Towards education for all

For centuries education was a privilege available only to a small part of the society. The unified education system as we know it today, that is education which is compulsory, free and available to everyone, is a relatively new invention. When it was introduced in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Partitions of Poland took place. Polish lands were annexed by Prussia, Austria and Russia, which is why the beginnings of opening education to everyone in our country depended on the solutions introduced by particular partitioners. On the national level, a unified education system, open for everyone, did not begin to operate until the beginning of the 1950s.

In Poznań and the Wielkopolska Region compulsory education was introduced by the Prussian authorities in 1825, whereas in Prussia itself it had already been in operation from 1717. Compulsory education encompassed reading, writing and arithmetic. At the beginning only children of the gentry, townsmen and Protestant clergy were allowed to go to schools. Children of peasants had to wait for this privilege till the middle of the 19th century. Before that, the idea of educating peasant children met with opposition not only from the gentry, which did not care about the education of the lower social strata, but also from the children’s parents themselves, who relied on children’s help in the households and the field.

What was the situation like in other parts of the annexed Polish lands? In Galicia compulsory education was introduced in 1873. In the Dutchy of Warsaw, on the other hand, it was introduced already in 1808 but not observed, as there were not enough schools.

 

photograph: being accepted as pupils at Primary School No. 84 in Poznań, 1985, photo by Stanisław Wiktor from the collection of the Cyryl Local Digital Repository

Main photo - Towards education for all
Close

Table of contents

In the lands under the Prussian rule, schools were used for the Germanization of Poles. The authorities gradually reduced the number of classes during which children were allowed to use Polish. At the end of the 19th century the Polish language was completely removed from schools and Polish teachers were being replaced with German ones. This led to an outcry from Poles who set up many initiatives with the aim of teaching children the Polish language, culture and traditions outside of the official education system. An example of that is the establishment of the People’s Education Society whose aim was to appoint in every village a person responsible for the education of Polish children.

When Poland regained independence in 1919, compulsory education was introduced in the whole country. However, creating a unified education system posed a great challenge. It required combining three completely different post-partitions realities. The main problem was the widespread illiteracy, which was most prominent in the lands previously annexed by Austria and Russia.

The education system at the time was not egalitarian – not everyone had equal access to it. In small towns, schools consisted of four grades, not seven. It was impossible to continue education after graduating from such schools. Therefore, children living in the country had limited access to education. What is more, middle schools and secondary schools charged fees for education. Not everyone could afford to pay them.

Despite the obvious flaws of the system, opportunities for social advancement increased considerably during the interwar period. Before 1939, 90 per cent of children attended schools.

In Poland education at primary schools became compulsory in the first half of the 1950s. It was at that time that a unified system of education was developed – a similar system was implemented in schools in the cities and in the country. The 1950s were also the time when illiteracy ceased to be a mass phenomenon.

2 / 32
Towards education for all
Strzałka skierowana w lewo Previous Strzałka skierowana w prawo Następny