“Equal opportunities”? Well, I guess it's only in the mouth of those who repeat that slogan, having no thought what any agrarian schools can look like. For some, education is simply a trampoline and for others a wall that cannot be jumped. It's like they truly believe that a kid waiting at six o'clock in the morning at a bus halt and a kid in the city who goes to the pool after school starts from the same place.
Imagine a country morning. Six o'clock in the morning, the autumn fogs lurk over the fields, you can hear the cock crowing and the neighbor's dog barking. A kid with a backpack larger than himself is waiting at the stop, wrapped besides thin with a jacket, due to the fact that “there is no winter yet”. The school bus will arrive in 10 minutes – if it comes at all, due to the fact that sometimes the driver is sick and there is no replacement... He's got an hr to drive, well, possibly a half, on a rough road, possibly with a shift in the cold, if he's unlucky. Then classes at school, where students from 2 years of age sit in 1 class, and the multimedia board – yes – exists, but only works erstwhile individual brings a cable from home. The math teacher comes erstwhile a week due to the fact that he commutes from the city and pays no more.
I'm overreacting? possibly a little... But is it truly that far from the truth? Yes, not all village looks like this – there are modern schools, well equipped – but these peripheral ones and the smallest ones are left to themselves. And does that mean we can cross them off?
At the same time his peer in Warsaw or Krakow leaves the home 15 minutes before the bell. The school is around the corner, the lounge is full of extracurricular activities, the cafeteria smells like fresh dinner. In the afternoon, swimming pool, English with native speaker, robotics ellipse and theatre. In the evening – tutoring, if necessary, due to the fact that parents have the numbers of 5 different teachers on their phone. And on the weekend, there's a movie or a museum or a theatre visit.
“Equal opportunities”? Well, I guess it's only in the mouth of those who repeat that slogan, having no thought what any agrarian schools can look like. For some, education is simply a trampoline and for others a wall that cannot be jumped. It's like they truly believe that a kid waiting at six o'clock in the morning at a bus halt and a kid in the city who goes to the pool after school starts from the same place.
School was expected to compensate for differences – in practice it deepens them
This is not an issue of ideology, but of everyday life, which many children in the countryside experience. agrarian school loses on all front: less teachers, little extracurricular activities, little opportunities. If in the city you can choose between 3 advanced schools in which there are bilingual classes, global programs and an offer of circles of interest, in the country the choice is frequently limited to “whether the school inactive exists”. Demography is merciless: classes shrink, students shrink, and young graduates of universities do not want to go back to “the province” due to the fact that there are neither prospects nor decent working conditions.
In addition, the elimination of gymnasiums was done. It is possible to discuss their disadvantages, but 1 thing is certain – for many students from smaller towns it was the junior advanced school that was the first place of real contact with a better equipped school, with specialists teachers, with peers from respective municipalities. It was there that ambition was born, where the first competitions appeared and the first thoughts about advanced school or method discipline outside the county. After their liquidation, youth remained longer in tiny simple schools, in grades VII–VIII, where it is hard to supply a full set of subjects, professional advice or a richer offer of classes. alternatively of equalizing the chances, the improvement narrowed it down even more – due to the fact that from now on it is simply a place of residence alternatively than aspirations, it more determines what the kid sees and learns.
Pierre Bourdieu spoke about "reproduction of inequality" – and that is precisely what we see in Polish education. Those who already have cultural and financial capital multiply it in urban schools. Those who have the least of them are in a strategy that will not supply that capital. Of course, I know there are exceptions – I know schools where teachers execute miracles and can do more than 1 elite squad in the city. But can the strategy be based on exceptions? The strategy should be a rule, not a lottery.
Is that truly the point of public education? Did we want a school that does not equal the differences, but reminds children of where they come from and where they belong?
Closed schools – Open wounds
In addition, there is simply a drama of the liquidation of tiny schools. Local governments translate into savings, show numbers in tables, calculate how much it costs to keep a building for respective children. but school isn't a mill that can be shut down due to the fact that it's not profitable. erstwhile the school closes, the last light in the village goes out. It was at this school that the village meetings were held, there were nativity scenes, there the children learned the first letters, there the parents felt that something else depended on them. erstwhile the door is slammed, the village loses its heart and becomes a point on a map where nothing happens – but that people start packing and leaving. Sometimes there's hope in a non-public school that parents make... sometimes.
Has anyone always counted the social costs of these "savings"? The cost of migration of families that decision closer to the city so that children get shorter? The cost of breaking up social ties erstwhile parents no longer meet in the school gym due to the fact that the school just doesn't exist? Emotional costs for children who spend 2 hours a day on a bus, alternatively of playing with their peers or developing passions?
Bureaucracy has its tables, but life doesn't fit in Excel. Savings in the budget box mean spending in the social box, but that no 1 notes it. And the school is besides a symbol – a signal that the state and community care about you, that you are important. Without school, the village begins to die silently, step by step, until there is only a memory that “this utilized to pulse life.” The erstwhile PGRs remember that... But do we remember them?
Joseph Tischner recalled: “Man is born to live, not to be used.” Today, we treat agrarian children as if they were just costs in the accounting sheet. It's like they're extra expenses that are best reduced. They are not children – they are “the art of students”. These are not communities – they are “administrative units”. And as long as we look at agrarian education like that, we'll only have statistic alternatively of community.
Parents want to, but the strategy does not give tools
Parents in the country are no different from parents in cities. They love their children the same way, they have the same dreams: a better life, a quieter future, more opportunities. They just don't always think about their daughter playing piano, and their boy learning abroad languages and going to sports. due to the fact that they're usually dreams, and alternatively they get a regular life that's beyond them. How do you get a kid to extracurriculars in a region town if they finish their occupation at 5:00 and the bus leaves an hr early? How can you find money for tutoring if your farm is making little and little income and extra work in the city means coming home late at night?
The city has infrastructure, alternatives, a wide range. The village – only desire. And sometimes they're even missing... It's a fundamental difference. Hence, parents in the country frequently feel guilty for not giving their children what they need, even though they do what they can. And the state and the education system, alternatively of supporting them, leave them alone with this burden. Or is it that more and more of this guilt is gone? I may be exaggerating here besides – I know families who have overcome their limitations and do not feel guilty at all. But isn't resignation the most dangerous signal that the strategy has left them?
Janusz Korczak utilized to say, “There are no children – there are people.” This conviction should be written in gold letters in all ministry. present we gotta repeat them differently: there are no "children from the village" and "children from the city" – there are citizens. And the citizen has the right to education at the same level, whether he lives in the capital or in a village in Podlasie. A country that does not warrant this not only fails but produces frustration, resignation and a sense of abandonment.
And let no 1 be amazed that this sense turns into a rebellion, that the slogans of the protest are formed. That these young people grow up convinced that the state is against them, not for them. That sooner or later they would pack their backpack and leave – to a larger city, to another country. And then the question is, who truly failed?
Digital dreams and analog reality
The technology was expected to be a rescue. advanced velocity internet, educational platforms, digital laboratories – all of this was expected to equalize chances and bring the village closer to the city. In ministerial presentations it looked great: students' laptops, interactive tables, modern programs. In practice, however, the net is like yeti in the countryside: everyone has heard about it, nobody has seen it. A computer in school frequently works worse than a child's smartphone, and if the equipment is modern, there is no 1 who can handle it. Computer discipline teacher? It's a luxury that can't be included in the lesson plan, due to the fact that there's just no 1 to work.
It's the irony of our time. We talk about artificial intelligence, robotics, the competitions of the future, while in many schools the future stopped in the 1990s. Young people in cities practice programming in Python and in the countryside students learn how to run an obsolete computer. The ministerial strategies are full of the slogan "digitisation", but at the level of the municipality the reality resembles a museum of technology alternatively than a school of the 21st century.
Is it truly amazing that children who take off from specified conditions fall behind? How can they compete for a polytech index, erstwhile their "computer lab" is simply a fewer defused computers that do not support newer programs? How can they dream of working in the fresh technology industry, if for them the highest of accomplishment is simply a unchangeable video connection in a distant lesson? Does individual who designs education policy truly believe that specified children can compete with their peers from large cities – let alone peers from Berlin or Amsterdam?
Resistance paradox
Paradoxically, it is in these hard conditions that a force is born that we frequently neglect to see. agrarian children are resilient, they can fight for their own, accustomed to that nothing comes easily. They know that to accomplish something, you gotta put effort – sometimes much bigger than their peers from the city. They can combine, organize time, learn without extra courses and tutoring. This resourcefulness can then be their asset – in work, in college, in adult life.
Many of them managed to escape: through scholarships, social programs, the support of 1 dedicated teacher or simply their own stubbornness. These stories are inspiring, but besides painful, due to the fact that they show that success in the countryside is frequently the consequence of a happy coincidence. Do we truly want the future of the full village to depend on the accident? From whether the kid is going to hit a Passionate teacher or a strategy that will discourage them?
How many talents do we lose due to the fact that someone's not lucky? How many stories of success will never happen due to the fact that 1 scholarship, 1 teacher, 1 chance? How many young people will quit their dreams due to the fact that the planet told them, “It is not for you, you are from the country”?
The village isn't a museum.
Because this is not about individual successes – about individual children who managed to "bring out". It's about a strategy that should work equally for everyone, and present it's like a sieve: it lets through a few, the remainder stops at the limit of possibility. A agrarian school cannot be a ‘costier version’ of urban education. This is not expected to be a minimum education, made of savings, conducted in a spirit: "It will be something." Education is not a cost that should be limited in the budget – it is an investment in the future of the country. If it is missing, the full village will become a museum and Poland will become a periphery of Europe.
The village is not a museum where we watch folklore at festivals and remember how “it utilized to live”. Although I like folklore... But as a folk dance instructor, in artistic form. The village is simply a space where more than 40% of Polish citizens inactive live, where children grow up with ambitions and dreams. Treating it like a tradition reserve is not only a mistake, but besides a slap for those who fight each day to make their children have equal chances.
Olga Tokarczuk wrote: “The planet is not given erstwhile and for all, the planet must be told again and again.” The village besides needs to be retelled – not as a place of delay, but as a space of the future. And the school should be the center of this fresh story: the library, the skylight, the place of classes and meetings, the place where the community is born. Meanwhile, we treat her like a budget balance, which is best disposed of.
Do we truly want agrarian education to be just a substitute? Do we want young people coming out of agrarian schools to start adulthood with the feeling that they were born worse? Can we afford to treat half the country as a background for dynamic metropolises?
The village is not an open-air museum—unless we ourselves make an open-air museum of it, depriving it of what gives life: schools, cultures and hope.
Point
And that's why present I see a painting that hurts the most: a kid from a agrarian school sits in a classroom, looks at a map of the planet and dreams of travel. He dreams about college, about work, about a life another than what he knows. But the strategy responds coolly: “You gotta settle for anything. I want you to know the way to a close mill or a farm. The remainder is beyond your reach." Is this truly the kind of Poland we dream about?
Rural education cannot be a compromise between dreams and the municipality's budget. He can't be a inexpensive semi-manufacturer, due to the fact that "they'll grow up somehow." What we are saving for schools today, next day we will pay with interest – in the form of depopulation, social frustration and depopulated villages. And then we'll wonder, how come our children left and our villages deserted?
Do we truly want to wake up in a country where education is simply a luxury dependent on postal code? Do we truly want half of Poland to be sentenced to a worse start just due to the fact that it was "not where it needs to be"?
Because if the village does not have equal chances, sooner or later the full country will wake up as a periphery – not only Europe, but besides its own ambitions. And then the only question remains: who truly failed – children who tried or adults who did not give them a chance?
And the answer that no 1 will want to hear: we all failed.
Maybe I'm overreacting, possibly I'm besides generalized – due to the fact that not all village looks like this. But even if it only concerns the outermost and outermost ones, can we truly say that they are little important? Can we just delete them?
