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“SLAVONIC CHRISTEN KOLD”
OR FIVE PRINCIPLES OF IGNACY SOLARZ’S EDUCATIONAL CONCEPT
T. Maliszewski
Introduction. The achievements of Polish educator Ignacy Solarz (18911940) are not, unfortunately, well known in the world despite the fact that in my country he is considered to be a significant figure in the history of adult education -one of the main founders of boarding folk high schools and a distinguished adult education animator in rural areas. After World War II his pedagogical activity was the interest of many authors [e.g.: Nowicki 1947; Wroczynski 1962; Turos 1970; Bednarzak-Libera 2006; Jamrozek 2010]. A number of publications appeared also on the occasion of Solarz’s one hundred birthday [e.g.: Gawor (ed.) 1992; Koprukowniak, Krawczyk (ed.) 1993; Got^biowski 1994]. For years many practitioners have been looking for inspiration for their own educational projects in his works [see e.g.: Poptawski 1948, Poptawski, Dyksinski (ed.) 1965; Stanowski 1981; Mierzwinska-Szybka (ed.) 1983]. The activity of I. Solarz in Poland can be compared to what Christen Mikkelsen Kold (1816-1870) did a few decades before to translate Grundtvigian ideas into the language of educational practice [Koztowski 1902, p. 33-35; Bjerg 1994, p. 21-35; Kulich 1997, p. 439-453]. Because the Polish educator was an activist of pan-Slavic movement of rural youth, his educational ideas also influenced the development of rural areas adult education in other Slavic countries. So the nickname of Slavonic Kristen Kold seems to be very well justified.
Let us recall some of the pedagogical truths that he advocated:
Truth I: Full participation of all the members of the society in civic society is the objective of adult education. Ignacy Solarz formulated this very relevant also today postulate to the fullest in his sort of pedagogical manifesto entitled “The Rural Folk High School named after Wtadystaw Orkan”. Already the first page of that publication presents the thought that can be considered the Credo of his entire pedagogical activity: “It has been and is our principal idea [...] to involve the mass of people in the active and main creative role in the history, to transform it from «social substratum» into a personal, farmer’s element in all fields of culture. It is about upbringing [...] to realise a mature, highly ethical, ingenious democracy. It is about processing figures into vitality and quality, about new sources of development opportunities of Polish and the world’s community” [Solarz 1937, p. 1]. Is it not one of the currently important postulates - the idea of making citizens of all the members of the society with which we have to do nowadays when many distinguished pedagogues, sociologists, philosophers or political scientists formulate similar thoughts? It is thus worth noting that it was Ignacy Solarz who was one of the precursors of such a socially viable contemporary idea of building civic society in the Slavonic region.
Truth II: Being a pedagogue/educator is not (only) a profession but (also) a passion and vocation. The truth that a pedagogue must with passion and without looking at the hardships of life perform the pedagogical tasks he has taken on should be continuously proved by his life choices. Today, when too many people forget about this hard to observe principle, there appears a postulate of
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incorporating it again into the educational canon. So looking for examples from the past, it is worth recalling the attitude of Ignacy Solarz. Let us recall one of his characteristics written down a few decades ago: “On the lead [...] there is an educator - a thinker, a poet, who with the imperatives coming from deep considerations on human fate, creates a type of an employee aiming at transforming himself, a man of the peoples, the nation, the humanity. Words and deeds fraternised in everyday hard work. The truth - in the word, and the word -the pulse of social heart. High ideas should be linked with life for them to become a reality” [Wiktor (in:) Mierzwinska-Szybka (ed.) 1983, p. 370]. We could, of course, find more similar quotations about the Polish pedagogue. Having agreed that an adult education teacher must definitely act in accordance with the ideas and opinions he voices we must say that it is worth recalling and popularising in the world also the attitude of Ignacy Solarz among the personal examples from the history of adult education, as he continuously proved with his life that being an educator is not only a profession but, first of all, a irrepressible passion for doing things and - let us call it grandiloquently - a vocation.
Truth III: There is always a necessity of taking care of making a student/course participant a subject. Full partnership in student-teacher relations was an important attribute of Ignacy Solarz’s pedagogy. According to Solarz it was the dialogue, students’ self-government, co-deciding about the elements of the programme, using the elements of cooperativeness, joint organization of life space (accommodation, meals, cleaning, etc. that co-decided about such subjectivity. One could see these issues as another - successful and important - attempt of negating the post-Herbart’s educational order that was still at that time the main thinking in the attitude to educational-upbringing issues. In this context, Ignacy Solarz could, in a way, appear to be, just like John Dewey, Ellen Key, Helen Parkhurst or Georg Keschensteiner, one of the representatives of “New Education” - an extremely ideologically plausible reformatory trend in the education of those times. For his concepts of pedagogical work aiming at making all participants of the educational-upbringing process subjects are a methodological proposal reaching far beyond folk high schools and now have a universal character.
Truth IV: Educational institution / organization should regularly cooperate with local community. The postulate of embedding each educational institution into the local community in which it functions by developing a number of community bonds was very loud in the opinions of Ignacy Solarz. As a creative educational institution must cooperate with the near (or more remote) social environment to, on the one hand, prove its social usefulness, and on the other hand - to develop in his students the idea of social involvement for their own local communities because - he emphasised - an educational institution: “is not a monastery or a court, it cannot be closed, rigid or foreign to the environment. It must be an integral part of its current life - not only the general life of the country but also of the nearest neighbourhood” [(Solarz) 1933]. Nowadays, when we made the necessity of an educational institution’s cooperation with its environment one of the main postulates in the European educational practice, showing that we also have valuable relevant Slavic examples in the form of the concept of environmental
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work e.g. Solarz, would surely be worth broader promotion in pedagogical circles -and not only the ones connected with adult education in rural areas.
Truth V: Creative use of inspiration from adult education world’s achievements makes sense. His ability to creatively use the pedagogical achievements of other nations is another important issue worth paying attention to while searching through the legacy of Ignacy Solarz for its usefulness today. The analogies with the concepts of “New Education” were mentioned above. Here let us remind the reader that Solarz’s concept of a folk high school is a creative transformation of Grundtvigian idea of school for life, thus referring to the Scandinavian tradition of folkh0jskole. Let us also emphasise that the new educational institution he created does not constitute an uncritical takeover of Scandinavian examples and an attempt at unreflective implementation of them in the Polish (and Slavonic) rural social space. Let us illustrate it with a quotation of Solarz himself on one of his institutions: “Although the Peasants’ School in Szyce comes from outside the Polish soil, from the great idea of the Scandinavian educator, Grundtwig, it became so deeply rooted in the Polish soil that it [is] an individual expression of this land, of the spirit of Polish rural areas” [Solarz (after:) Solarzowa 1985, p. 249]. As one can see, the reception of the examples from the North constitutes for that pedagogue just the first step in building the educational formula Polish people (and other nations) need. For it must be modified in such a way as to optimally respond to the educational needs of the community it is addressed to. And Solarz is fully aware of that. His attitude to taking from foreign pedagogical innovations can thus be considered to be exemplary - and worth using also today.
Conclusion. As one can see, the five pedagogical principles presented above and taken form Ignacy Solarz (“Slavonic Kold”), are of universal character -still valid, despite of the lapse of time from their articulation and regardless of detailed conditions of the given social space. And their list does not exhaust the scope of possible references to the achievements of that distinguished educator in the modern times. It is, however, a good illustration of the universal character of his andragogical thinking. To conclude one must express his hope that Solarz’s achievements will be of interest both to the theoreticians and practitioners of adult education from other countries.
Bibliography
1. Bednarzak-Libera M. (2006): Ignacy Solarz (1891-1940) - wychowawca mlodziezy wiejskiej i spoldzielca [Rural Youth Educator and Cooperative Movement Activist], [in:] E. Krynska (ed.), Idealy wychowania i wzory osobowe narodu polskiego w XIX i XX wieku [Ideals of Education and Personal Examples of Polish Nation in 19th and 20th Century], Vol. 2, Biatystok.
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Republic of Poland], [in:] E. Sapia-Drewniak, J. Janik-Komar (ed.), Uniwersytety ludowe i inne formy oswaity dorostych [Folk High Schools and other Forms of Adult Education], Opole.
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14. [Solarz I.] (1933), Wiejski Uniwersytet Orkanowy w Gaci. Pierwsza chtopska niezalezna uczelnia [“Rural Folk High School Named after Wtadystaw Orkan in Gac. First Independent Peasant School”] [Warszawa].
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