Szkoła polska na obczyźnie - wielkie nadzieje i... szybki zmierzch. Krótka historia jednej placówki na Łotwie

Abstract

: In 1989, political and social changes took place in the territory of the former USSR. On the wave of regaining independence in the countries annexed to the state of the Soviets, the Polish national minority became active. It gained a chance to recreate Polish schools that existed before the war, among others, in independent Latvia. Educational institutions were established where children could learn in the language of their ancestors. Six such schools were opened – three secondary and three primary. With varying degrees of success, they devel-oped their activities, “stumbling” over the problems that were imposed on them along the way, changing the education law and limiting the financing from mu-nicipal budgets. Not all schools managed to cope and after about a dozen years the activities were closed. The text presents the recent history of one of them. It shows the many years of efforts of the organizers of the facility operating in Jekabpils since 1994 and closed in 2015. It describes the hope accompanying the establishment of the school, cre-ating its atmosphere and culture. For many years, there was a struggle to acquire an apprentice. It shows the efforts of teachers delegated to work from Poland, calling for the level of education in Polish, opposing the change in the concept of school work, conceived as an institution with the Polish language of instruction, reduced by the authorities to teaching it as a foreign language. The presented documentation of plans for renovation, expansion or construction of a new facility from scratch, created in 2005–2010 by interested entities on both sides of the border, shows the determination of the local Polish community seeking support for their initiative on both sides of the border. However, it turned out that no one cared about the school in Jekabpils, apart from the activists of the Union of Poles in Latvia and Polish teachers. Today only documents and memories have remained.