Korczak’s Educational Theory and Its Reflection in His Pedagogy

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the meaning and the implications of the core of Korczak’s educational ethos, on its higher aims, and on its methods, which are implicit in the term “ameliorative compassion” or “critical friendship.” This term symbolizes an educational ethos based on two simultaneous, interconnected educational processes: the formation of friendship – which offers true respect to the child, that is to say, the child must be accepted as she is as a growing and developing person; and the expression of criticism, identifying the problematic points in the child’s conduct, and, after identifying them, encouraging the child to accept tasks of self-improvement—intellectually, ethically, and behaviorally—and, finally, providing her with tools for achieving it.

 The following topics are discussed in this chapter:

• i.   Korczak’s attitude toward theory, especially toward educational theory, and his position regarding the proper relation between theory and practice, particularly in the field of education. Korczak had a positive attitude toward theory if it fulfilled the following two conditions: 1) It drew its inspiration and power from real human experience; 2) It was tested and evaluated according to its ability to give rise to positive human traits.

• ii.   The five main components of educational action are the educator/teacher, the learner, the subject matter, society (its goals and the pressures it exerts), and the goals of educational activity. Korczak maintained that the central role in all educational activity is played by the educator.

• iii.   The supreme goals of Korczak’s educational method and its philosophical meaning: Children’s well-being and positive sense of their selfhood and their moral development.

• iv.   Discussions of the differences between Korczak’s philosophy and theory in the field of moral education and several other philosophies and theories current in this area today: Korczak’s method achieves an integration between ethical education based on concern for the other and relational caring, on the one hand, and ethical education based on intellectual striving for relations founded upon justice and decency on the other.

Appendix: Selected Sources

Source 1—“The Special School—Theory and Practice”

Introduction

This article by Korczak comprises one of a series of essays that he published in the Polish Journal of Special Education. It addresses and discusses two major issues in the field of educational thought:

• The desirable relationship between theory and practice in the field of education

• The ultimate aims of education and the ways to realize them

Among Korczak’s many writings with which I am familiar, the style and syntax of this specific article are the closest to linear, theoretical, and abstract academic discourse. The arguments and ideas Korczak raises in this article help us to decipher and construct his educational theory in general, and his position on the two major philosophical issues presented above in particular.

Topic for Reflection and Discussion

The decision to share this article in its entirety with this book’s readers is inspired by the interest in initiating a two-dimensional critical dialogue: on one hand with the substance of the article itself, and on the other with the way it is interpreted in the first part of this chapter (pp. 129–135).

In light of this we suggest that your analysis, reflection and discussion of this source focus on the degree of your agreement with the major points Korczak raises in it and with the ways these points are interpreted above; and the reasons underlying the position you take on these two interrelated issues.

The Special School - Theory and Practice

Thanks to theory—I know; as a result of practice—I feel. Theory enriches the intellect, practice colors feelings, trains the will. I know—does not mean that I act in accordance with what I know. The views of others must crystallize in one’s own living ego. I weave from theoretical precepts, but with the possibility of choice. I reject, forget, omit, dodge, ignore. The outcome is my own conscious or unconscious theory which guides my actions. A great deal has been achieved if a piece of theory sustains within me its existence, its raison d’etre; if it has influenced me to some degree, has had an impact. Theory I repudiate time and again; myself—rather rarely.

Practice is my past, my life, the sum total of subjective experiences, collection of failures, disappointments, defeats, victories and triumphs, negative and positive sensations. Practice distrustfully controls and censors theory, tries to each it in lies, in blunders. Maybe for him… for that place… perhaps for his conditions…, but for me, in my own work, in my workshop…. Always different. routine or experience?

Routine is the result of apathetic will power out in search of ways and means to facilitate, simplify, mechanize the work, to find a convenient short cut to saving time and energy. Routine makes emotional detachment possible, eliminates hesitation, sets up equilibrium. You do your job, efficiently discharge your formal duties. Routine enters at the point where the day’s professional work ends. Now I find everything easy, no need to rack my brain, search, even look. I know for certain, beyond argument. I get along. I act sufficiently to avoid inconvenience. Anything new, surprising, unforeseen upsets and annoys. I want it to be just as I know it to be. The legitimate function of theory is to support my outlook, never to negate, undermine, embroil. Reluctantly, I have already once molded the framework of theory into a point of view, a plan, a program. I molded it carelessly because I do not care. You say: awful! Too late now, I am not going to start over again. For routine, the ideal quality is tenacity, my own authority propped up by the authority of ad hoc tenets picked up and strained off. Myself and others (a welter of quotations, names and official titles). Experience?

I make a start from what others know, I build according to my own capabilities, I yearn honestly, completely, not under external orders, under the pressure of control by others, but out of my own, unconstrained goodwill, under the wakeful eye of con-science. Not as a matter of conformity but to enrich my own self. Distrustful alike of alien opinion and my own, I do not know, I seek, I question. Tired, I brace myself and mature. Work is the most precious part of my innermost life. Not what is easy but what is most comprehensively effective. Seeking depth, I complicate. I understand that to experience means to suffer. Much experience—great suffering. I judge failure not by the sum of frustrated ambitions but by the total of amassed evidence. Whatever is novel is a fresh incentive to mental effort. The truth discovered today is but one stage. I have no notion what will be the last stage; suffice it that I am aware of the first stage of work. That first stage of educational work—what is its message, what does it amount to?

• Paramount, in my opinion—judging fact at face value—is for the educator to be able:

• To forgive in every case wholly and completely; to understand everything is to forgive everything.

The teacher has to growl, grumble, shout, scold, threaten, punish; but within and for himself he must judge every offense, breach, fault indulgently. He went astray because he did not know; did not think; succumbed to temptation, prompting; because he experimented; because he could not do anything else.

Even where marked ill will is involved, the responsibility rests with those who incited it. Sometimes, a serene and indulgent teacher must patiently weather the communal storm of vengeful anger called up by the brutal despotism of a predecessor. The provocative “do it to spite him” is a trial, a test, a touchstone. To forbear, to stick it out means to prevail.

A teacher who frowns, frets, feels resentment toward the child for being what he is, how he was born, where he was reared—is not a teacher. Sorrow—not bad temper.

Sorrow that the child should choose a crooked diversion from the lone trail of destiny. A smooth yoke or sharp-edged shackles. He is unfortunate, and the more so because he is at the beginning of the road.

Every report of an imprisonment or the death penalty is a painful memento for a teacher.

Sorrow, regret—but not anger. Compassion—but not vengefulness.

Are you not ashamed to be seriously angry? See how small, fragile, weak and helpless he is. Not what he will be, what he is today. A few joyful cries and sky-blue smiles at the dawn of life. He knows, senses the burden of his inferiority. Give him a chance to forget, relax. What a powerful moral lever in his sordid life will be the memory of the person—perhaps the only one—who was kind, who did not fail him. Saw through him, understood, and remained kind. He—the teacher.

It is essential to believe that a child cannot be squalid, only dirty. A delinquent child is still a child. That must not be forgotten for an instant. He has not given up yet, still does not know why he is what he is, wonders, at times realizes with alarm his own separateness, his inferiority, his being different from others. Why? Once he accepts his fate, he will cease to struggle, or worse… if he comes to the conclusion that men, in general, are not worth his struggle with himself. Then he declares: “I am as good as, perhaps even better than, others.”

How straightforward and dignified is the work of an animal tamer. The fury of wild instincts is overcome by man’s unflinching, consistent will. He prevails by the spirit. A teacher might well follow with bated breath the new trends in taming—by gentleness—no longer with whip and pistol. And this is but a tiger or a lion.

Amazing how a brutal teacher can incense even gentle children. I do not require that a child surrender totally: I tame his movements. Life is a circus ring, with moments more and less spectacular. He judges not what he is but what he does.

A teacher who has not experienced the rigors of hospital, clinical work is short of many focal points of thought and feeling. My job as a doctor is to relieve if I cannot cure, to halt the progress of the disease if I cannot help, to combat the symptoms… all… some and, if no other course is open, to cope with but a very few. That is the first thing. But not all. I do not ask whether he is going to use for good or ill the health I have restored to him. In this respect I must be prejudiced, dumb, if you wish. A physician who treats a man condemned to death is by no means ridiculous. He does his duty. The rest is not his responsibility.

The teacher does not have to take responsibility for a distant future, but he is fully responsible for the present. This assertion, of course, will arouse controversy. Some think just the opposite, erroneously in my opinion, though sincerely. Sincerely? Perhaps hypocritically? It is far more comfortable to suspend responsibility, to hold it over to a hazy tomorrow, than to account for every hour—right now, today. The teacher is indirectly responsible to society for the future, but for the present he is directly and preeminently responsible to the child under his care.

It is convenient to sacrifice the child’s immediate present to tomorrow’s lofty ideals. To teach morality is simultaneously to nurture the good, to obtain a good which exists in spite of faults, vices, and innate vicious instincts. And confidence, faith in man, is this not in itself a good that can be perpetuated, developed as a counterweight to the evil which occasionally cannot be eradicated, and which can be controlled only with difficulty?

How much more reasonable life is than many teachers are! What a great shame.

And now, when after years of work, mental effort, harsh experience, one finally arrives at these truths, he finds to his astonishment that they present no novelty, that theory has long been saying the same thing, that he has read it some time, heard it, always known it, and now, in addition, practice has made him feel precisely what he also knows.

Whoever finds a clash between theory and practice has not developed emotionally to the level of current theory; let him not learn any more from books and prints but from life: he does not lack ready prescriptions but the moral strength, won by sweat, to feel truth, to make a blood brother of the truth of theory.

Wolins, M. (ed.) (1967). Selected Works of Janusz Korczak. pp. 392–395

Source 2—Between Medicine and Education

Introduction

In the eyes of educational thinkers and researchers, educators and teachers, Korczak’s tetralogy How to Love a Child is considered his pedagogical masterpiece. Its first part is called “The Child in the Family”; its second part “The Boarding School”; its third “Summer Camps”; and its fourth “The Children’s Home.” Korczak scholars assume that Korczak wrote this work in the following years: Part one—1914–1918; part two—1917–1919; part three 1918; and part four, 1918–1920. Korczak himself stated that he wrote most of the passages of the work’s first three parts during the years he served as a military doctor in the Russian army (1914–1918), and most of the passages of the last part after World War I. At the same time it is clear that a considerable amount of the material that served him for the writing of this work is based on his experiences as the head of the Jewish orphanage during the first two years of its establishment (1912–1914) before the outbreak of World War I.

Educators and teachers in the diverse fields and types of education are likely to enjoy and gain insights from this work. However, each of its four parts seems to address specific types of educators. The first part, which focuses on early childhood development, is of special interest to parents of young children and educators and teachers in this field; the second and third part, which address children’s development from their youth and up and through their adolescence, as well as the fourth part, which reviews and describes most of the educational frameworks Korczak created and implemented in the two orphanages he led, are directly related to formal and informal educators who work with children from the age of primary school to the last years of secondary school.

The source below is taken from the second part of this work, and explores the relationship between the medical and educational professions as Korczak understood it. Reading it will hopefully deepen the reader’s understanding of Korczak’s educational approach and method.

78. It is a mistake to think that having given up the hospital for the boarding school, I betrayed medicine. Eight years of hospital work impressed me sufficiently strongly that everything other than chance events, (like a car accident or swallowing a nail) can be determined in a child, only after clinical observation lasting over several years. Not occasionally as in an illness or accident, but day by day, in the favorable periods of good health.

A Berlin hospital and German medical literature taught me to concentrate on what I know and step by step, systematically, go forward from that. Paris taught me to think of whatever we do not know but should like to know, must and will know. Berlin is a workday filled with small worries and efforts. Paris is the festive tomorrow with brilliant premonition, powerful hope and unexpected triumph. Willpower, the pain of ignorance, and the delight of seeking were my gift from Paris. The technique of simplification, inventiveness in small matters, and order in details came from Berlin.

I dreamed of the great synthesis of a child when flushed with excitement I read in a Paris library the wondrous works of the French classical clinicians.

79. I owe to medicine the technique of investigation and the rigors of scientific thinking.

As a physician, I check the symptoms. I see the rash on the skin, hear the cough, feel a raised temperature. By the sense of smell I discover the odor of acetone in the child’s mouth. Some things I notice immediately, the hidden I seek out.

As an educator, I deal with symptoms too: the smile, laughter, the blush, weeping, yawning, the scream, the sigh.

As a cough can be dry, moist and suffocating, so weeping can be accompanied by tears and sobs or be almost tearless.

I ascertain the symptoms without anger. A child is feverish, a child is whimsical. I bring down the high temperature by removing the cause as far as possible.

I lessen the intensity of the whim as far as possible without detriment to the child’s spirit.

I am at a loss as to why my medical treatment fails to produce the desired effect. I do not get angry but merely try to find out. I notice that an order issued by me misfires. It is ignored by several children or by just one. I do not get angry but try to find out why.

Occasionally an apparently insignificant and meaningless symptom reveals an important law, an isolated detail links up fundamentally with a salient problem. As a physician and teacher, I know no such things as trifles, and carefully follow the footprints of that which appears to be incidental and worthless. A minor injury may sometimes ruin the robust, vigorous, yet delicate functions of the system. A microscope reveals in a drop of water germs which lay waste whole cities.

Medicine has revealed to me the miracles of therapy and the miracles worked by efforts to penetrate the secrets of nature. Through medicine I witnessed countless times how men die, and how relentlessly, tearing the mother’s womb, a fetus, a ripe fruit, breaks through into the world to become man.

Through medicine, I learned the art of painstakingly putting scattered details and contradictory symptoms together into a coherent image of diagnosis. And rich in keen awareness of the grandeur of natural laws and the genius of man’s searching mind, I am confronted with the unknown—a child.

(Wolins 1967: 253–254)

Topics for Reflection and Discussion

• Diagnosing a human phenomenon or event that engenders puzzlement and tough questions in the Berlin method and the Parisian one as Korczak depicts them in passage no. 78.

• The salient connections between the field of medicine and the field of education in Korczak’s eyes.

• The nature, meaning and possible implications of the relationship between not-knowing and knowing; the scientific and the mysterious; the revealed and the concealed

Sources 3–6—“The Korczakian System”

All four of the following sources (3–6) are taken from the fourth section of Janusz Korczak’s book How to Love a Child. This fourth section is entitled the “Children’s Home.” In it Korczak presents the main educational practices— methods and frameworks—that were implemented in the culture and life of the orphanage, and shares his reflections on the former’s educative “powers.”

Source 3: The Lost and Found Cabinet

A teacher turns up his nose at the contents of children’s pockets and drawers. A little of everything: pictures, postcards, bits of string, tags, pebbles, pieces of cloth, beads, boxes, various bottles, pieces of colored glass, postage stamps, feathers, pine cones, chestnuts, ribbons, dry leaves, paper cutouts, streetcar tickets, odds and ends of something that was and bits and pieces of something that will be. A story, often highly involved, is attached to each item. Different in origin and value, the object is sometimes emotionally priceless. They all signify memories of the past and yearnings for the future. A tiny shell is a dream of a trip to seacoast. A small screw and a few pieces of thin wire are an airplane and proud dreams of flying one. The eye of a doll, broken a long time ago, is the sole reminder of a long lost love. You will also find the mother’s photograph and two pennies received from a grandfather now dead, and wrapped in pink tissue.

New objects are added to the collection, some of the old ones lose their value. So he will swap, make a present of it, then regret and recover it.

It happens that a brutal teacher, unable to understand and consequently disdainful, angry over torn pockets, and stuck drawers, annoyed by the arguments and bother when something gets lost, or found lying about without order or discipline—in a fit of bad temper he collects all those treasures and consigns them with the rubbish to the stove.

A gross abuse of power, a barbarous crime. How dare you, you boor, to dispose of the property of another? How dare you require after that, that the children respect anything, or love anybody? You are not burning bits of paper but cherished traditions and dreams of the beautiful life.

A teacher has the duty to see to it that every child owns something which is not anonymous property of the institution but definitely his own and that he has a safe place to keep it. If a child puts anything in his drawer he must be sure that nobody will touch it. The two beads are her precious earrings. A chocolate wrapper is his certificate of shares in a company. The diary is an important document deposited in the archives. Further, it is an absolute duty to help a child find whatever he has lost.

So there should be a glass cabinet for objects lost and found. Every little thing has an owner. Whether it is found lying under the table or left on the window sill, or half covered with sand in the courtyard, it must find its way to the cabinet.

The smaller the number of ownerless objects in an institution, and the greater the number of small private belongings, the more bothersome is the constant handing over and recovery of found trifles, and the complaining about losses. What do you do when things found are handed to you? You put them in your pocket: sheer dishonesty!

Wolins 1967: 304–305

Topics for Reflection and Discussion

• Salient features of the way Korczak reflects upon and interprets the worlds of children as these are reflected in his relationship to the items children tend to collect and keep.

• The links Korczak constructs between ownership of private property and respect for property and between respect for persons and love of them.

• The main messages Korczak seeks to convey in these passages.

Source 4—The Court of Peers and Its Code

Motivation and aim of the Court of Peers

If I am devoting a disproportionate amount of space to the Court, it is because I believe that it may become the nucleus of emancipation, pave the way to a constitution, make unavoidable the promulgation of the Declaration of Children’s Rights.

The child is entitled to be taken seriously, that his affairs be considered fairly. Thus far, everything has depended on the teacher’s goodwill or his good or bad mood. The child has been given no right to protest. We must end despotism. (Ibid: 312–313)

I declare that these few cases have been the nub of my training as a new “constitutional” teacher who avoids maltreatment of children not because he likes or loves them, but because there is a certain institution which protects them against the teacher’s lawlessness, willfulness and despotism.(Ibid: 351)

Code of the Court of Peers

Preamble

If anyone has done something bad, it is best to forgive. If it was because he did not know, he knows now. If he did it unintentionally, he will be more careful in the future. If he does something bad because he finds it hard to get used to, he will try. If it was because he was talked into it, he will not listen the next time.

If anyone does something bad, it is best to forgive and wait until he is good. But the Court must defend the timid that they may not be bothered by the strong. The Court must defend the conscientious and hard-working that they should not be annoyed by the careless and idle. The Court must see that there is order because disorder does the most harm to the good, the quiet and the conscientious.

The Court is not justice but it should strive for justice. The Court is not the truth but it wants the truth.

Judges may make mistakes. Judges may punish for things which they themselves do. They may say that even though they do it, it is still wrong.

But it is shameful if a judge consciously hands down a false judgment. (Ibid: p. 313)

The Code

§§ 1–99

There are ninety-nine paragraphs providing for dismissal of the charge or for a statement that the Court did not try the case. And after the trial, everything goes on as if none had been held, or in the event of a trace of guilt, the defendant undertakes to make an effort never again to do anything of the sort.

§ 100

The Court does not declare him guilty, does not censure or state the Court’s displeasure, but considering § 100 to be the minimum punishment, includes the case in the judgment count.

§ 200

§ 200 provides:

“You were at fault.”

Too bad, it cannot be helped. May happen to anyone. Please do not do it again.

§ 300

§ 300: “He did the wrong thing.” The Court censures.

Under §§ 100 and 200, the Court requests—here it orders.

§ 400

§ 400—serious fault.

The paragraph states: “You behaved very badly” or: “You are behaving very badly.” Paragraph four-hundred is the last resort, the last effort to spare the guilty disgrace. It’s a last warning.

§ 500

§ 500 provides:

“Whoever has committed such an offense, remains utterly indifferent to our requests and orders, either has no respect for himself or no regard for us. There- fore, we cannot spare him.

The judgment with full name is to be published on the front page of the Court Gazette.”

§ 600

The Court rules that the judgment be posted on the Court bulletin board for one week and published in the Gazette.

If § 600 is applied to persistent wrongdoers, the defendant’s graph may be posted for even longer. Only the initials are to be made public and not the name in full.

§700

In addition to what is provided under § 600 the text of the judgment is sent to the family.

It may become necessary to expel him so the family should be warned. If the family were to be told suddenly: “Take him out” they might complain at not having been warned, at being kept in the dark.

§ 800

The Judgments Graph

§ 800 provides: “The Court finds itself helpless. Maybe the kinds of punishment used long ago in institutions would help, but here they don’t exist.”

A week is allowed for thinking it over. During that week he can bring no complaints to the Court, nor will the Court hear any charges against him. We will see if he intends to improve and if so, for how long.

The judgment is published in the newspaper, posted on the bulletin board, and the family is informed.

§ 900

§ 900 provides:

“We have abandoned hope that he is capable of correction.”

The appropriate judgment is:

“We do not trust him.”

Or:

“We are scared of him.”

Finally:

“We want nothing to do with him.”

In other words § 900 expels from the institution. However, he may be allowed to stay if he can find someone in the Home to vouch for him. The expelled may come back if he finds a guardian.

The guardian is tried by the Court for all offenses of his ward.

A teacher or one of the children may act as guardian.

§ 1000

§ 1000 provides:

“We expel.”

Every expelled child has the right to apply for readmission after three months.

Topics for Reflection and Discussion

• The degree of correlation between the educational ethos intimated in the Code’s Preamble (“If someone has done something bad….”) and the content of the code’s clauses and the sequence between them.

• Leading words or expressions that appear repeatedly in the code and its clauses, and their significance.

• Possible meaningful links between Kohlberg’s stages of moral development and the stages of moral development of the orphanage’s community of educators, pupils and technical/administrative staff.

Sources 5 and 6– The Meeting and the Committee of Guardians

The Meeting

The child’s thinking is no more limited nor inferior to that of an adult, it is different. In our thinking, images are faded, ragged, emotions dull and dusty. The child thinks with feelings and not with intellect. That is why communication is so complicated, why there is no more difficult art than speaking to children. For a long time I was under the impression that children should be addressed simply, understandably, in an interesting, picturesque manner, convincingly. Today, I think otherwise. We must speak to them briefly and with feeling, without particular selection of words or phrases but frankly.

I would prefer to say to the children: “My demand is incorrect, unfair, impractical, but I must insist on it,” than to argue and enjoin that they accept my point of view.

To get the children together, complain to them.

Scold them, and force a decision on them—that is not a meeting.

To get the children together, address them, stir and select a few to take upon themselves the duty and responsibility— that is not a meeting.

To get the children together, tell them that I can’t manage, and they must think up something to improve the situation—that is not a meeting.

Noise, commotion—a vote just to get it over with—a travesty of a meeting. Frequent speeches and frequent meetings make trivial these gatherings of mass suggestion used to initiate or to explain a particular action, or some everyday difficulties.

A meeting should be businesslike. The children’s remarks should be attentively and honestly heard, with no misrepresentation or pressure. The decision should be postponed until the teacher can work out a plan of operation. If the teacher does not know how to tackle a problem, lacks the ability or means, the children, too, are entitled not to know, to lack the ability or means.

No promises that can’t be realized! The stupid and thoughtless children make promises, the wise and honest ones get angry and scornful.

A way must be found to a common language with children. It doesn’t come out of the blue. A child must know that to speak openly and frankly is permitted and advantageous, that understanding and not anger or resentment will result. Further, he must be sure that he will not be laughed at or charged by the others with apple polishing. What a meeting needs is an open and dignified moral atmosphere. There is no more useless comedy than to stage elections and voting to secure a result which suits the teacher.

Besides, the children must learn the techniques of holding meetings. It is no easy matter to deliberate in a community.

One more condition: Any compulsion as regards attendance at debates and voting is indefensible. Some children have no desire to take part in meetings. Should they be compelled?

“Talk and talk, and nothing comes of it.”

“Why a meeting, sir, when you will do what you like anyhow?”

“What sort of a meeting is that where nobody can say anything without them either laughing or getting angry?”

Such criticism should not be taken lightly, nor looked upon as emerging from ill will. The more critical children are justified in their grievances.

Today I judge meetings severely, that is because in my early days at the Children’s Home I overestimated their significance, I erred in the direction of a surplus of words.

It is certain that meetings do stir the collective conscience of a community, enhance the sense of joint responsibility, leave their mark. But let us tread warily. There is not, and cannot be, absolute good fellowship and solidarity in any community. With one I am linked only by a common roof and the morning bell, with another by attendance in the same school, a third is close to me by similar tastes, a fourth by reason of friendship, a fifth by love. Children have every right to live in groups and individually, arranged by their own effort and to suit their own conceptions.

Ibid, pp. 310–312

The Committee of Guardians

Instead of explanations, I quote from an exchange between one of our hell-raisers and his girl-guardian:

April 16

“I want to be a carpenter, so when I start preparing for my voyage, I will be able to .make a chest and put in it all sorts of things, and clothes and food, and I will buy a sabre and a rifle. If wild animals attack me, I will defend myself. I love Hela very much but I am not going to marry a girl from the Children’s Home.”

Guardian’s comment: “Hela is fond of you, too, but not so much because you raise hell. Why don’t you want to marry a girl from our institution?”

“I don’t want one from our institution because I will be ashamed. When I will be getting ready for my voyage to discover a new continent, I will learn to swim well, even in the sea. I will go to America, work hard, make money, buy a car and travel in it across America. But first I’ll go to the wild people and stay there for three weeks. Good night.”

Guardian’s comment: “Good night. And will you write me a letter?”

“I have talked with R. how it was at home. I said that my father was a tailor, and R’s father was a shoemaker. And now we are here in a sort of prison because this isn’t home. And to those who have no father and mother life is worth nothing. I was telling how my father would send me to buy buttons, and R’ s father sent him for nails. And so on. I have forgotten the rest.”

Guardian’s comment: “Write more clearly.”

“Well, that is how it will be. When I get back from my voyage, I will get married.

Please advise me, should I get married to Dora, Hela or Mania? Because I don’t know which one to take for a wife. Good night.”

Guardian’s comment: “Dora says you are just a squirt. Mania doesn’t want you and Hela laughed.”

“But I did not ask you to find out, I only wrote down whom I love. Now I am upset and ashamed. I only wrote down whom I love. What now? I will be ashamed to approach them. Please tell me where I should sit so that I can behave myself, and also write me a long story. And please don’t show my notes to anyone because I am afraid to write much. But I want to know very much what an Australian looks like. What do they look like?”

Guardian’s comment: “If they are not ashamed, you shouldn’t be either. One cannot write stories in a small exercise book. If they want you, you can sit at the third table. I will try to show you an Australian. I will not show your diary to anyone.”

“I think to be twelve years old is a lucky thing! When I go away, I will say good-by to everyone. I don’t know what to write.”

Guardian’s comment: “You said you had so much to say that the paper might not be sufficient, and now you don’t know what to write.”

“Please advise me because I have terrible trouble and there is something bothering my conscience. Well, I am worried because during the lesson, I don’t know why, I am thinking about something bad but I am afraid to do what’s bad. To steal. But I don’t want to upset everybody, I try as hard as I can to do better and not to think about it, to think of travels. Good night.”

Guardian’s comment: “You did the right thing in writing to me. We’ll have a talk and I’ll give you advice. But don’t get offended when I tell you something.”

“I have already improved. I am friends with G., who has already helped me. And I try very hard. But can’t I go out more often than once in two weeks? Why, I am just like the others, why should they have it better than me? And they go out every week, and I only every other. I want to be just the same as all the rest. Grannie asked me to come every week and I feel ashamed to say that I’m not allowed.”

Guardian’s comment: “You well know why you are not allowed to go out as often as the others. I’ll ask, but I doubt it will work.”

“I already had trouble before because I was thrown out of school, I was to be kicked out of the Children’s Home, too, if they wouldn’t accept me in another school. And now I go to school again. I know thirty five nations… I have a travel book. A real book. I very much want to have a box. Please answer.”

Guardian’s comment: “I’ll look for a box or try to get one, and I’ll give it to you. Can you write me what you want the box for?”

“I need the box very much because I have many things: letters, and booklets and a lot of different things I need. Now, I am not friends with anybody because there is nobody to be friends with. When this copybook is finished, will I get another one? I have not been writing nicely because I am used to writing between two lines. I will put everything down, worries, anything I do wrong, what I think, and all sorts of things, I have plenty of interesting things to write about.”

The boy was 9, the girl, his guardian, 12.

Ibid, pp. 308–310

Topics for Reflection and Discussion

• The crucial characteristics of a genuine meeting with children.

• The paths of communication between the guardian and the pupil; similarities and differences between these modes and those Korczak recommends in the context of holding a meeting with children.