The holidays are almost over... The beginning of the school year in 2 weeks, and virtually in a fewer days the first compulsory meetings for directors are organized successively by the school curators. It is worth observing their course and recommendations of the ministry, which will organize the yearly work of all educational institutions in Poland. Unfortunately, the directions set by the MEN and the provocative behaviors of the authorities give the highest anxiety. Many teachers and parents ask whether the school will stay a school, a place of education and education, whether it will turn into a multicultural and multilingual crucible, deliberately destabilized and shaken by subsequent convulsions.
On 21 August at 1 p.m. in Warsaw Castle Square, the catechestes announced their legitimate protest. As teachers, they are bullied and discriminated against by employers, treated by MEN as auxiliary staff of the "second league", and are now forced to obey perfidious and harmful regulations. It was not adequate for Minister Nowacka to violate the apparent rights of a student attending spiritual classes to measure his work fairly. After the spiritual evaluation of the certificate has been eliminated, the next step is to segregate teachers into “subjects” and “catechists”. The regulation of 22.03.2024 excluding the assessment of religion from the certificate, intentionally confused with the strongly-acclaimed elimination of "homework", did not encounter real resistance, so the left-wing taran tries to run another bastion with the Cross at the top.
The catechets are provocatively discriminated against, but they are not the only ones – with them students and parents declaring their willingness to attend spiritual lessons. Since the fresh school year, everyone is to comply with the fresh regulation [signed in the mediate of the vacation on 26.07.24] and thus, to deal with teaching and learning in very many inter-branch teams and – worse – inter-class groups.
According to the thought of B. Nowacka, students of classes 1-3, 4-6 and 7-8 can be combined regardless of their capabilities, achievements and mastered material, with apparent harm to their education. For a long time, the Catechests have argued that this contradicts the basic principles of didactics.
Now the Association of Świeckie Catechets has asked for urgent aid from the president of the Republic of Poland: "On July 26th, the Minister of National Education Barbara Nowacka issued a regulation, which not only reconciles the constitutional rights of students attending spiritual classes, their parents and spiritual teachers, but besides the legal order in force in Poland. This regulation provides for the creation of very many groups of students declaring their willingness to participate in spiritual lessons. specified groups would include students from different educational levels. In practice, this means that students are deprived of the right to implement the programme basis of their religion. For spiritual teachers, however, it means a abrupt failure of means of living, due to the fact that if the changes come into force from 1 September 2024, there will be a crucial simplification in the posts of spiritual teachers. {...] We are asking the president urgently to challenge this regulation to the Constitutional Court in accordance with the presidential prerogative set out in Article 191(1)(1) of the Constitution," we read an open letter to the President.
Teaching everyone in 1 class by 1 teacher, as in the 19th-century agrarian school for partitions – this is the model that B. Nowack followed. Not by not knowing what effective teaching should be. MEN disregarded the request to get clear approval of churches and spiritual associations on the principles of organizing spiritual lessons. The Committee on Education of the Catholic Conference of the Polish Episcopals expressed its unequivocal opposition to these unlawful practices. "In particular, we ask Catholic parents to talk courageously on this issue," says Bishop Wojciech Osial, president of the Commission.
Consciously planned action, discouraging the learning of religion, without grades, in overcrowded classes, most likely at the last or first lesson hr from the next 2025/6 school year, which is already prudent [i.e. with premeditation and looking at subsequent reactions of society and clergy authorities] promises left-wing MEN, is to remove 50% of the spiritual hours from schools, and yet to reject it completely.
Ironically, in all European countries, but for four, religion [or choice of ethics] is simply a compulsory subject, appreciated for a peculiar educational function and assessed on an equal footing with another subjects. In many testimonies, the evaluation of religion is in the first place, specified as in Germany, and there is no evidence of planned revolutionary changes.
Is Poland the experimental field of possible further discrimination against Catholics on a global scale, or the intentionally generated conflict area, in order to make social dissatisfaction and, through transitional chaos, accomplish the transformation desired by external entities?
What the educational authorities are actually aiming at, for it is surely not the end, but a tool for achieving further objectives.
Is it not the nonsubjective of specified a crucial destabilisation of the situation in schools that, under the influence of protests, the unequal treatment of teachers, on charges of deficiency of the regulation of law, the left-wing ones will be removed from the ministry?
Is the thought of far more perfidious under the appearance of failure, deficiency of competence, violation of rights? possibly it's not just these MEN authorities, but the full education management system?
It may shortly be that the ministry as specified has exhausted its formula? That “presumptive” pedagogical supervision is unnecessary in a country of advanced democracy? That the programme bases have been sufficiently adapted to EU directives and achieved satisfactory levels of globalisation, e.g. through civic education [read: anti-national breeding of a mobile European]? That through alleged wellness education [read: sexualizing children from the youngest classes] Future effects of adequate sex and anti-family identity disorders, pro-abortional attitudes, tolerances for all deviations and slow pharmaceutical companies are guaranteed? That universal surveillance by functional diagnosis is already active on a mass scale, providing a satisfactory amount of data to the EU's superbase and that the inclusion of migrants into the pseudo-education strategy has become a fact, expanding chaos and turning schools into a welfare light system.
That the sub-objectives and the MEN should so be eliminated?
What then? Then, as part of the “renewal”, “transformation” and “outstretch” by those who are light and much more democratic – in contrast to the terrible own politicians and their inept solutions – will we not be offered the European Education Area managed straight from Brussels? Proposed possibly even by bottom-up, afraid about the state of education, “social” organizations or councils, with the eager support of a number of NGO-bred, well-funded and promoted as a 3rd sector?
The European Area of Education has been announced for respective years, in this direction is the revision of the EU Treaties, called the "European Partition of Poland" by the patron Jerzy Kwasniewski of Ordo Iuris.
If the MEN go to a sharp start, the European Education Area can be welcomed with large relief as a democratic, modern and responsive to the challenges of the future.
If respective key areas fall due to akin governance – specified as the economy, defence, energy sovereignty, abroad policy – possibly fresh mobile Europeans [after the digital transformation in the Polish school] irritated by the ineffective Europe of Nations, will they welcome the Empire of Europe?
Parents and students are slow finishing vacation time, not necessarily knowing what awaits them, as the multiplicity of media messages related to the school covers crucial matters and obscures – deliberately – the image of the full system.
The joy of returning to a tried, kind group of teachers, friends of the class, friends of the parents – akin to us, ordinary, thirsty for normality, fulfilling our own ambitions, performing the duties entrusted, getting the cognition and skills, enjoying the improvement of students and children...
Versus: unrealistic requirements of decision-makers, ideological corset, fueled aversion, deficiency of common trust, fear of informing signallers and flight from the profession – teachers; nonchalance and disregard of responsibilities, questioning of all authority, taught claimability, escaping into alienation, cyber dependence – students; anxiety, failure and helplessness of parents, resulting in escape into home education or “in the cloud”, seen as a remedy for any pain.
In the light of the partial flood of MEN regulations, the information chaos created on intent to make constant anxiety, in view of heating up any of the topics to cover others, let us return to what is crucial to the normality of the educational process.
Teacher, focus on what you're called to do, what's your duty, what you'll be accounted for. You are a Polish or a mathematician, not a guardian of a multicultural and multilingual community. You know your responsibilities and defend it and talk plainly erstwhile your rights are violated. Teach what you want your children or grandchildren to be taught. Only this and that!
And show solidarity with your colleague – a teacher of religion or ethics, due to the fact that you do not know if after HiT, religion, possibly the WEDZ, will not turn to... Polish language and mathematics.
Parents, keep your eyes peeled. Don't be a passive observer of the school's life. It's up to you to get over her thresholds as an educator, what and how your kid will learn in her, and with what she will come into adult life.
It is up to all of us together – what the Polish school will be and whether it will be.
Hanna Dobrowolska
School Protection Movement
Coalition for the Salvation of the Polish School
Let's save the school.
