In Search for Historic Sources of Humanistic Dimensions of School Inspections

ABSTRACT

In the article, an attempt was made to demonstrate the usefulness of the concept of administration as a humanistic field of knowledge, developed by representatives of the sciences of administration, management, and economics, in research on school administration, with particular emphasis on school supervision. Referring to the postulate to include historical experiences in the plan of creating a human-oriented administration, the subject of interest was the history of school supervision. The author analysed the impact of up-to-date methodological approaches on the image of the former school inspector, and made suggestions that could extend the said studies with new, previously unnoticed aspects and objectify them. In reference to these proposals of interpretation, the author referred to the history of school supervision in Poland, presenting the examples of sources that may help build a humanistic dimension of school inspections.

KEYWORDS:

• History of education
• school inspector
• school administration
• Poland

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Thomas Greenfield and Peter Ribbins, Greenfield on Educational Administration. Towards a Humane Science (New York: Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005).

² Eugenie Samier, “Educational Administration as a Historical Discipline: An Apologia Pro Vita Historia”, Journal of Educational Administration and History 38, no. 2 (2006): 126.

³ Neil A. Johnson, “Understanding and Administering Educational Organizations: The Contribution of Greenfield’s ‘Alternative Theory’”, The Journal of Educational Thought (JET)/ Revue de la Pensee Educative 24, no. 1 (April 1990): 28–38.

⁴ Samier, “Educational Administration”, 126.

⁵ Greenfiled and Ribbins, Greenfield on Educational Administration, 210.

⁶ E.g.: Jeffrey Glanz, “Ahistoricism and School Supervision”, Educational Leadership 35 (November 1977): 149–54; Helen Sungalia, “The History of Education and the Study of Educational Administration”, Journal of Educational Administration and History 40, no. 1 (2008): 41–5, doi: 10.1080/00220620801927657; Arthur Blumberg, “Where We Come From: Notes on Supervision in the 1840s”, Journal of Curriculum and Supervision 1, no. 1 (1985): 56–65; Samier, “Educational Administration”; Russel Grigg, “Ofsted Says We are Outstanding: HMI Conceptions of Teaching Excellence in the Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Primary School”, British Journal of Educational Studies (published online 29 November 2020), doi: 10.1080/00071005.2020.1850636; and Russel Grigg, “Wading through Children’s Tears: The Emotional Experiences of Elementary School Inspections, 1839–1911”, History of Education 49, no. 5 (2020): 597–616, doi: 10.1080/0046760X.2020.1770342.

⁷ In: Scott J. Seregny, “Power and Discourse in Russian Elementary Education: The School Inspectorate, 1869–1917”, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas. Neue Folge, 47, Heft 2 (1999): 162.

⁸ Scott J. Seregny, “Power and Discourse”; Jane Perryman, “Panoptic Performativity and School Inspection Regimes: Disciplinary Mechanisms and Life under Special Measures”, Journal of Education Policy 21, no. 2 (2006): 147–61, doi: 10.1080/02680930500500138; Jane Perryman, “Inspection and the Fabrication of Professional and Performative Processes”, Journal of Education Policy 24, no. 5 (2009): 611–31, doi: 10.1080/02680930903125129; and Mirosław Łapot, “Cacique, Pasha, Uniform-Clad Monster … The Perception of a School Inspector in Galicia in the Years 1867–1914”, History of Education 51, no. 1 (2022): 69–90, doi: 10.1080/0046760X.2021.1942239.

⁹ Narciso de Gabriel, “Schoolteachers, Social Control and Professional Conflict: Government Procedures brought against Schoolteachers in Galicia (1859–1910)”, History of Education 47, no. 4 (2018): 466–87, doi: 10.1080/0046760X.2017.1410729; Narcisio de Gabriel, “Caciques, Schools, and Schoolteachers in Spain from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the 1920s”, Paedagogica Historica 54, no. 5 (2018): 545–63, doi: 10.1080/00309230.2018.1479436; and Łapot, “Cacique”.

¹⁰ Scott J. Seregny, “Power and Discourse”, 162.

¹¹ Grigg, “Wading”, 602.

¹² Bruce Curtis, Building the Education State: Canada West, 1836–1871 (London-Ontario: The Althouse Press, 1988), Andy Green, Education and State Formation: the Rise of Education Systems in England, France and the USA (London: Macmillan, 1990); Andy Green, Education and State Formation. Europe, East Asia and the USA, 2nd edition (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Raymond Grew and Patrick Harrigan, School, State and Society. The Growth of Elementary Schooling in Nineteenth-Century France – A Quantitative Analysis (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1991), Nancie Beadie, “Education, Social Capital and State Formation in Comparative Historical Perspective: Preliminary Investigations”, Paedagogica Historica 46, no. 1–2 (2010): 15–32, doi: 10.1080/00309230903528439; Jeffrey Glanz, Bureaucracy and Professionalism: The Evolution of Public School Supervision (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1991); H.G. Williams, “Nation State versus National Identity: State and Inspectorate in Mid-Victorian Wales”, History of Education Quaterly 40, no. 2 (2000): 145–68, doi: 10.2307/369534; Myriam Southwell, “Schooling and Governance: Pedagogical Knowledge and Bureaucratic Expertise in the Genesis of the Argentine Educational System”, Paedagogica Historica 49, no. 1 (2013): 43–55, doi: 10.1080/00309230.2012.744063; and Jakob Evertsson, “History, Nation and School Inspections: the Introduction of Citizenship Education in Elementary Schools in the Late Nineteenth-Century Sweden”, History of Education 44, no. 3 (2015): 259–73, doi: 10.1080/0046760X.2014.1002018.

¹³ Greenfiled and Ribbins, Greenfield on Educational Administration, 221–59.

¹⁴ Fazal Rizvi, “Tom Greenfield and Educational Administration”, Curriculum Studies 2, no. 1 (1994): 122, doi: 10.1080/0965975940020106.

¹⁵ Mieczysława Mitera-Dobrowolska, Komisja Edukacji Narodowej 1773–1794. Pierwszy urząd wychowania w Polsce [CNE 1773–1794. The first office of education in Poland] (Warszawa: Państwowe Zakłady Wydawnictw Szkolnych, 1966), 16.

¹⁶ Hanna Pohoska, Wizytatorowie generalni Komisji Edukacji Narodowej [General Visitors of the CNE] (Lublin:Wydawnictwo KUL, 1957), 69.

¹⁷ Jurgen Herbst, Nineteenth-Century Schools between Community and State: The Cases of Prussia and the United States. History of Education Quarterly, 42(3) (2002): 317–341, doi:10.1111/j.1748-5959.2002.tb00001.

¹⁸ Józef Madeja, Elementarze i nauka elementarna czytania i pisania na Śląsku w wiekach XIX i XX (1858–1930) (Katowice: Wydawnictwo Śląsk, 1965), 217–28.

¹⁹ Karol Poznański, Oświata i szkolnictwo w Królestwie Polskim 1831–1869. Lata zmagań i nadziei, vol. 1, Przebudowa systemu szkolnictwa i wychowania w Królestwie Polskim w latach 1831–1839 (Warszawa, 2001), 85; Ryszard Kucha, Oświata elementarna w Królestwie Polskim w latach 1864–1914 (Lublin: Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 1982), 19.

²⁰ Norman Davies, Boże igrzysko. Historia Polski, vol. II, Od roku 1795 (Kraków: Wyd. Znak, 1991) [God’s Playground. A History of Poland. vol. II, 1795 to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981]), 137.

²¹ Edmund Juśko, Rada Szkolna Krajowa i jej działalność na rzecz szkoły ludowej w Galicji (1868–1921) (Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL, 2013).

²² Józef Buzek, Studia z zakresu administracji wychowania publicznego. Cz. 1, Szkolnictwo publiczne (Lwów: Towarzystwo dla Popierania Nauki Polskiej, 1904).

²³ Łapot, “Cacique”, 69–90.

²⁴ Samier, “Educational Administration”, 126.

²⁵ Instrukcja ck. RSK dla okręgowych inspektorów szkół ludowych z 21 stycznia 1872r., in Ustawy i rozporządzenia w zakresie szkół ludowych, ed. K. Pierożyński (Lwów, 1904), 27.

²⁶ Ibid., 27.

²⁷ Ibid., 29.

²⁸ Ibid., 29.

²⁹ Ibid., 28.

³⁰ Ibid., 29.

³¹ Ibid., 29.

³² Władysława Szulakiewicz, Nauczyciele i ich edukacja. W kręgu idei lwowskiej pedeutologii (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2017), 175.

³³ Samier, “Educational Administration”, 126.

³⁴ Seregny, “Power and Discourse”; de Gabriel, “Schoolteachers”; Łapot, “Cacique.”

³⁵ Sprawa dyscyplinarna inspektora Jana Krawczyka (1895), Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine in Lviv, set 178, subset 1, sign. 1594, 1–10.

³⁶ Ibid., 13.

³⁷ Samier, “Educational Administration”, 126.

³⁸ The terms cacique, pasha and uniform-clad monster, used in the title of my article, come from the Galician pedagogical press (Łapot, “Cacique”).

³⁹ E. J. “Uroczystość na cześć inspektora szkolnego”, Szkolnictwo Ludowe, 18 (1891): 283–4.

⁴⁰ “Liść zasłużonego uznania nad trumną śp. Inspektora Szostkiewicza”, Szkolnictwo, no. 4 (1902): 29.

⁴¹ “Pożegnanie inspektora okręgowego”, Szkolnictwo Ludowe, no. 2 (1891): 30.

⁴² “Z żałobnej karty”, Szkolnictwo, no. 2 (1912): 17.

⁴³ “List z kraju”, Szkolnictwo, no. 29 (1896): 234; and “Sprawozdanie Towarzystwa Wzajemnej Pomocy Nauczycieli i Nauczycielek Szkół Ludowych Okręgu Żółkiewskiego za rok 1896”, Szkolnictwo, no. 7 (1897): 62–63.

⁴⁴ “Jeden w imieniu wielu”, Szkolnictwo, no. 18 (1898): 150.

⁴⁵ Sviatoslav Pakholkiv, Ukrainska intelihentsija u Habsburskii Halyczyni: osvichena verstva y emancipatsija nacii (Lviv: LA “Piramida”, 2014), 13.

⁴⁶ Mirosław Łapot, “Sprawa dyscyplinarna Henryka Machnickiego, nauczyciela Gimnazjum w Kołomyi – karta z dziejów szkolnictwa w Galicji w drugiej połowie XIX w”, Rocznik Polsko-Ukraiński 17 (2016): 76–90, doi: 10.16926/rpu.2016.18.05.

⁴⁷ Kazimierz Rędziński, Żydowskie szkolnictwo świeckie w Galicji. 1813–1918 (Częstochowa: Wydawnictwo Wyższej Szkoły Pedagogicznej, 2000), 71–7.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 131.

⁴⁹ Sprawozdanie powizytacyjne Mieczysława Baranowskiego (1895), Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine in Lviv, set 178, subset 2, sign. 5696, 109.

⁵⁰ Sprawozdanie powizytacyjne Filipa Boreckiego (1905), Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine in Lviv, set 178, subset 2, sign. 4161, 41–2.

⁵¹ Greenfield and Ribbins, Greenfield on Educational Administration, 100.

⁵² Galicyjskie wspomnienia szkolne, ed. A. Knot (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1955). See also footnote with Skłodowska-Curie.

⁵³ The absence of the autobiographies of school inspectors, as claimed by Samier, is “a consequence of a professional ethos restricted by statutory requirements of secrecy and confidentialism, and the anonymity required in the tradition of ministerial responsibility. This is complemented by a socialised obedience to authority, most highly developed in bureaucratised organisations. Lifting the veil of secrecy and removing the mask of anonymity only happens in many circumstances when retired civil servants publish memoirs and letters, and only then can the complex conditions under which senior officials worked be uncovered”. Eugenie Samier, “Towards Public Administration as a Humanities Discipline: A Humanistic Manifesto”, Halduskultuur 6 (2005): 25.

⁵⁴ Jan Kornecki (no date), Wspomnienia i szkice. Moje życie i moja wieś rodzinna, Biblioteka Zakładu Narodowego im. Ossolińskich we Wrocławiu, Dział Rękopisów, sign. 13174.

⁵⁵ Stanisław Tokarski, Lustracje. Kartki z pamiętników inspektora szkolnego (Lwów: Wydawnictwo “Rodziny i Szkoły”, 1904).

⁵⁶ Peter Ribbins, “Biography and the Study of School Leader Careers: Towards a Humanistic Approach”, in Leadership in Education, ed. M. Brundrett, N. Burton and R. Smith (London: Sage, 2003), 55–73; Helen Gunter and Peter Ribbins, “Leadership Studies in Education: Towards a Map of the Field”, Educational Management & Administration 30, no. 4 (2002): 387–416; and Peter Ribbins and Helen Gunter, “Mapping Leadership Studies in Education: Towards a Typology of Knowledge Domains”, Educational Management & Administration 30, no. 4 (2002): 359–85.

⁵⁷ Tokarski, Lustracje, 16.

⁵⁸ Ibid., 17.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 46.

⁶⁰ Ibid., 13.

⁶¹ Ibid., 24–33.

⁶² Ibid., 33.

⁶³ Greenfield and Ribbins, Greenfield, 251.

⁶⁴ Samier, “Educational Administration”, 133.

⁶⁵ Jolanta Dzieniakowska, “Organ Związku Inspektorów Szkolnych w Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej Sprawy Szkolne”, Przegląd Historyczno-Oświatowy, no. 1–2 (2013): 20.

⁶⁶ J. Kornecki, “Inspektor szkolny w Polsce niepodległej”, Sprawy Szkolne, no. 1 (1925): 3–4. Kornecki recommended to the inspectors: “it is indispensable for you to make yourselves more acquainted with the thoughts, needs and expectations of the milieu of teachers, to show its members empathy, kindness and respect, to show its members care, to support them with advice, to encourage them and motivate to work, to make them attached to you; wisely an old manual instructs that one works more gladly and willingly for those who were able to win their hearts than when one has to obey a command or request issued by those one cares little about”; ibid., 11.

⁶⁷ “Organizacja obwodowych władz szkolnych”, Sprawy Szkolne, no. 3 (1933): 254–5.

⁶⁸ Grzegorz Michalski, “Działalność Związku Inspektorów Szkolnych w Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej (1922–1939)”, in Z dziejów polskiej teorii i praktyki edukacyjnej, ed. W. Szulakiewicz (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2009), 171–88; and Grzegorz Michalski, “Stanowisko Związku Inspektorów Szkolnych w Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej wobec problemów ustroju szkolnego w latach międzywojennych”, in W kręgu dorobku edukacyjnego II Rzeczypospolitej, ed. K. Jakubiak and T. Maliszewski (Kraków: Impuls, 2011), 177–83.

⁶⁹ Michalski, “Stanowisko”, 177–83; and Dzieniakowska, “Organ”, 17–30.

⁷⁰ Władysław Lewicki and Zenon Zaklika, Inspektor szkolny i nauczyciel. Ich stosunek wzajemny do siebie i społeczeństwa (Lwów: Nakładem Księgarni Naukowej, 1922).

⁷¹ Ibid., 7.

⁷² Ibid., 9.

⁷³ Ibid., 11. Greenfield wrote, that “the language is at the heart of the process by which we understand reality and by which we exert control over ourselves, others, and the physical world”; Greenfield and Ribbins, Greenfield on Educational Administration, 104.

⁷⁴ Lewicki and Zaklika, Inspektor, 13.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 13.

⁷⁶ Ibid., 22.

⁷⁷ Ibid., 23.

⁷⁸ A. Podlaski, “O człowieku władzy słów kilkoro”, Ognisko Nauczycielskie, no. 3 (1932): 81–5.

⁷⁹ Ibid., 81.

⁸⁰ Ibid., 82.

⁸¹ Ibid., 84.

⁸² Włodzimierz Gałecki, “Nadzór szkolny”, in Encyklopedia wychowania, vol. 3, ed. S. Łempicki (Warszawa: Nasza Księgarnia, 1937–1939), 339.

⁸³ Ibid., 339.

⁸⁴ Ibid., 339–40.

⁸⁵ Ibid., 341.

⁸⁶ Łapot, “Cacique”, 88.

⁸⁷ Samier, “Educational Administration”, 136.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mirosław Łapot

Mirosław Łapot: since 2009, I have been working as an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Pedagogy of Jan Dlugosz University in Czestochowa, at which I conduct the classes on the history of education. The principal subject-matter of my research is education in Galicia in the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the period from 2011 to 2015, I was involved in a scientific project bearing the following name: The history of Jewish Education in Lviv, financed by the National Center of Science of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland. I am also interested in the history of relationships between Poles, Jews and Ukrainians in the aspect of education. I am the author of more than 70 articles and three monographs, the latest of which is: Mosaic Religion in the Public Educational System in the Period of Galician Autonomy (1867-1918), Częstochowa 2019.