This article was devoted to considerations on the need to take into account, in discussions on the objectives of literary education, the new cultural situation determined by the presence among us of the mass media, representing a threat to the culture of the written word. A new perception of the process of literary education is presented, in which motivation during the course of the school interaction to contacts with a literary work should be the principal task, of greater importance than equipping the pupils with a technique for an interpretation procedure or with an encyclopedic knowledge of literature. The author maintains that one of the factors favouring implementation of a literary education objective defined in this way may be the attitude of the teachers — open to the ideas and interpretations of the pupils, allowing the young people independent and untrammelled expression of their opinions and assessments of the literary works studied, and also taking into account, in the out-of-school work, the experiences of the pupils in the domain of contacts with literature and with the transmissions of mass culture. According to social psychologists, such an attitude by the teacher corresponds to the preferred style of direction, denoted as the democratic style. This article also contains a diagnosis of the unsatisfactory present state in this area together with an attempt to explain the causes.

An attempt is made here to describe the conceptions of teaching the theory of literature, of significance due to the function fulfilled by this field of literature knowledge in school teaching of Polish and particularly in the study of a literary text. The author recalls the school tradition of the teaching of poetics and next outlines its contemporary place in Polish language didactics as an ancillary discipline. The author places this conception of the subject in the context of others, also indicating the elements favouring currently the theoretical-literary teaching education (e.g. teaching principles).

The problem matter considered here is that of the creative reception of literature, starting from the programme principles. “Education for culture” as a conception written into the Polish language teaching programme is implemented by means of the active attitudes of pupils and teachers. Presenting briefly the conception of “attitude”, writing in a manner similar to that of the leading pedagogues of our century, we range ourselves on the side of the “creative stance” as regards literature (creativity).
In didactic practice, preference is still given to “knowledge of literature”, rather than to the “reception of literature”, bearing in themselves literature awareness. This state would appear to be bound up with the past epoch, internationally programming the perception of the literary works, and also with the audiovisual context of contemporary culture. Old customs and new subordinating conditions are the cause of passive attitudes of both pupils and teachers. The pupil unwillingly reads the literary work, waiting for a ready digested knowledge of literature, the teacher seeks the help of the literature of the subject, regarding this as more useful than his own active presentation of the lesson subjects. In the primary and secondary school, by educating for culture we stimulate the pupil’s development through perception. These objectives should also be served both by didactic literature and by didactic handbooks of every kind. The future of this type of publication depends on the effectiveness of inspiration, and not the instruction and “feeding” of ready-made models. It should serve the “active attitudes” of both the pupil and the teacher and also fulfil the functions of these attitudes — motivational, inspirational, creative, integrational, critical. The weight of technical audiovisual stimulation in contemporary culture causes the necessity of revision of didactic attitudes both as regards teaching of the language and of literature. Rational justification of this necessity represents a change in the position of literature in the contemporary world, signalled by the sociology of culture, anthropology and tutelary psychology.

The currently required programme for the teaching of the Polish language in the VI class envisages acquainting the pupils with various means of presentation of characters in literary works. In this article, a brief survey is made of the attitudes of literature theorists on the literary character as an aesthetic category of the work considered. Particularly analysed are the writings of Henryk Markiewicz and also Bożena Chrząstowska and Seweryn Wysłouch, who deal in various ways with the “existence” of these figures in the narration. Next is given an outline of the characterisation of means of presentation of figures in the texts recommended in the programme for the VI class: in the novella Sachem by Henryk Sienkiewicz, in the story Na wakacjach (On vacation) by Bolesław Prus, and in the fantastic tale Wielkie lanie (A thorough hiding) by Stanisław Lem. The first of these texts creates a character urged by a socionational motivation, the second — according to a psychological motivation, while the third — from a fantastic, fairy tale motivation.

Attention here is focused on a little known strand in the publicist writings and popularisation-educational activities of the author of Nights and Days, these efforts being most intensive in the period preceding national liberation (they lasted up to 1918), and next came to fruition in varied activities which Maria Dąbrowska undertook during the inter-war years. This interest led the writer towards literature for children and young people, in the initial phase published chiefly in periodicals for young readers and as school textbooks. In showing the views of Maria Dąbrowska on upbringing, the present author not only endeavours to discover their genesis but also to point out the many and varied instances of Dąbrowska’s interest in schools and educational problem matter, e.g. giving lectures and readings, preparing textbooks for the history of Poland and other subjects. For this purpose, use is made of Dąbrowska’s Diaries (including their manuscript version) and next the present author gives and comments on the writer’s typescript, on deposit in the archives of her works, containing the canon of required reading for cooperative training schools. This article indicates the permanent, though marginal, interest in school and educational matters of the author of The Smile of Childhood.

This sketch presents a proposition for interpretation of the verses of Jerzy Niemojewski and Wisława Szymborska. As the interpretational plane, the intertextual relationships of the works analysed were taken, in the understanding given to this conception by Genette and Barthes. The proposition presented for these readings should be included in the problem matter described in didactic science by the term: interpretational contexts.

The current conception of language education in the primary school is here subjected to a critical review. The author directs his attention to the structure of language education and the associated problems of integration, also to the study of language in schools together with the principles of its functional teaching, and also the forms of utterances and the scientific bases of this conception. From criticism, several conclusions may be drawn: it is necessary to go beyond the language system in the direction of pragmatics, to speak principally not of declensions and conjugations of words and sentences, but of utterances, of the act of speech, how this utterance has an author and an addressee, that it is a dialogue and subjective entity, to speak of lingual behaviour and the functional nature of utterances (for which the sociolinguistic description is more suitable than the merely linguistic), to develop communicational competence, to learn contextual, situational and executive language, to combine with this teaching some knowledge of the word (cognition) and not merely about grammar, to take into account the non-language aspect of communicative understanding among people.

In various studies in the area of communication between the teacher and pupil may be found the terms: “discourse,” “dialogue,” “conversation,” “talk.” In this article, attention is drawn particularly to the discourse since it presupposes the subjective treatment of the pupil. The actual organisation of the discourse may be a form of our knowledge and also control and broadening or limiting of various contents. Effectiveness and productivity of the teaching depends on the type of interactions. Modification of the system of interactions according to Flanders on the problem of the didactic question during Polish language lessons illustrates the question and answer situation in the didactic process. Analysis of actual material (recorded lessons, check supervision of lessons, documentation from students’ practice work) indicates that in the Polish school we are confronted with the problem of “avalanche questions from the teacher” and “pupils’ replies syndrome.” Predominating among the questions are those of purely factual type; the least frequent are conceptual questions. Types of interactions during lessons determine the teaching style, that is the directive, partnership or reactive style.

The feasibility of integrating phonetics with other fields of knowledge is discussed. The pragmatic functions of teaching and learning pronunciation are presented, and also the significance of phonetics knowledge achievements for the teaching of writing, reading, spelling, the art of declamation (culture of the living word), singing, and learning of foreign languages, as well as historical phonetics, phonology, dialectology, and morphology (inflections and word-forming). Attention is also drawn to the indispensability of phonetics knowledge for conducting studies in such domains as the theory of literature, the theory of poetry, surdopsychology, surdopedagogics, logopedics, and psycholinguistics. In the final part of the article, methodological recommendations and guidelines relating to the teaching of phonetics in the primary school.

This article is devoted to the problem matter of teaching spelling in the earlier school classes. The low level of mastering correct writing skills observed among pupils of the first school classes prompted the undertaking of experimental studies on the feasibility of increasing the effectiveness of teaching error-free writing. The learning of skills and habits of correct writing should be a creative process. For this reason, it was decided to make use in the teaching of spelling the knowledge concerning memory, which, in line with the most recent research, is treated as a complex, active system reflecting the multi-stage process of data processing, during which this data undergoes various changes. In experimental classes, a new model of spelling exercises was introduced, utilising the strategy of memory organisation of material. The structure effect was investigated in the case of words associated with the historical and morphological principle of Polish orthography. Results obtained from these experiments and their analysis showed a substantial improvement in correct spelling competence among pupils in experimental classes as compared with others from control classes.

Rittel T., Podstawy lingwistyki edukacyjnej. Nabywanie i kształcenie języka, Rzeszów 1993.

Gąsiorek K., Abstrakta w rozwoju języka dzieci i młodzieży, Kraków 1991.

Kłakówna Z.A., Sztuka pisania. Ćwiczenia redakcyjne dla klas IV–VI. Metodyczny podręcznik nauczyciela, Warszawa 1993.
Kłakówna Z.A., Sztuka pisania. Ćwiczenia redakcyjne dla klas IV–VI. Zeszyt ucznia, Warszawa 1993.

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Kida J., Cytowane wyrazy obce w twórczości Stefana Żeromskiego, Rzeszów 1992.
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Kurczab H., Scalanie treści kształcenia w przygotowaniu zawodowym nauczyciela polonisty, Rzeszów 1993.

Dydaktyka 2, red. Kurczab H., Rzeszów 1992.

Rzęsikowski S., Funkcja teatru w polonistycznym kształceniu młodzieży. Część I: O sztuce teatru w kontekście potrzeb edukacji polonistycznej. Część II: Formy teatralne na gruncie szkolnym, Kraków 1992.

Teoretyczno-metodologiczne podstawy badań nad efektywnością kształcenia polonistycznego, red. Sinica M., Zielona Góra 1993.