Warszawska historia wychowania w drugiej połowie XX wieku

Abstract

History of education and upbringing as a scientific discipline originated from the interests of the Galician historians of culture (Józef Kallenbach, Stanisław Łempicki, Stanisław Kot) and from the needs of the Polish pedagogical circles, searching for historical roots of their discipline (Henryk Rowid, Bogdan Nawroczyński, Hanna Pohoska). Two currents in history of education emerged: the ”historical” and the ”pedagogical” current. In the beginnings of the formation process of the discipline, the dominating context was the cultural-literaryhistorical one. Between the two World Wars, the sociological concept of history of education began to develop (Helena Radlińska) in Warsaw. After the World War 2, the whole country witnessed intensive development of history of education, connected with the development of research centres in universities and in the Polish Academy of Sciences. A question arises whether any original values, and what values, were contributed to the history of education research in the 20th century by the Warsaw circles or researchers’ circles. The status and achievements of history of education in Warsaw in the first 25 years after the World War II is relatively well examined. Two strong research centres emerged: in the Pedagogical Faculty of the University of Warsaw, and in the History of Education Section of the Polish Academy of Sciences (now the Institute of the History of Science). In the University of Warsaw, the ”historical”, ”sociological”, and ”pedagogical” currents in history of education developed. The leading researchers were Hanna Pohoska, Łukasz Kurdybacha, Ryszard Wroczyński, Michał Szulkin, Bogdan Suchodolski, and Stefan Wołoszyn. The research centre in the Polish Academy of Sciences, created by Łukasz Kurdybacha, assembled researchers not only from Warsaw, but also from the whole country. Kurdybacha, Stanisław Łempicki’s pupil, maintained the concept of history of education of the ”Lviv school”. He initiated and orderly developed scientific research, research methodology, young researchers’ training, publications: monographs, sources, the yearly ”Rozprawy z Dziejów Oświaty” (History of Education Essays), a comprehensive synthesis of the global history of education (two volumes of Historia wychowania /History of Education/, edited by Ł. Kurdybacha, and two volumes of Historia Wychowania. Wiek XX /History of Education in the 20th century/, edited by Józef Miąso). Answering the question of originality of the Warsaw circles of history of education requires investigating the achievements of the departmental institutes and higher schools of Warsaw which offered pedagogical studies. In the last three decades of the 20th century, owing to the research conducted in these centres, the research scope and the limits of history of education were broadened, especially in the fields of history of special pedagogy (Stanisław Mauersberg), agricultural education (Tadeusz Wieczorek), vocational education (Tadeusz W. Nowacki), physical education (R. Wroczyński), etc.