How Right-Wing Populists Influence Citizenship Education—Evidence from Poland

Abstract

As the importance of right-wing populist parties (RPPs) has grown significantly in Europe, with some even forming governments, the attendant political and policy programs are attracting greater attention. However, to date most of the relevant research has been focused on the core slogan policies of RPPs, relating to immigration and the economy. This has left the parties’ educational policies understudied. In seeking to address this situation, we analyse changes in the citizenship-education curricula that Poland’s schools pursued during the years 2017 to 2022, with the country’s ruling party (Law and Justice—PiS), thus offering a case study of a typical RPP. This article scrutinizes citizenship-education curricular changes pursued by PiS—with an approach that regards this as the field that best allows the desire to reconstruct the model of citizenship to be discerned. We also explore a process of “civic de-socialization,” and the new system of values being put in place in the curricula, by the Polish government. We examine whether the new provisions this entails fit into the ideological system of right-wing populists, and we conclude by developing hypotheses, and seeking to conclude theoretically, that ideological radicalization in education is being observed, in the wake of years of rule by an RPP. Interesting in this regard is the finding that more profound changes were not put into effect until a second stage to the reforms was reached. Overall, the case of the curriculum pursued in Poland by PiS points to a new ontology of citizenship, more nativism, and an anti-progressive agenda.