6533b832fe1ef96bd129b007

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Polityczna i militarna batalia o przyłączenie Wielkopolski do Polski po I wojnie światowej na kartach podręczników do nauczania historii. Casus polskich opracowań dla szkół ponadgimnazjalnych i ponadpodstawowych z przełomu XX i XXI wieku

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In the opinion o f the vast majority o f historians, school histoiy education is extremely important. They emphasize that it plays a key role not only from the point ofview ofshaping the knowledge ofyoung people about the past, but also in defining the historical awareness o f the whole society, because often what students learn at school determines their lifelong knowledge o f many historical issues. Unfortunately, the awareness o f these obvious statements does not go hand in hand with respect for the achierements o f history didactics. As a scientific discipline, history didactics undertakes as one o f its most important research areas the analysis o f school history textbooks which are still the basie sources o f students ’knowledge about the past, besides the history teacher and the Internet. Bearing the above conclusions in mind, the author o f the article decided to analyze approximately a dozen o f the most popular history textbooks for secondary and upper secondary schools, which Polish youth used at the tum o f the 20th and 21st centuries, with a focus on how they present the political and military battle to incorporate Greater Poland into Poland in 1918-1919. The article uses mainly the philological and comparative methods. By isolating the main themes o f the Greater Poland Uprising and selected themes o f the Paris Peace Conference from the textbooks, it was shown that these issues received in the analyzed textbooks attention adeąuate to their importance and occupied as much space as reąidred by the curriculum frameworks for history teaching in the 1990s and the core curricula in operation sińce the beginning o f the present century. This is due to the fact that practically all the analyzed textbooks contain, along with a short commentary and sometimes also a didactic review, the basie facts about the circumstances o f the outbreak, course and signifcance o f the Greater Poland Uprising. The analysis clearly shows that the history textbooks used by young people in the 1990s were definitely more accurate, but were also characterized by a more interesting narrative. Unfortunately, in the case o f all the analyzed textbooks, their didactic structure was a relatively weak point.