The right to education in the 20th-century Polish Constitutions
The right to education in the 20th-century Polish Constitutions

Summary/Abstract: The right to education is one of the most crucial human social rights. The aim of the paper is to present the evolution of the perception of this right in the 20th century Polish Constitutions. The Constitutions and their catalogue of human rights (including the right to education) were decisively influenced by the changes in the 20th century's political background. The 1921 Constitution, which represented the liberal model of human rights, regulated the right to education to a fairly large extent. Whereas the 1935 Constitution was in line with the concept of building a centralized state and ignored the issue of human rights guarantees, maintaining only a part of the previous Constitution's provisions. The communist Constitution of 1952 contained quite extensive guarantees regarding the right to education. However, it included human rights not as subjective rights of a human being but as an element of the social tasks of the state. One significant achievement of the PRL period was the elimination of illiteracy, which had been quite common in the Second Polish Republic. However, in a totalitarian state, respect for human rights was not a priority to the communist authorities, and history provides numerous examples of violations. Following a period of political transformation initiated in 1989, the perspective of the human rights concept has gradually changed. In the 1997 Constitution, human rights are derived from the dignity of a human being, and the guarantees it contains regarding the right to education are the widest in comparison with the previous constitutions of the 20th century.

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