High school (Polish: lyceum), museum, mausoleum… On reviving masterpieces during classes of the Polish language and literature

Abstract

Theodor W. Adorno claimed that ‘‘museum and mausoleum are related not only phonetically. Museums are like family tombs of artwork.” The author of this text comes to the conclusion that this set of sound-alike words can be topped up with another word – high school (Polish: liceum). The ones responsible for completing school curricula and textbooks fill them up with texts of culture for some reasons considered import ant and valuable. They also segregate them according to various order (on high school level it is mainly a chronological order). This ‘‘compulsory collective existence”, which might be understood if we take an academic context into consideration (history of art, history of literature), very often does not make sense to high school students. The author of this text wonders why it is the way it is and what to do so that high school does not change into museum, and even mausoleum. And how to make high school students appreciate the values acknowledged by experts. Looking for the solutions, the author starts with reflections on art, expresses a negative opinion on the new high school curriculum, refers to works of experts on various fields (e.g. history of art, sociology, didactics, philosophy) and – most of all – refers to literary works and paintings.