“Through school, we need to change our attitude towards the state”: Educational Reforms in Poland after the First World War

This study offers an overview of external factors influencing English language education in Poland in the interwar period, i.e. from 1918 to 1939. Its main objective is to track how modern language teaching goals projected in curricula and theoretical publications are reflected in the content and methods used in English language schoolbooks. The interwar period is a time of intense discussions on the place of modern foreign languages in Polish schools. In a country that had just regained independence, the necessity of their universal education was emphasized. The education reforms carried out at that time included both organizational and ideological changes. The English language, which became a school subject for the first time in the history of Polish education, became the subject of these discussions and reforms alongside the traditionally taught German and French. The foreign language teaching programs from the beginning of the analysed period emphasized linguistic proficiency, which was understood as the possibility of efficient use of the language in speech and writing. With time, the emphasis shifted from practical to educational purposes. The educational goal meant paying attention to the values typical of a given foreign culture, which can be assimilated for the benefit of the reborn Polish state.

The triumph of a linear, providentialist, and teleological history, forged by authors such as John of Biclaro and Isidore of Seville in the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo could prompt equally linear readings of its content. This chapter examines how John and Isidore – the principal narrative sources in the construction of the Visigothic past – portrayed relations between central and local powers with a particular focus on the lexicon of conquest. This does not necessarily imply a rigid vision between centre and periphery, but rather an exploration of the role that these relations played in the construction of a linear history by clerics, monks, and bishops in seventh-century Hispania.

Consolidation of the Visigothic Kingdom in Hispania

Recent research has undoubtedly demonstrated that consolidation of the Visigothic Kingdom in Hispania did not occur through a linear process of conquest. As we shall see below, while it is true that dominion was sometimes achieved through military conquest in the strict sense of the word, it is no less true that these conquests formed the basis of more complex processes related to negotiated – and sometimes imposed – mechanisms such as taxation, administration, and pacts with the Catholic Church, aspects that are beyond the scope of this chapter but which form the backdrop to the subject under study.

The Goths, who from the time of Cassiodorus, Jordanes, and Procopius of Caesarea came to be known as Visigoths in the sources, formed their kingdom in Hispania in gradual stages. Their defeat at the hands of the Franks at Vouillé (507) undoubtedly represented a turning point, but was not the only reason why the Visigoths settled in Hispania.

The proliferation of known ‘Ecclesiastical Histories’ should be located in the Greek-Byzantine world, where a theological-political reflection on the empire, conceived as universal and providential, made inroads. Eusebius of Caesarea is unanimously considered the founder of this Christian historiographic genre, which spread in later centuries in both the East and the West. Eusebius’s Chronici canones , in fact, radically transformed the formulation of Christian Chronography and he created a new literary genre with the Historia Ecclesiastica . This author conceived a new type of history, unconventional in outlook and methodological in approach, grounded in a new religion. He established and transmitted the notion that God’s plan of salvation realises itself through the centuries.

Eusebius’s notion is characterised as a providential vision of history, devoid of free will. This is one of the key differences that would soon distinguish pagan from Christian historiography. The first was based on free judgement, which was a source of pride for ancient historians. Conversely, the other was grounded in scriptural authority. Concerning pagan historiography, Eusebius’s originality lies in the object of his history, namely, the church/ churches, which he characterises as the people or the Christian nation (ethnos ). Indeed, the very title of his work, Historia Ecclesiastica , does not refer to the church as a theological and institutional entity. In this work, the word ‘church’ seldom appears in the singular, indicating the theological notion of a universal church intended as an assembly united by faith, feeling, and institutions.