LETTER FROM WARSAW
When, in December 2023, democratic forces returned to power in Poland after eight years of populist policies of the nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS), the expectations of civil society were immense. After the reestablishment of the rule of law, it is undoubtedly in the changes in the educational system where the greatest hopes were placed. It is also in this area where the democratic coalition, although very heterogeneous, ranging from the left to the conservative peasant party, had made promises of more concrete reforms.
Because the Polish school has come a long way. The previous Minister of Education, Przemyslaw Czarnek, a fundamentalist Catholic with wild language, had become the embodiment of a reactionary wave in schools. The one who did not hesitate to compare the European Union with a system “worse than the Soviet Union” said about LGBT+ people that“it is necessary Stop listening to this nonsense about so-called human rights or so-called equality. These people are not the same as normal people.” Regarding women affected by a late pregnancy, it was considered that “They are not doing what God created them to do.”
But, in the face of outcry from teachers, PiS’s attempts to centralize the education system and promote traditionalist values have largely failed. Political pressures were no less strong and led to a form of self-censorship on the part of the teaching staff. The superintendents of education, these state representatives responsible, at the regional level, for supervising the educational system, exercised real coercion over school leaders.
The depoliticization of the system, the emblematic promise of the Democrats, is already underway. All of the superintendents were fired by Education Minister Barbara Nowacka. The atmosphere at school has changed: the 2024 edition of “Rainbow Friday”, an informal day of action scheduled every October by students to raise awareness in society about the situation of LGBT+ people, took place in a calm atmosphere, while which assumed the character of almost clandestine action in previous years.
Against the concordat
METROme Nowacka makes no secret of his secular beliefs about schools in a country where the clergy still retains considerable influence. One of his first battles was to reduce the number of hours of catechesis, from two to one hour per week, taking into account the considerable drop in enrolled students, from 93% of secondary school students in 2010 to 54% in 2022. It earned him a legal and media battle in disagreement with the clergy and Catholic organizations, who consider that the measure goes against the concordat signed between Poland and the Vatican in 1993.
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