LETTER FROM WARSAW
When, in December 2023, democratic forces returned to power in Poland after eight years of populist policies of the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, the expectations of civil society were immense. After the restoration of the rule of law, it is undoubtedly on the changes in the education system that the greatest hopes were placed. It is also in this area that the democratic coalition, although very heterogeneous, ranging from the left to the conservative peasant party, had made the most concrete promises of reforms.
Because the Polish school has come a long way. The previous education minister, Przemyslaw Czarnek, a fundamentalist Catholic with unbridled language, had become the embodiment of a reactionary surge in schools. The one who did not hesitate to compare the European Union to a system “worse than the Soviet Union” said about LGBT+ people that” it's necessary stop listening to this nonsense about so-called human rights or so-called equality. These people are not equal to normal people.” Regarding women affected by a late pregnancy, he considered that they “are not doing what God created them to do.”
But, faced with the outcry from teachers, PiS's attempts to centralize the education system and promote traditionalist values have largely failed. Political pressures were no less heavy and led to a form of self-censorship on the part of the teaching staff. The superintendents of education, these state representatives responsible, at the regional level, for supervising the education system, exercised real coercion on school heads.
The depoliticization of the system, the Democrats' flagship promise, is now underway. The superintendents were all fired by Education Minister Barbara Nowacka. The atmosphere at school has changed: the 2024 edition of “Rainbow Friday”, an informal day of action scheduled every October by students to raise awareness in society of the situation of LGBT+ people, took place in a calm atmosphere, whereas it took on the character of an almost clandestine action in previous years.
Against the concordat
Mme Nowacka does not hide his secular beliefs about schools in a country where the clergy still retains considerable influence. One of its first battles was to reduce the number of hours of catechism, from two to one hour per week, taking note of the considerable drop in enrolled students, from 93% of high school students in 2010 to 54% in 2022. This decision earned him a legal and media battle at loggerheads with the clergy and Catholic organizations, who consider that the measure goes against the concordat signed between Poland and the Vatican in 1993.
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Source: Lemonde