Historia wychowania w galicyjskich pracach pedagogicznych środowiska Krakowa

Abstract

History of education in Galician pedagogical works was inspired by the organizational and research status. Pedagogical circles of Cracow concentrated around three elementary groups of activists and theoreticians of the educational thought. The first group included the enthusiasts who tried to take the opportunity to create a Polish school of pedagogical thought in the situation of educational autonomy. They did not obtain formal pedagogical education, but were self-taught activists who treated educational work as a social and patriotic mission. The symbol of this group was Stanisław Zarański, a lawyer, the director of the Support Office of the royal-imperial Higher National Court in Cracow. The second group was formed by the professionally active teachers, especially concerned with teachers training. Such persons were Hipolit and Władysław Seredyńscy, and the gymnasium teachers who were encouraged to write papers on their subjects, as well as on didactics and pedagogy by the 1875 ministerial regulation. It ordered to include at least one scientific paper in the annual report written by school management. The most numerous teams of creative teachers were employed in St. Ann’s Gymnasium, St. Hyacinth Gymnasium, and King Jan III Sobieski’s Gymnasium. The third, most important group was the group of scientists associated with the Jagiellonian University. Pedagogy was taught in the Cracow University as early as in the first half of the 19th century, marginally, e.g. within the framework of theology. The autonomy activated the University authorities. In 1875, an unsuccessful attempt to create a Chair of Pedagogy was made, and repeated in 1900, to similar effect. A breakthrough in the development of pedagogy at the Jagiellonian University was the activity of Leon Kulczyński. Yet it must be remarked that also earlier lectures had been delivered by e.g. Józef Kremer and Maurycy Straszewski. The common forum for the exchange of views between the three groups was the royalimperial Towarzystwo Naukowe Krakowskie (Cracow Society of Learning), and later on - Akademia Umiejętności (The Academy of Learning). Despite strong bonds with the German achievements, standards of pedagogical compendia in Galicia (in Cracow and Lviv circles) were distant from the European models for textbooks. In Galician pedagogy, the necessity to separate the history of educational thought and practice had been forgotten, and the subject was incorporated in the issues of theory of teaching and upbringing, discussed in the coursebook texts.