Book Description
The monograph’s most important assets are that it consistently treats scholiology as the study of school; it bases the study of school on culture and national traditions as well as contemporary world trends important for its development; it emphasises the educational value of scholiology; it treats its participants democratically as active agents and partners; and it does not follow blindly the fashionable movements in education and disciplines devoted to it. It is also a timely and socially, cognitively and methodologically important, utilitarian work, characterised by an innovative approach, scientific objectivism and credibility, competent use of the conducted analyses, transparent recommendations and showing the means, limitations, and determinants of applying the proposed solutions efficiently. The monograph has all the qualities of a good book. The Author has included important trends in the world and Polish study of school and its present-day developments. He has expertly shown the essence and origin of the basic concepts of scholiology and their functions in keeping with the understanding according to contemporary disciplines concerned with education. He has aptly, yet briefly, defined the process of scientific cognition in the study of school on the basis of disciplines concerned with education, both humanistic and social ones. The Author’s concern about the organic growth of scholiology and his readiness to help other educators is clearly conspicuous on the pages of the book. The Study of School is a noteworthy monograph full of concrete facts, and although some of its parts are not easy at all, it is never monotonous or tiring to read. It is not narrow-minded, but full of diversity and open. It is a book which cannot be overlooked in the education, improvement and in-service training of teachers. prof. zw. dr hab. Kazimierz Denek Foreword The school system has been under constant criticism from theorists of education for over thirty years. Some of the Polish scholars who have conducted critical reviews of school and the education system are Bogdan Suchodolski (1959), Jan Szczepański (2000), Wincenty Okoń (1999b), Czesław Kupisiewicz (1985a, passim), Czesław Banach (1997), Zbigniew Kwieciński (1990, 2000), Alicja Kargulowa (1991, passim), Józef Kozielecki (1995, passim), Aleksander Nalaskowski (1995, passim), Bogusław Śliwerski (1998), and more recently Tadeusz Pilch (1999, passim), Kazimierz Denek (2000, passim) and Maria Dudzikowa (2001, passim). Out of the listed Polish theorists of education, Kupisiewicz, Denek, Pilch, Janowski (2002), Kwiatkowska (2005) and Śliwerski (2006) in particular carried out not only an in-depth critical analysis of how contemporary school functions, but also attempted to identify optimal, in their opinion, ways and means of overcoming the crisis. Contemporary school has also been criticised, both objectively and subjectively, by foreign theorists of school education, such as Ivan Illich, Philip H. Coombs, Hubertus von Schoenebeck, Merlyn J. Behr, Erich E. Geissler, Hartmut von Hentig, Torsten Husén, Eliška Walterová, David Greger and others. As Behr stated (1982, cited by: Kupisiewicz, 1985b, p. 27), if we wanted to take this dissatisfaction seriously, schools would have to close down. Criticism of school – main trends: 1. Traditional school, isolated from reality and contemporary life, does not keep up with the requirements of the times in the post-industrial or postmodern era, especially in the times of globalisation, with regard to science, the development of technology and information technology, social progress, environmental studies, culture and morality. 2. Contemporary school as a dedicated educational institution has taken on too many functions and tasks connected with general and vocational education, upbringing and socialisation, cultural education, and recently even integrated teaching and providing diagnosis and therapy to children with social adjustment problems, as well as developing creativity, even though it lacks the proper conditions and suitably qualified and motivated staff to perform all these functions. John Dewey wrote in The School and Society, first published in 1899: Upon the ethical side, the tragic weakness of the present school is that it endeavors to prepare future members of the social order in a medium in which the conditions of the social spirit are eminently wanting (Dewey, 1907). Dewey went on to state in the same work: The obvious fact is that our social life has undergone a thorough and radical change. If our education is to have any meaning for life, it must pass through an equally complete transformation. This transformation is not something to appear suddenly, to be executed in a day by conscious purpose (Dewey, 1907, p. 26). Without generalising, we can find many analogies with the present times. The school at that time was facing similar challenges as it is facing now. Aleksander Nalaskowski (1995, p. 79) wrote in Niepokój o szkołę (Concern About School): This means that schools should frantically search for a solution to the dilemma: how to educate quickly and sensibly, without teaching superficiality and shallowness of thinking […]. He continued: In schools, we encounter literally everything that can be encountered in the contemporary world. It is a peculiar agora of history and contemporary times. In order to successfully complete the tasks charged to schools of various grades and levels it is no longer sufficient to supplement and change curricula, to improve teaching methods, to prolong the period of education, to buy ever newer computers and audio-visual equipment, or to improve school architecture and interior design. There is an increasingly large discrepancy between schooling and education which is necessary in adult life. This is true of general as well as vocational education. hich is mediocre because it is poor, can only be a school of new quality, one open to change, promoting children’s development, but considerably more expensive. It should be an institution which will offer better conditions, which will set higher requirements, but at the same time will be friendly to children. Among contemporary Polish theoreticians of pedagogy Stanisław Palka consistently holds the position that research on the borderline of pedagogy and other disciplines can give a strong impulse to the growth of pedagogy and can be inspiring for auxiliary sciences as well (a collective work edited by Stanisław Palka, Pogranicza pedagogiki i nauk pomocniczych (Borderline of Pedagogy and Auxiliary Sciences) (UJ, Kraków 2004). As for school – as a social institution serving a specific purpose – the following sciences and disciplines play an important role: philosophy, history, ethics and aesthetics, sociology, psychology, theoretical and practical pedagogy, didactics, social pedagogy and resocialisation, the media and the Internet, management and economics of education, law, architecture and school ergonomics, along with many other disciplines (such as inventics – the science of invention). The influence of tradition and culture, as well as moral philosophy, i.e. ethics, on school life is also obvious. At present, culture and its various forms are becoming increasingly important. School culture is a complex phenomenon. It is based on three dimensions: mass, collective (group) and individual, and on three levels: transcendental (metaphysical values); rational (norms, customs, social standards) and subrational (the teacher’s personal preferences and feelings). The role of culture, ethics or aesthetics is already sufficiently understood and popularised in numerous scholarly theses, monographs and essays. Therefore, I have not devoted a separate chapter to these problems in my monograph on the study of school, even though they are of fundamental importance in the broadly defined study of education. Due to scholiology’s connections to almost all areas of life and their entanglement in many contexts, a solid analysis of the functioning of the contemporary school system requires subscribing to the model of open pedagogy, which Zbyszko Melosik calls pedagogy without borders (Melosik, 2001, p. 31). It is in opposition to confined pedagogy, whose proponents set borders of what belongs to the field of pedagogy and what does not. Open pedagogy, due to its interdisciplinary nature, encourages us to pursue – if such are our research interests and needs – issues which belong to philosophy, psychology, sociology and cultural studies. Every researcher of the problem of contemporary education repeatedly listens to this encouragement, since it is a problem requiring a broad, interdisciplinary approach (Melosik, 2001, passim). This is even truer for scholiology. In the study of school – due to its institutional and systematic character – we are dealing with a different way of searching for those connections and a somewhat different role of these areas of knowledge for school and the education system. This allows for a new vision of school to be created and offers an opportunity to cast a new look at school’s present and future functions. New areas and common research fields and topics come into view. In a longer term, this may lead to a new thinking about school and to increasing the effectiveness of its work, which would take into account the effect produced by the integrated approach (possible synergic effect). This goal is very distant and perhaps too ambitious. During the final stages of preparing the English version of Scholiology for publication, in June 2018, the European Parliament passed a resolution on modernisation of education in the EU. The draft of the resolution, prepared by MEP Krystyna Łybacka, presents a comprehensive approach to the problem of education, looking at the process of schooling from pre-primary to higher education, including mechanisms of lifelong learning and creating optimum conditions for individualised teaching. The part devoted to teachers is an important element of the resolution. The document emphasises the need to improve the status of teachers, their working conditions and career prospects and pay. As the rapporteur correctly notes, The traditional place of learning, i.e. the school, is now complemented by the many other sources of information available. Modern technologies have liberated education, created opportunities for multidimensional educational activities, and established an EDUCATIONAL SPACE. A major challenge is to ensure that schools are the most interesting place in this space. […] Europe’s demographic and social challenges, the requirements of the labour market, new technologies, personal preferences and educational needs are determining the directions of changes in education. It is important that education systems take these factors into account in order not only to offer high-quality knowledge, but also to ensure appropriate competences, including the key competence of the 21st century: the ability to successfully learn throughout one’s life (Draft report on modernisation of education in the EU, 2018). The resolution seems to contain key recommendations for modern education, which are discussed in-depth in the Study of School, or Scholiology, to which I have devoted many years of my research work.
