„Nieznany kraj”. Śląsk w powojennej szkolnej edukacji regionalnej (analiza treści podręczników do kształcenia polonistycznego z lat 1945‒1970)

Abstrakt

The article is based on educational sources and refers to the texts on Silesian themes
included in school textbooks for the Polish language. An analysis of the textbook
material used in school Polish language education in the years 1945–1970 leads to an
important conclusion: the collection of literary fragments included therein, referring
to the Silesian region, fulfils three purposes: it realises cognitive, educational and
aesthetic values. Among the educational assumptions, especially in the textbook
materials published in the late 1940s, then 1950s and 1960s, the dominant ones were
those that subordinated the integrative function. It consisted in shaping in the consciousness
of the young generation of Poles the conviction that cultural differences
between regions do not contradict the national, social and cultural unity of the
Kashubians, Silesians or Highlanders, that the culture of a region is an integral part
of our national culture, and that in addition to its distinctiveness there are elements
common to various regions and nationwide educational goals. The integrative function
is also embedded in the cognitive and emotional content. However, the process
of transformation of patriotic education dominated by ideology has undergone modifications
and clear evolution over time. Textbook works on Silesia from the 1970s
already take into account a different perspective – promoting the assumptions of
the new regionalism, emphasising the socio-cultural and historical distinctiveness
of these lands, the issues of the ethnographic colour of Silesia, the spatial turn and
geopoetics, local identity, exposing ‘what is peculiar to [this region], original, individual,
testifying to a living, subjective bond with the heritage of the past’.