WIESŁAW ANDRUKOWICZ
SET SCHOOL WITHIN REALITY
The article presents a thesis that contemporary school should be a community of paradoxically formulated goals and ways of their realizations and evaluation in which subjects face each other not exactly as equal, since it may only be ‘unfair equality’ (considering absolute variation of human existence), though as ‘honestly unequal’ ones (considering individually motivating process of discovering real needs, aspirations and possibilities). In short, fair can only be equal game rules and the opportunity to participate in various games (for less and more advanced). It must be stated clearly however that equality does not condition real justice, though justice conditions the same game rules and occurrence of various games. Honest is what seems proportional to needs, aspirations and abilities of all subjects of education game (perhaps with a slight surplus). Paradoxically, as M. Heidegger shows, perfect equality and identity feed on mediocrity, distance and indifference, where impersonal tone set up dictatorship. As a result, ‘univocal’ school community becomes a place of ‘average talk and writing’ and superficial curiosity and schizophrenic actions (realizing official and unofficial programs). Perhaps, we should return to B.F. Trentowski school formula of ‘multi-vocal community’.
Key words: co-existence, fair difference, “seeing-the-World”, “understanding co-existence”, “self-dictatorship”, critical alfabetization.
WOJCIECH KRUSZELNICKI
THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION AS THE HISTORY OF IDEAS
The history of pedagogical thought has been developing into an autonomous subdiscipline within pedagogy as a human science. It has also become a major point of the curricula of educational studies. This state of affairs engages theorists in a debate concentrating on the question of relevancy of historical knowledge for contemporary studies in educational theory. In my paper I argue that historical research within pedagogy should not exalt and monumentalize the past for its own sake with little or no effort made to enter a creative and critical dialogue with the past ideas. I present a different view on the history of pedagogy and try to envisage it as a history of ideas whose distinctive methodology in dealing with the past is capable of salvaging from past texts critical impulses and reintroducing them to contemporary contexts.
Key words: methodology, history of pedagogical thought, history of ideas, historical discourse, philosophical discourse, universalism vs. contextualism, continuity.
JAROSŁAW GARA
THE PHILOSOPHICAL CATEGORY OF TOTALITY AS A HEURISTIC OF PSEUDO-PEDAGOGY
Totality deprives the human life of individuality. Both Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Lévinas sought the sources of totalitarian thinking in the philosophical tradition of the West that is based on Greek ontology. Its most important issue may be expressed in the question about arche panton and the answers to the inquiries of this kind have always led some individual existences to one superior whole, thus neutralizing their own unique identity. The philosophical category of totality is therefore something more than an intellectual abuse because it is also reflected in both social and cultural life. Moreover, totality is always reflected in the fact that it wants to grasp, subordinate and unite everything in one vastly superior whole. That is why one can differentiate two sorts of totality – the “hard” one (connected with some hidden forms of violence) and the “soft” one (connected with some direct acts of violence). As the most typical manifestations of the latter there should be mentioned arrogance and patronizing treatment. They constitute a specific temptation in the relationships formed in education such as the ones between the student and the teacher. These attitudes are undoubtedly related to one’s subjective feeling of superiority and to the objective being in power over others. Being arrogant and patronizing can most of all be revealed in two types of relationships, such as the one between the teacher and student as well as the one between the teacher’s superior and the teacher himself.
Key words: philosophy of the dialogue, philosophy of education, intersubjective relationship, pseudo-pedagogic.
KRYSTYNA NOWAK-WOLNA
THE CLASSICAL THEORY OF DRAMA AND ITS EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS
Art is both an action and its result: creation (the work of art). Friedrich Nietzsche divided art into the Apollonian and Dionisyan one. The Apollonian element symbolizes the order and harmony, whereas the Dionisyan element leads to ecstasy and metamorphosis through pain. There guidance is needed from a teacher or a psychotherapist. The ecstasy and the purification of the soul can also be obtained through beauty (the Apollonian element) because under its influence the soul raises itself to the world of the ideas. Becoming beautiful in soul means becoming good at the same time. Participating in beautiful activities, staying among good people opens the “inner eye”. A man shapes himself according to the role model he admires. It is a route upwards described by Abraham Maslow in the 20th century.
A genre of art that influences people by means of both the Apollonian and the Dionisyan elements is drama. A drama can be looked upon from different points of view: as a way of human existence (man as a dramatic person), as one of three literary genres, and as a genre of stage art.
From the point of view of the educative value of drama the most interesting theories are: the philosophical theory of Józef Tischner and the classical drama theory described extensively in Aristotle’s Poetics. The idea of kátharsis plays a specific role in the classical theory of drama catharsis. It means transformation, a sublimation of feelings.
The medical dimension of the term is connected with the notion of homeostasis. In creative or receptive experience, a man’s manifested energy becomes intense to the highest degree, engaging the whole organism which leads to the establishment of well-being, the basis of both physical and psychological health.
A drama is first of all an action, an open structure. A role is part of this structure. Identifying with the role leads to compassion and empathy, that carries a deep educative meaning. While learning our part we establish a contact with the stage person, while at the same time developing our ability to establish a contact with other people in our life. This function of drama could be called communicative. The drama remains connected with the play because of the plot and the actions of stage persons. The educative function of art is a moral-aesthetic function, it encompasses the whole man and shapes his/her everyday life. This function is a multi-level one. The first level consists in the influence through the very structure of the work, the second is an aesthetic-moral influence by means of derivative values of mimesis type. The third level is an aesthetic-practical influence acting through evoking a specific action. The division conforms with the well-known aesthetic tryad: the understanding, explanation, application. The first two levels refer to the theory of education, while the third one refers to the educative practice.
Translated by Anna Katarzyna Wolna
Key words: truth, good, beauty, art, creative activity, expression, drama, theatre, tragedy, comedy, mimesis, catharsis, dialogue, role, plot, action, dramatic person, education, self-education, aesthetic education, aesthetic value.
PÁDRAIG HOGAN
EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE AND THE INTEGRITY OF LEARNING
This four-part enquiry explores the integrity of learning, not in the sense of integrity as ‘honesty’. Its chief concern, rather, is with reclaiming the integrity, or ‘wholeness’ of education as a practice in its own right. The first section examines how this integrity, with its classical roots in the work of Socrates, became lost, or colonised, by the dominant powers in the history of Western civilisation. The second section investigates how some landmark investigations of Enlightenment, including the ‘modern’ efforts of Kant and the ‘postmodern’ efforts of Foucault, have sought to emancipate human understanding, and human learning, from different forms of such colonisation. The ongoing difficulties attending such efforts lead the enquiry to follow a different path in the third section. This reviews some central insights of recent philosophical research (e.g. hermeneutic philosophy) that are relevant to understanding the experience of human understanding itself; insights that yield conceptions of educational practice that are more revelatory than ideological, more conversational than partisan. The final section attempts to sketch key features of educational environments that are informed by such insights. Particularly significant in this connection are some virtues that actually constitute the integrity of learning, as they become embodied in educational practice as a form of critical dialogue.
Key words: dialogue, preconceptions, capabilities, pastiality, integrity.
MAŁGORZATA NIESIOBĘDZKA
CHILDREN’S PARTICIPATION IN CONSUMER DECISIONS CONCERNING PRODUCTS OF THEIR OWN USAGE
The aim of the study was to define how much children aged 3–6 participate in consecutive phases of consumer decision making process. The work also includes an attempt to define the role of gender and age of a child as factors differentiating children’s participation in the process concerning products addressed to them. The results show that participation of small children is rather scarce. Children of that age often come up with an idea of purchasing a toy or sweets, though they rarely take the role of an expert or decision maker, independently of the type of product. The capacity of their participation depends mainly on their gender.
Key words: consumer decision, children, gender, age.
ZUZANNA ZBRÓG
THE FEELING OF SATISFACTION WITH SCHOOL AMONG THE MOST IMPORTANT SCHOOL PARTICIPANTS: LEARNERS, TEACHERS AND PARENTS
The article presents the results of the author’s own research on satisfaction with school as a place for work, learning and a decision concerning children’s good. The theoretical context of analysis was the level of satisfaction of basic social needs of the main school participants.
It is found out that what is the most important for the emotional feeling of satisfaction, cooperation, and inter-organisation cooperation, is the needs that consider positive interpersonal relationship: mutual kindness, support, regard, respect and acceptance from other people, together with the opportunity to develop cognitively and set the probable social role of an individual, as well as cooperation in deciding on the society matter, autonomy of choice, actions, and problems solutions. Fulfilment of those needs results in higher subjective identification of group and the institution (organisation), and, at the same time, the feeling of emotional linkage with the school.
Key words: satisfaction, school participants, non-public school, social needs.