Why is authoritarianism afraid of school? Public education as the foundation of democracy

Randi Weingarten's book "Why Fastists Fear Teachers: Public Education and the Future of Democracy" goes far beyond the American context. Its message is peculiarly clear from the position of Central and east Europe – a region which historically experienced both totalitarianism and long-term processes of erosion of school autonomy. In the Polish context, questions about the control of curricula, the place of a teacher in the structure of power and the function of education in shaping civic subjectivity are highly familiar.