Poland’s new left-liberal government, led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, is facing sharp criticism over plans to radically overhaul the national school system’s curriculum. Once implemented, it will replace the classical national educational material with a program more favorable to cultural and political globalism.
Former Education Minister Przemysław Czarnek, a member of the Polish parliament (Sejm) for the Law and Justice (PiS) party, has emerged as one of the most vocal critics of the Tusk government’s planned transformation of the educational system, arguing they pose a serious risk of disconnecting young Polish students from “tradition, their culture, and Poland.”
Tusk’s sweeping changes, set to come into effect in secondary schools in September, have been presented to the public under the guise of ‘streamlining’ school programs. In truth, however, the reforms will effectively do away with entire chapters of Polish history. Notable military heroes will be excised from standard textbooks and teaching material, as will writings by the late great Pope John Paul II, who fought against authoritarianism.
A group of over 60 Polish and Hungarian historians have expressed their opposition to a history curriculum that, among other things, omits the impact of Christianity on Polish culture, the Stalinist terror, and the historically important relationship with Hungary.
Also as a part of the reforms, notable literary works, including The Tin Drum by German author Günter Grass, fables by Russian writer Ivan Krylov, the epic national poem Pan Tadeusz, and the works of romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz are all slated for removal from primary and secondary school history and literature programs.
At the forefront of the initiative to shape the worldview of Polish students in a way that suits the aims of the liberal-globalist elite is Poland’s new Education Minister Babara Nowacka, a self-described feminist and pro-abortion and LGBTQ activist, who signed the reforms into law.
Nowacka claims that reducing the volume of material taught will “enable teachers and students to cover the material more calmly and in-depth, resulting in a more effective education.”
Under the new system, graded homework will be eliminated and replaced by “voluntary tasks,” according to the new education minister. For students under the age of 14, this will come into effect as soon as next month.
Tusk’s Brussels-aligned government, which since assuming the reins of power has embarked on a relentless—and some would say unlawful—campaign to purge conservative ideas from public institutions, has attempted to justify the comprehensive changes by citing a drop in Poland’s 2022 PISA student aptitude test scores in math, reading, and science compared to 2018.
Although most have attributed the decline in PISA scores—recorded across several EU countries, including France, Germany, Sweden, and Finland—to lockdown measures imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Tusk government has blamed the drop in test scores on PiS’s nationally oriented curriculum.
