T. Maliszewski

“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; Wroczyński 1962; Turos 1970;
Bednarzak-Libera 2006; Jamrożek 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; Gołębiowski 1994]. For years many
practitioners have been looking for inspiration for their own educational projects in
his works [see e.g.: Popławski 1948, Popławski, Dyksiński (ed.) 1965; Stanowski
1981; Mierzwińska-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 [Kozłowski
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 Władysław 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:) Mierzwińska-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 folkhøjskole. 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.
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