How not to screw your children’s lives - book review

Can’t recall now how I have come across a series of books by Mikołaj Marcela which dissect imperfections of the Polish schooling system. Past reading some of them, I do not wholeheartedly agree with all of the author’s assertions, yet I find the book valuable.

Familiarising with its content made me realise the current primary and secondary education system is based on principles worked out in Prussia in the first half of the nineteenth century and rests on obedience and discipline. The Prussian government, by imposing common schooling obligation wanted not just to promulgate education, but aimed at bringing up submissive citizens.

As the author points out, the schooling system in Poland and in most countries is uniform, not unique. All pupils, regardless of their unique talents and skills are pushed into ruthless frames of standardisation which kill the lust for knowledge and talent development.

Core deficiencies of Polish schools, nimbly depicted in the book are accurately pinpointed.
1) Agreeably, Polish school do not teach skills that could come in useful in real life. I wonder whether the assumption is that young adults should be taught useful skills at home, or that should learn the hard way the moment life necessitates it.
2) Beyond all doubt, school to not teach how to learn – such techniques need to worked out and mastered by pupils themselves.
3) Sadly the curricula too often favour memorizing facts, instead of focusing on understanding causations and teaching how to seek out information and to verify them (particularly important in the era of fake news).

With some exceptions of outstanding teachers, school classes do not inspire, seldom kick-start talent nurturing, rarely spur curiosity. Pupils are infrequently encouraged to challenge their tutors, to debate with one another. This is all put down to an obsolete model of one-side interactions between teachers and students, with the former passing on knowledge and testing its acquisition and the latter obediently listening and swotting up for tests and exams.

With the diagnosis of all the ailments eating up the Polish schooling one also must keep in mind several obstacles hinder its turnaround. A major reform would require a general consensus between stakeholders (government, teachers, parents) of the current system that it badly needs an overhaul and on directions in which it would need to be reshaped. Besides, if we were to ditch standardisation and treat children individually, it would require more workforce of higher quality, which means much more money (payrolls, but infrastructure too) would need to be injected to the education system. There also ought to be consensus a substantial chunk of public finances should be laid out for the education system, which in decades will determine Polish economy’s competitiveness. Those expenses would certainly pay themselves off.

P.S. On personal front, doing reasonably fine, though with ups and downs typical for such getting-over periods.