Page 188 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

considering the separate roles of the older and the younger generations. In their minds, the older

generation, which had been raised under the conditions of the Russian empire, was ignorant and

possessed little aptitude or enthusiasm for improving village life. On the one hand, proponents of

adult education believed that these women and men were redeemable, and they encouraged teachers

to lend their skills to local farming cooperatives and to model modern hygienic practices, such as the

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washing of hands. In Volhynia, the school board organized adult education courses for the vast
number of illiterate peasants who had never received a formal education in order to raise literacy

rates, modernize farming methods, improve the local economy, and create loyal citizens who were

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immune to the intrigues of political agitation. On the other hand, however, some teachers dismissed

the potential of the older generation to change and instead promoted their interventionist role as a

kind of surrogate parent who helped to break the cycle of misery and ignorance among rural youth.

Indeed, while they believed that young people had been stymied by the passive attitudes of their

parents and were therefore more susceptible to political radicalization, they simultaneously clung to

the idea that it was the task of the state to salvage children and shape them into modern citizens at

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school.

The case for the importance of the schoolhouse’s direct intervention in the life of the child

was made in the Volhynian chapter of a 1934 publication that collected together descriptions of

children from across rural Poland. Entitled The Child of the Polish Countryside (Dziecko wsi

polskiej) and edited by the pedagogue and psychologist Maria Librachowa, the book sought to

assemble local knowledge in order to compare different “types” of children living in diverse areas

across the state. In 1931, when the nationwide educational journal School Work (Praca Szkolna) had

88 On the role of teachers in cooperatives, see Jan Dec, “Udział Nauczycielstwa w pracach organizacji społecznych
na wsi,” Dziennik urzędowy kuratorium okręgu szkolnego wołyńskiego 6, no. 2 (1929): 63-65.
89 During the 1929-30 school year, such courses were organized in 316 localities across the province. Jakub
Hoffman, “Oświata pozaszkolna i samorządy,” Przegląd Wołyński, May 25, 1930, 5.
90 Memo signed by Józewski about the elections to the legislature in 1928. AAN, PRM Rkt 56 t.8. See also the
minutes of meeting from Dubno in 1929, AAN MSW (Part 1) 87/4 (of report).

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