Visiting Professor Tadeusz Slawek Shares His Perspective as a Polish Scholar

As a result of a developing relationship between West Chester University and the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland, Tadeusz Slawek, a literary scholar, poet and former president of that university visited West Chester’s campus for a week in late September. During that time, he taught classes in literary theory and creative writing and poetry; conducted a poetry reading presented a talk about contemporary Polish poetry to West Chester faculty.  In a campus interview, Professor Slawek talked about his experiences at West Chester, the University of Silesia, the similarities and differences between the two institutions and higher education in the U.S. versus Poland.

What are some of similar and different challenges facing educators in the U.S. and Poland today?

Before the transformation in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Poland was viewed as a highly educated society, but in fact, that wasn’t true. After 1989, the number of students in higher education nearly tripled. As a result, new colleges were formed. The University of Silesia, for example, enrolls approximately 42,000 students and has about 3,000 faculty, staff and administrators. At the moment, it is the second or third largest school in the country.

Like West Chester University, the University of Silesia is largely regional and very much aware of the needs of the five areas. Our system of education is also influenced by the fact that Poland is a member of the European Union. As a result, our education system is now compatible with the system of education in other European countries.

Traditionally Polish universities offered exclusively a fairly advanced five-year master’s level program, which concluded with a required scholarly dissertation. The European model consists of a three-year baccalaureate program followed by two more years if a student wants to acquire a master’s degree. While this creates some challenges for us, being a member of the European Union opens up tremendous opportunities for our students to travel and have all kinds of experiences.

Do you approach the teaching of writing in Poland differently than in the U.S?

Yes, and that stems from a cultural difference. Poland’s culture is embedded in its literature to such a degree that even when the country was erased as a state from the maps of Europe for over 100 years, its literary tradition sustained its culture. Creative writing has always been looked upon not as a skill but as a talent or a gift of God and not something that could easily be taught. 

For many years, I was a member of the English department.  We follow the English or American curriculum, which requires that students learn how to create compositions in paragraph structures. Planning and organizing writing in that way is very foreign to our culture of literature and writing. Poetry and other types of creative writing, for example, weren’t taught to students. Instead, those who had “the gift,” would develop that talent by studying and interpreting various texts.

Today, it’s much more common in writing classes that students are taught what I would best describe as bureaucratic writing by which they learn how to write a letter or apply for a job.

Are courses at the University of Silesia taught in Polish?

Polish is the primary language, but Poles are also expected to have a working knowledge of English by the time they enter the university. Examinations are very competitive now, so that students also must be fluent in whatever department they enroll. For example, students who are studying in the French department must already be fluent in French. The same goes for any other language department.

Before the transition, secondary school students also studied Russian, but after the transition, it was dropped. Now it’s again viewed as a very important language and is beginning to be offered because Russia is our neighbor.

What was life like in Poland under the Soviet regime?

I was born in 1946, so I was seven years-old when Stalin died in 1953. Poland differed from other countries within the Soviet Union is that the system never really percolated down through the society. Yes, the government was run by Polish communists with strong ties to the Soviets, but as documents now show today, the relationship between the two was strained.

We had a tremendous sense of irony and humor regarding the historical arena in which we had to perform certain roles, but we performed these roles with a distance. 

Even in the hay day of communist rule in Poland, the membership of the party was very low. Of the 40 million people living there then, the ruling party membership was a little over one million. 

Did you feel hampered or censored under the communists?

Those of us in academia never felt threatened. I cannot recall in over 30 years of my being a teacher a single intervention in what I was teaching and researching. On the whole, I think we enjoyed a wide margin of academic freedom.

Established in 1968 as the ninth university in Poland, the University of Silesia consists of four campuses with its primary facilities located in Katowice, a heavily industrialized region in southern Poland.  The coal, steel and other industries exert a strong influence on the university’s curriculum which strives to equip its students “for life, as well as for work.” Students there are able to pursue undergraduate and master’s degree courses, postgraduate studies and courses toward professional skills and Ph.D. degrees.