Przedszkola i ochronki zakonne w świetle polskiego prawa oświatowego w latach 1945-61
Kindergartens and nurseries in the light of education law in Poland between 1945 and 1961

Summary/Abstract: Polish communist authorities of the People's Republic sought to secularization of education system, starting from the lowest level of education, namely kindergartens. As part of the anti-Church state religious policy, kindergartens run by female religious congregations were gradually eliminated in the first two postwar decades. Restricting independent of the ruling ideology entities that had been contributing up to that moment to preschool education institutions, resulted, in an undemocratic, totalitarian political system, in the monopoly of the state on organizing, conducting and supervising the institutions of preschool education, which would encourage more effective indoctrination of pupils. The education law became one of the instruments to implement the objective. Although until 1961 a pre-war educational Act of 1932 officially was still in force, in practice since the forties the state began to move religious congregations away from responsibility of raising a child of a preschool age. This phenomenon was not stopped by protests of superiors from religious congregation and hierarchy of the Church who claimed that the Polish government ratified international convention against discrimination in education, according to which, apart from state-run kindergartens there could also be “other” non-state educational institutions. Despite the absence of legal obstacles, religious congregations could not revive the business of conducting pre-school education.

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