IDEA OF UNIVERSITY AND THE PLACE OF UNIVERSITY
IDEA OF UNIVERSITY AND THE PLACE OF UNIVERSITY

Summary/Abstract: Any debate about the aim of university is a question of its place within the cultural and social whole of a given time, tradition and dominant ideology. In the first place this will feature concern about its autonomy from the state, Church, parties, capital, etc. The debate will go on to include the relationship between science and the education of citizens, science and industry and science versus capital. The dispute has included the participation of philosophy and theology or social sciences in preparing university candidates, which is still an issue ignored in Poland, and in broadening their horizons. The bone of contention between the positivist philosophy of facts and the humanistic deliberations on values is the understanding of culture and responsibility, that is, a dispute about a model of a graduate and a citizen: a narrow specialist, or a rational, integral man. Is the mastery of specialist knowledge more important than the skill of universal way of thinking and responsible collective action? Therefore, we are posing a question regarding a model of university as a community of people: what form of relations between the teacher and a student should be preferred in order to teach how to live reasonably in the contemporary and future societies? What do faculties strive to achieve? Is the target to be met competitiveness, as measured by a “calculable” profit, decorated with the stars of knowledge or, rather, is it disobedience in thinking by its typical graduates?

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