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The Status of Geography in the Polish Education System

The place of geography in the Polish education system reflects the society’s demand for knowledge and skills provided by that subject. Until the reform (see below) geography as a separate subject was present in primary schools from fourth to eighth form (until 1999) and in secondary schools (to a different extent) from first to fourth form (Table 1). It can be seen that the time devoted to teaching geography in various school types has been gradually curtailed by every rearrangement (1983, 1984and 1990) of the curricula. Moreover, having only one lesson per week in higher forms of primary education and at the beginning of secondary schools has made geography into a low prestige subject in the eyes of pupils who have only limited contact with it. From 1946 until the late 1980s, a much greater amount of time, two hours per week, was provided for teaching the subject both in primary and in secondary schools. Geography was important during the communist era for ideological reasons, because geography offered a perfect means for showing the achievements and economic development of Poland and of other EastCentral European countries. It should not be asserted, however, that Polish students, with many ideological obstacles, managed to familiarise themselves adequately with the issues of the world’s regional geography in primary (forms 6th to 8th) as well as in secondary (2nd form) schools. The purpose of geography education was not precisely laid down at both primary and secondary levels of teaching. Teaching schedules in primary and secondary schools were combined into a structural entity. One of the main aims was to provide the pupils with ideas and terms, and help them to understand the regularities, rules and theories from the field of physical and economic geography, which were in turn the subject of study in secondary schools. The information to be conveyed to the studentswas compulsory for each of the respective school types. On the whole, many opportunities were given to develop and perfect such skills as observing and describing natural phenomena by using scientific terms, reading and interpreting maps, noticing cause–effect connections in the environment, and estimating human economic activity from the point of view of its rationality. However, the art of teaching geography became a subject of criticism by didacticians who indicated in their Reports (1973, 1989) that an information overload might lead to encyclopaedism. This was not just a problem for geography, but also that of other subjects in the