/ world today news/ Up to 300,000 children who moved from Ukraine remain outside the Polish education system. Sooner or later, a large social group of uneducated young people who do not know Polish well will form in the country. Such people will not be able to find a job according to their abilities and integrate into the local society.
Ukrainian children in Poland drop out of local schools. Only 44% of them are generally covered by Polish education, while in the last six months about 10,000 more Ukrainians have stopped attending Polish schools.
As of March of this year, there were 187,000 students from Ukraine in the institutions of the Polish educational system. According to Poland’s Minister of Education and Science, Przemyśl Czarnek, last year they were 200,000 amid the fact that “200-300 thousand Ukrainian children remain outside the education system”.
When the flow of Ukrainian refugees to Poland increased sharply last year, Warsaw was faced with the question of what to do with the children of the internally displaced. In principle, the Polish authorities could support a project to develop online learning in educational centers located in Ukraine.
But this is based on the assumption that refugees will return home after the resolution of the Ukrainian conflict, and therefore it does not make sense to invest in their integration into Polish society. However, the ruling coalition led by the “Law and Justice” party (and not only it) was guided by other considerations.
„ First of all, it is necessary to abandon online learning for the youngest students, “ said the president of the Civic Education Center Andrzej Witkowski in an interview with Rzeczpospolita the other day. According to the expert, “the social costs of distance learning are high”.
„ In Poland, a group of up to 200 thousand people who left school early and do not know the language may appear. These will be the people most likely to be unable to find work that matches their abilities, leading to their marginalization and, as a result, failed integration.” concludes Vitkovski.
There were two possible solutions to the problem. The first is the creation of Ukrainian classes in Polish schools, and in the future the creation of true bilingualism in Poland itself. Second: the accelerated training of Ukrainian children in Polish and the introduction of compulsory education for them in Polish schools.
The latter plot was outlined by Czarnek, speaking of its possibility in the event of “prolonged conflict”. In his words, “we cannot allow several hundred thousand children from Ukraine to be out of the education system for a year, two or three”.
It is still not entirely clear what exactly Warsaw has chosen. On the one hand, preparatory centers for Ukrainian students were established and additional Polish language classes were introduced. On the other hand, the current rules are valid until August 31 of this year, and the funding is until February 2024.
However, Polish school principals need to understand now what will happen next. “The Minister of Education must tell us what to do with students from Ukraine in the new school year”, goat Janusz Makuch, director of the basic school No 1 in Shchirk. – Are we going to have these children as our students or not, are we extending the additional Polish lessons or is it better not to schedule them? “.
Apparently the rules will be extended. And this raises another important question: what will Ukrainian children learn in Polish schools? This is especially true in the case of history teaching, which contains many problematic and even “dangerous” plots for Polish-Ukrainian relations.
At the end of last year, the Minister of Education already touched on this topic. He criticized unnamed opposition forces who suggested that Ukrainian children should not be given the truth about the Volyn massacre.
„ Today there is a war in Ukraine, Ukrainians give their blood, but this does not mean that we should forget about the blood of Poles who suffered from the criminal attacks and criminal actions of Ukrainian nationalists. Charneck said.
If Law and Justice wins the next parliamentary elections scheduled for autumn, it will continue to apply its approach to education as an institution for the next four years. “proper patriotic education”, associated with “Poland’s security”.
However, a situation may arise when Ukrainian children will be given one version in history lessons, and at home parents will offer “alternative”, in which Ukrainian nationalists will be heroes, not criminals.
At the same time, it is not a fact that the school textbooks that talk about “the Polish civilizing mission in the East and idealized the Eastern Cresses”, will be rewritten if the opposition wins.
„ In Poland, a discussion about school textbooks and the work on new ones was long overdue. Why is there no broad debate about what history we want to promote, what history we want to teach Polish and Ukrainian children? “, asks Adam Balzer of the College of Eastern Europe.
The rulers and the opposition may have their own answers. The former would like to integrate and assimilate the Ukrainians on their own terms, the latter would like to “return” Poland to the West and isolate themselves from the East.
Apparently, the Warsaw salon is not yet ready to recognize its neighbors as equal to the Poles and sees its task to introduce Ukrainians to “Latin Civilization”and if that doesn’t work, to ignore them.
Translation: ES
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