Social and political determinants of educational inequalities in Poland. Genesis and dimensions – the politics of helplessness

Abstract

The study is devoted to the phenomenon of educational inequalities, in particular between the city and the countryside, which I treat as the basic source of all inequalities in modern society. Access to education and participation in the education system is the main source of human social advancement in the contemporary world. Access to education is governed by national law and international treaties. On the other hand, participation in education was conditioned in the past by social and moral circumstances (e.g. women’s education, state policy in the Polish nobility), while today it depends mainly on economic conditions. All indicators measuring the level of development and the situation of the material conditions of town and village inhabitants show a profound differentiation of the economic situation between these two environments, always to the detriment of the countryside. The origins of these inequalities should be seen both in the historical conditions, which were almost tragic for the countryside, in the form of one of the cruellest, oppressive forms of serfdom and in modern times, which imposed absolute servitude on the countryside, e.g. compulsory supplies, taking away all development capital from farmers. And this unfriendly economic policy towards the countryside is continued by the current authorities, which, by creating the appearance of financial “charity” in the form of spectacular, one-off gestures, excluded the village from the process of civilization advancement, which was exemplified in the times of real socialism by, for example, electrification of villages. Today, the symptoms of economic, and hence cultural handicap, include communication exclusion; the liquidation of cultural infrastructure; exclusion of a rural child from all developmental and extracurricular activities - which automatically condemns them to intellectual secondary; an increase in the cost of education, commercial fees for boarding schools and boarding houses; the carelessness of the government for the health of rural children., ...The development strategy and the mythical economic order do not create any illusions that the economic and cultural advancement of villages is the subject of the government’s concern for the balanced development of all environments, especially the disadvantaged ones. In the field of educational advancement of villages, in the light of the announced declarations of the Ministry of Education, all hopes must be abandoned. The blockade of the social character of the school, its removal from the influence of the self-government and the community of parents, grotesque declarations of the curricular goals of education, and the omnipotence of probation officers, which have never brought good fruit in history, take away hope for the chances of promotion and equality.