prof. dr hab. Kostyło Piotr MarekEnglish
Welcome to the home page of Associate Professor Piotr Marek Kostyło, MSt., from the Faculty of Educational Studies
Dear Colleagues and Students,
I am a philosopher of education reading in the field of philosophical foundations of educational concepts and practices. Philosophy, like psychology, sociology, and history, is an indispensable perspective, without which any educational activity can hardly be understood. When we start teaching or learning we always ask ourselves: "Who is it for?" and "What is it for?". The answers to those questions have to be philosophical since they refer to many possible addressees and aims. To choose the most relevant among them is the question of philosophical preferences.
Education is a complax subject for philosophical considerations. It is because it contains two distinct but complementary dimensions. I call the former local and axiological, whereas the latter universal and epistemological. Education has always been pursued in local contexts, within communities living according to particular traditions, values, and ambitions. However, at the same time education has transcended any such community by strengthening the universal power of reasoning and critical thinking in individuals. Education develops epistemological competences of each student but does it in different contexts. As Hanan Alexander, a contemporary Jewish philosopher of education says, we all come from somewhere.
There are a lot of tasks I would like to fulfill in my academic work. One of them is to enrich Polish pedagogical thought with significant foreign texts dealing with education. Why is it needed? Roughly speaking, there is a gap in foreign academic literature on education available in Poland caused by the censorship practices carried out under Communism in the second half of the 20th century. At that time many seminal books authored by the Western specialists in education, considered by Communist ideologues as bourgeois and dangerous, were forbidden. As a result, plenty of fresh and original educational ideas were not allowed in Poland.
My idea is to make up for those shortcomings and bring various valuable publications to Polish readers. I am doing that by translating, editing, and writing introductions to foreign books. In my work I am open to different intellectual traditions, from pragmatism through sociologism and classical liberalism to the analytic approach. Not identifying fully with any of those, I am searching for the traces which make them fruitful for pedagogical thoughts and practices. My method of research aims at showing a high potential of liberal education, which claims that before making up their minds as to what they advocate for, people have to get to know various alternative concepts and ideas.
As any academic I have my mentor, whose work inspired me to choose the path I took. The mentor’s name is Zbigniew Kwieciński. He is an outstanding scholar, a sociologist of education, and an intrepid advocate of equal educational chances for all pupils and students. For the last fifty years Kwieciński has been exposing the weaknesses of the Polish educational system and demanding their removal. His uncompromising and brave attitude has brought some criticism upon him from the ruling circles, no matter which political option was then in power. Kwieciński’s idea of building up a mature society, ready for critical thinking and self-education, has been a fertile intellectual hint for the future.
In the text below, “School Failure and Its Interpretations”, I am referring to the permanent process of inadequate school operations and emphasize the role Kwieciński has played in searching for their reasons.
