements of the anti-communist struggle are to be removed from history lessons, the “theoretical” aspects of mathematics are to be reduced in comparison to “concrete application”, religious education is to be halved, and texts by Pope John Paul II will probably disappear completely from the reading lists if the ‘experts’ appointed by the government have their way. The opposition is raging—but the teaching profession is keeping a low profile: no wonder, as one of the first measures taken by the Tusk government was a significant increase in their salaries. In contrast to the Right, the political Left knows only too well that it is the ‘supremacy over the children’s beds’ (and brains) that decides the political battle.
As a Western European, you can only shake your head and turn away, because what is happening in Poland was already tried out in the West 20 years ago—and it has been a resounding failure. In Germany, Belgium, or France, an increasing number of students cannot read and write properly when they enter university, let alone understand more complicated texts (so much for ‘critical thinking’), and professors spend a large part of their time making up for basic deficits that result from inadequate schooling. It is no wonder that Poland, which previously had a fairly solid school system, achieved such excellent results in the Pisa studies compared to its western neighbors—and it is to be feared that this will be over in a few years when the above-mentioned reforms have been implemented, and Poland will thus lose one of its most important locational advantages.
The new government may be ideologically blinded, but it will hardly be able to ignore the fact that the Western European school system has reformed itself to death and that similar measures will probably have similar consequences in Poland. So why is the ‘new Poland’ willingly accepting its own dismantling? The answer can only be political and leads us back to so-called ‘critical thinking,’ which is de facto extremely selective.
On the one hand, the experience of the West, as well as the indicators of the planned reduction in school subjects, shows that this ‘critical thinking’ will probably only focus on traditional values such as religion, family, patriotism, capitalism, etc., but hardly on atheism, LGBTQ values, globalism, or socialism. On the other hand, experience shows that the dismantling of factual knowledge in favor of excessive circles of know-it-alls deprives pupils and students of all the building blocks from which they could construct real and solid arguments and not just strong ‘opinions.’
An example from my own experience as a university lecturer in history for many years. In all subjects with a historical focus in Western Europe, the study of data, facts, and causalities has been systematically abolished for many years in favor of ‘project’-based approaches that focus only on individual episodes of history, but no longer on history as a whole. This means that pupils and students hardly have any reliable knowledge of concrete causes and effects; However, while their entire chronology is extremely vague and they usually have little idea of what actually happened between, for example, the fall of the Roman Empire and the French Revolution, they are treated ad nauseam to politically correct myths such as the “Inquisition”, the “witch burnings”, the “Golden Age” of “tolerance” in Muslim Andalusia or the splendor of the court of Versailles just before 1789—and they will from that draw the corresponding conclusions.
The consequence: ‘critical thinking’ without the relevant prior knowledge is a bit like trying to speak without knowing more than a dozen words—you won’t get very far. And that is precisely the point: Instead of favoring a genuine, reality-based general education of responsible citizens, pupils and students are only given a few, highly selective pieces of information steeped in left-wing ideology—never placed into a more global context—until their world view becomes so entrenched that it is too late to question it and they seriously believe that our continent’s woes can actually be solved with climate stickers and demonstrations against ‘the Right.’
This commentary was published on February 23, 2024 by Tichys Einblick and published here with kind permission.
The Polish School System Is Being Moved to the Left
Poland’s new education minister, the self-declared feminist, pacifist, pro-abortion, and LGBTQ activist Barbara Nowacka, in consultation with Prime Minister Tusk, has announced a comprehensive reform of the Polish school system, the essence of which has already come into force this year. The program is shocking, albeit painfully familiar to a Western European—and the goal, namely a massive left-wing reshaping of the youth in order to make any possibility of conservative parties returning to power impossible, is hard to miss.
The central lever is the abolition of graded homework, which will come into force for children under the age of 15 as early as April; the plan is to completely abolish graded homework for secondary school pupils in a few years’ time—and anyone who believes that ‘graded’ homework can be replaced by ‘voluntary’ homework has probably never set foot in a school in the last 30 years. The reason? Homework is discriminatory, as children from socially better-off families receive support at home that is not available to others—a typical socialist (bogus) argument, the failure of which became apparent in the Western part of the continent 20 years ago. Since the relevant material has to be shifted back into the classroom accordingly, a massive reduction of the entire curriculum is required, which is to be slimmed down by 20 percent. This measure is disguised by assertion, also familiar from the West, that the aim is to replace ‘dull memorization’ with ‘critical thinking”.
If you then look at the new curricula created by ‘experts.’ it quickly becomes clear which way the wind of this ‘critical thinking’ is blowing: National classics such as Pan Tadeusz are only to be read in excerpts, the level of English proficiency is to be lowered by one mark compared to the present (from B1+ to B1) at the end of school, central elements of the anti-communist struggle are to be removed from history lessons, the “theoretical” aspects of mathematics are to be reduced in comparison to “concrete application”, religious education is to be halved, and texts by Pope John Paul II will probably disappear completely from the reading lists if the ‘experts’ appointed by the government have their way. The opposition is raging—but the teaching profession is keeping a low profile: no wonder, as one of the first measures taken by the Tusk government was a significant increase in their salaries. In contrast to the Right, the political Left knows only too well that it is the ‘supremacy over the children’s beds’ (and brains) that decides the political battle.
As a Western European, you can only shake your head and turn away, because what is happening in Poland was already tried out in the West 20 years ago—and it has been a resounding failure. In Germany, Belgium, or France, an increasing number of students cannot read and write properly when they enter university, let alone understand more complicated texts (so much for ‘critical thinking’), and professors spend a large part of their time making up for basic deficits that result from inadequate schooling. It is no wonder that Poland, which previously had a fairly solid school system, achieved such excellent results in the Pisa studies compared to its western neighbors—and it is to be feared that this will be over in a few years when the above-mentioned reforms have been implemented, and Poland will thus lose one of its most important locational advantages.
The new government may be ideologically blinded, but it will hardly be able to ignore the fact that the Western European school system has reformed itself to death and that similar measures will probably have similar consequences in Poland. So why is the ‘new Poland’ willingly accepting its own dismantling? The answer can only be political and leads us back to so-called ‘critical thinking,’ which is de facto extremely selective.
On the one hand, the experience of the West, as well as the indicators of the planned reduction in school subjects, shows that this ‘critical thinking’ will probably only focus on traditional values such as religion, family, patriotism, capitalism, etc., but hardly on atheism, LGBTQ values, globalism, or socialism. On the other hand, experience shows that the dismantling of factual knowledge in favor of excessive circles of know-it-alls deprives pupils and students of all the building blocks from which they could construct real and solid arguments and not just strong ‘opinions.’
An example from my own experience as a university lecturer in history for many years. In all subjects with a historical focus in Western Europe, the study of data, facts, and causalities has been systematically abolished for many years in favor of ‘project’-based approaches that focus only on individual episodes of history, but no longer on history as a whole. This means that pupils and students hardly have any reliable knowledge of concrete causes and effects; However, while their entire chronology is extremely vague and they usually have little idea of what actually happened between, for example, the fall of the Roman Empire and the French Revolution, they are treated ad nauseam to politically correct myths such as the “Inquisition”, the “witch burnings”, the “Golden Age” of “tolerance” in Muslim Andalusia or the splendor of the court of Versailles just before 1789—and they will from that draw the corresponding conclusions.
The consequence: ‘critical thinking’ without the relevant prior knowledge is a bit like trying to speak without knowing more than a dozen words—you won’t get very far. And that is precisely the point: Instead of favoring a genuine, reality-based general education of responsible citizens, pupils and students are only given a few, highly selective pieces of information steeped in left-wing ideology—never placed into a more global context—until their world view becomes so entrenched that it is too late to question it and they seriously believe that our continent’s woes can actually be solved with climate stickers and demonstrations against ‘the Right.’
This commentary was published on February 23, 2024 by Tichys Einblick and published here with kind permission.
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