What is a little Pole not supposed to know? "Changes to the school curriculum airbrush important topics from our past"

I have read the history school curriculum (primary and secondary school, extended and basic version), together with the proposed erasures, which in the mode of changes you could read for yourself and analyse.

Like many others, I also sent my comments to the MEN, as required, however, that is, in a text of no more than 1800 signs. I may be mistaken, but I suspect that mine and thousands of other protests will end up in the trash. Indeed, the proposed changes are not just slimming down the teaching syllabus, but deliberately, through their creators, eliminating important threads from our past.

However, the nature of the school curriculum must first be further explained. True, both textbook authors and teachers will be able (even forced) to broaden the narrative of the past in order to meet the tasks arising from the role of an educator and a teacher. The point is that this broadening does not have to go in the direction of topics deliberately neglected and eliminated from the basic curriculum. Moreover, the pupil does not need to know more in order to graduate from secondary school and pass the baccalaureate exam, or even worse, to enter university and become, God forbid, a teacher of future generations of children and young people.

The curriculum for primary schools, already in its very general and adjective-laden introduction (there is no ideological introduction for secondary schools at all), distances the student from such aims of upbringing as building national identity, Christian values and the importance of the Church (or religion in human life), and there is no mention of patriotism. It also avoids - in favour of tolerance, and such generalities from contemporary newspeak - any association with the Polishness of the Eastern Borderlands, or the territories taken by Russia as a result of three successive partitions, and Eastern Galicia.

These initial stabs at Polish identity have further consequences. As far as the Eastern Borderlands are concerned, one has the impression that the authors of the curriculum acknowledged the anti-Polish argumentation of Daniel Bauvois and others, who argued that Polishness had blossomed there due to the colonisation (and thus compulsion, not choice) of these territories by the Crown.

The authors of the school curriculum were therefore eager to dispense with suspicions ( no one knows where they came from) about alleged expansionism, imperialism or the actual achievement of Polish culture encompassing the area of today’s countries separating us from Russia. This is particularly evident when it comes to the eastern territories of the First Polish Republic; references to the transfer of Polishness to the area of WKL and Rus are avoided (there are, of course, no figures such as St Andrew Bobola), there is no notion of the Borderlands, nor of the contribution of Polish culture to those lands (not even important places of worship, or manors, palaces and churches). Of course, there is also no mention of the role of the landed gentry (this applies to the area of the whole of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, especially in much of the 19th and 20th centuries up to 1945), nor of the conspiracies or uprisings and deportations to Siberia which covered the Taken Lands in the 19th century (this term, and the term Borderlands, is also absent).

The role of the Catholic Church

What sounds particularly threatening is the lack of any information in the school curriculum - including the secondary curriculum - about the positive role of the Catholic Church (starting with the dispute between Bishop Stanislaus and the King, or the division of Poland into districts; there is no description of the system of the First Republic of Poland, for example; there is no description of the Primate - Interrex; and there is no description of the system of the First Republic of Poland), which was particularly important in the 19th century when we managed to maintain the national identity without the state thanks to Catholicism.

There is therefore no imperative in the core curriculum for a student to know anything about the identity of a modern nation forming its patriotism without a state. Only in the People’s Republic of Poland, there is a sudden inclusion of a title on the role of the Church, in the context of the entire post-war period (1945 - 1989). And indeed, only then do specific two names appear, of which (fortunately) all Poles know: Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski and Pope John Paul II. But what did the Primate of the Millennium defend, what did he try to save in confrontation with the destroyers of Polish traditions, in favour of creating a „new man” ? - a student is unable to find out.

The authors, moreover, avoid as much as possible evaluating and thus indicating what are the norms, without which a Polish school cannot exist; it becomes something alien. In the case of the formation of the People’s Republic of Poland, there are no terms such as: legal opposition and independence underground - there is also no concept of the Cursed Soldiers or the Unbroken.

A teacher can, for example, teach about Polish-Ukrainian relations that the only reason for the exacerbation of relations during the war (for there is no term for genocide) was the bad policy of the Second Republic towards the Ukrainian minority. In the school curriculum, the authors eliminate practically most of the names, and again you can clearly see the purpose of this.

A few of them remain, e.g. from those living in the 18th century (especially the second half), a student is obliged to know only King Stanisław August and Kościuszko; there is no place for Stanisław Leszczyński, priests Stanisław Konarski or Stanisław Staszic, Hugo Kołłątaj. Nor, apart from Władysław Anders, are there any generals of the 20th century - neither the Hallers, nor Kopański, nor Jordan - Rozwadowski, etc. Obviously, there is no place for such institutions as the Polish National Committee in Paris, i.e. also no mention of the participation of the Polish delegation (of the united state) in the Congress of Versailles. And this was the only peace in the last 200-plus years when we co-created the order of Europe and the world, acting as a victorious state (additionally, only emerging after 123 years of absence). And the student is not supposed to know about such successes!

The most striking omission is the absence of names that include the category of the blessed and saints of the Catholic Church, mainly martyrs. The Polish identity, so unequivocally affected by the presence of two genocidal state totalitarianisms (plus the Ukrainian one) on the Polish lands, is intended by the authors to lose the multi-generational trauma. What is the purpose of this? One can only guess that this is a condition for becoming a true European, a progressive, a human being with only a horizontal view of the area and culture.

This applies strangely enough mainly to Polish-German relations. Genocide is missing from the curriculum, there is no Westerplatte, but there is also no Piaśnica. Auschwitz is probably included mainly because of the Holocaust, although it has not been decided to delete Rotmistrz Pilecki. Still not at this stage of education! - one would like to comment.