Non-mainstream Regional Education – Closer to Sources and Local Knowledge. Projects from Lower Silesia Cover Image

Edukacja regionalna obok głównego nurtu – bliżej źródeł i wiedzy lokalnej. Przykłady działań na Dolnym Śląsku
Non-mainstream Regional Education – Closer to Sources and Local Knowledge. Projects from Lower Silesia

Author(s): Anna Kurpiel, Marta Derejczyk
Subject(s): Anthropology, Social Sciences, Customs / Folklore, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology
Published by: Polskie Towarzystwo Ludoznawcze
Keywords: regional education; non-formal education; animation; Lower Silesia; locality; regional education

Summary/Abstract: Local knowledge has been at the center of ethnologists’ interest since the time of Clifford Geertz. The search for a local interpretation of cultures, however, has not found a referencein what is essentially local – that is, regional education. In this area, the “classical type” of the local memory of the past (“region – nation”) is the dominant one, i.e. elements of regional education are at the same time important components of national identity. In the multicultural Lower Silesia, post-war regional education was a tool for propagandaof “the return of the Piast lands to the Motherland” and their “fusion” with the Motherland (i.e. cultural homogenization). Currently education about the region exists in a rudimentaryversion. Some teachers try to fill in these deficiencies, within the framework of their competences and capabilities, by carrying out additional projects with their students and bymaking use of the cultural and educational offer of cultural institutions. Animators associated with non-governmental organizations are also important initiators of such activities.The authors, based on the experience and activities of the Ważka Foundation, present examples of non-formal educational activities in which ethnology along with “localknowledge” and its narratives play a key role. Referring to their own experience, they also propose a bottom-up, participatory regional education, carried out in close contact with the field and with direct intergenerational transmission.

  • Issue Year: 59/2020
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 69-87
  • Page Count: 19
  • Language: Polish