Civic Education in Poland. Reflections on the Subject History and the Present

Abstract

The subject of the research covers civic education in Poland on the example of the subject History and the present introduced in 2022 (to secondary schools). The main aim of the article was to determine the content of teaching civic education in accordance with the core curriculum of the educational activities studied. What subject scope should be implemented during formal civic education and what was planned in the core curriculum of the subject History and the present? The research problem formulated in this way determined the course of the conducted scientific research, the structure of the article and the research methods used, among which the following were of primary importance: the method of analysis and criticism of literature (sources), the method of examining documents, the comparative method, the institutional and legal approach, the systemic method (formal civic education was included in the broader context of the functioning of the social system).
As a result of the conducted research, it was established that the authors of publications devoted to the issue of civic education recommend that it should include teaching content that falls primarily within the area of social sciences with the leading role of political and administrative science (history – especially contemporary history – should be the background for civic education, not its main dimension). Meanwhile, the subject History and the present is set in a historical perspective, taking into account mainly the component of knowledge from the history of the world and Poland from 1945 to the second decade of the 21st century.