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FIGURE 35. Contrasting styles in church architecture. A 17th century wooden church at Grywald, southern Poland (top), and a new church at Drogomysl, also in southern Poland (bottom) (U/OU) (pictures)
H. Education (C)
1. The national context
The major educational goals of the postwar Communist regimes in Poland have been twofold: first, to mold a new "socialist man" whose strong ideological convictions would lead him to virtually automatic support of regime policies, and second, the expansion of mass education, combined with the reorientation of students in higher schools from the traditional academic disciplines—such as the liberal arts, law, and the social sciences—toward technical studies and economics. Over the years, the government has succeeded in achieving the second goal, but its success, paradoxically, has been the main reason why it has failed to achieve the first.
Historically, Poland's educational system had been deeply steeped in humanist tradition along French and German philosophical lines, decidedly influenced by religion, and supported by the state. Despite periods of internal turmoil and pre-World War I domination by Germany, Austria, and Russia, the interwar Polish Government succeeded in a remarkable assimilation of diverse educational principles, and on the eve of World War II Poland's academic system was regarded as one of the best in Europe. Despite the widened accessibility of educational opportunity, however, schools of higher learning during the interwar period were still characterized by a high degree of ingrown exclusiveness and overemphasis on legal and humanistic studies far exceeding the needs of the society. As a result, interwar Poland had problems with a qualified, unemployed, and often alienated intelligentsia along before the term became current elsewhere. In keeping with the rapid postwar industrialization and urbanization, the Communist government mounted a massive campaign to expand schooling facilities, to eliminate the exclusiveness of higher schools, and to put major emphasis on scientific, technical, and vocational education. The resultant virtual explosion in the numbers of educated youth within the framework of a social and political system unwilling and unable to satisfy either their material or spiritual demands has been central to the regime's conflict with the younger generation, and therefore, has been largely of its own making.
The government's postwar educational goals were hindered by the unprecedented physical destruction of the wartime period, by the rapid rise in the numbers of school-age children due to the postwar "baby-boom," and by the shortages of qualified teachers and pedagogues who, as members of the educated elite, were systematically eliminated by the Nazi occupiers. In general, the government has succeeded in all these sectors not only in overcoming the impact of the wartime period, but in creating a greatly expanded system of mass education.
Consistently rising outlays for education including an extensive program of school construction and rapid
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