Od słowa do słowa, czyli o nieprofesjonalnych odbiorcach tekstów literackich i ich wypowiedziach na temat zadań i powinności literatury

Abstract

The obsessive complaining about Lower Secondary School students being so pervasive, it seems difficult to imagine that anybody would all of a sudden start only singing praises to them. And yet, there are some people who see the students in a positive light. These claim that preconceived notions about the students either partially or entirely depart from the truth. The reasons for the diverging viewpoints should be looked for in different information about, for instance, the students’ (in)appropriate attitude towards school duties imposed on them and towards other people. Therefore, the author of the article attempts at outlining a portrait of Lower Secondary School students which emerges from the research material. The material comprises of statements uttered by the teenagers from outside of Kraków about their expectations towards literature. It gives an insight to what tasks the young people give not only to literature and its creators but also teachers of Polish literature and culture. Thus, the author has chosen to analyse three of the students’ demands: the two most frequent and the least frequent among the claims. They intertwine with students’ way of understanding the obligations of literature. The obligations, in turn, give the possibility to identify attitudes and reader’s role which students either assume or would like to assume while dealing with literature. Conclusions drawn based the analysis of the young people’s opinions may become a fulcrum on which questions about a contemporary Lower Secondary School student are asked – a human being, a literature reader and an author of written texts – are raised. Despite the impossibility of finding the ultimate answer for numerous questions about students, it is worth calling for their constant identification as human beings and recipients of literature (culture) aimed at designing Polish literature and culture lesson activities suitable for them.