The right to education is one of the most important rights through which adults recognise the well-being of the child as the highest aim in his development and the development of each society. The child’s right to education is guaranteed in various legal regulations, both Polish and international, and is one of the key rights that enable the child to develop and function socially. Article 26 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights20 states that:
1. Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compul-sory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental free-doms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the Uni-ted Nations for the maintenance of peace.
3. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
Article 22 of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of 28 July 1951 (Law Journal from 1991, No. 119, pos. 515) states that:
1. The Contracting States shall accord to refugees the same treatment as is accorded to nationals with respect to elementary education.
2. The Contracting States shall accord to refugees treatment as favourable as possible, and, in any event, not less favourable than that accorded to aliens generally in the same circumstances, with respect to education other than ele-mentary education and, in particular, as regards access to studies, the recogni-tion of foreign school certificates, diplomas and degrees, the remission of fees and charges and the award of scholarships.
20Wybór dokumentów prawa międzynarodowego dotyczących praw człowieka, M. Zubik (ed.), Księga Jubileuszowa Rzecznika Praw Obywatelskich, Vol. II, Warsaw 2008, pp.
15–16.
Article 2 of the Protocol no. 11 to the Convention on the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms of 20 March 1952 (Law Journal, 1995, No. 36, pos. 175), states that:
No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functi-ons it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.
Article 30 of the International Convention on the protection of the rights of all migrant workers and members of their families of 18 December 1990 states that:
Each child of a migrant worker shall have the basic right of access to educa-tion on the basis of equality of treatment with naeduca-tionals of the State concerned.
Access to public pre-school educational institutions or schools shall not be refused or limited by reason of the irregular situation with respect to stay or employment of either parent or by reason of the irregularity of the child’s stay in the State of employment21.
Competent training of teachers who will conduct education completes children’s right to education. Thus, it is important that conditions be created to prepare adults to the role and profession whose aim is to support children in the schoo-ling system with the cooperation of the school environment. A document of the Frame of Multicultural Competences in the Polish system of education states:
“The system of education should provide teachers, other educational staff, youth leaders and coaches with necessary training for the realisation of tasks and aims of intercultural education as well as the possibility of constant in-service training and enhancing one’s competences.” (Rafalska 2016, p. 14)
We can ignore these documents22 and other provisions, yet this would produce nothing good in practice. Due to the specifics of particular institutions, environ-mental conditioning, temporal and staff limitations as well as individual migration
21Poland has not ratified this Convention.
22Athens Declaration “Intercultural education: managing diversity, strengthening demo-cracy” of the Council of Europe, The Council of Europe Charter of Education for Demo-cratic Citizenship and Human Rights, the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity 2002, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, The Convention on the Rights of the Child, the (European) Con-vention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
and intercultural histories of each student, the systemic and non-systemic solu-tions in the area of the education of foreign students as well as the attempts to conduct intercultural and anti-discrimination education in public schools seem insufficient. In fact, in some municipalities and districts they are absent. As a result, those teachers who have not had contact with foreign students and have not participated in courses, training or seminars in the field of intercultural education do not always have adequate knowledge, skills or intercultural competences.
This situation was confirmed by the results of the study: The competences of teachers in the area of multi- and intercultural education23 as well as interviews conducted with teachers within a pilot research project referring to the readiness of the Polish school to accept students from Arab and African countries.24 One of the respondents stressed: “I consider myself to be an empathic person, however, I fear that faced with such a student I would not know how to behave, that I would say something tactless, offend, scare or discourage them. Being aware of the child’s past is necessary as it helps to better understand, and adjust the working style to the child’s needs. […] If I am to be honest in my response, I have to say that when I visualise the situation when refugee students from Arab or African countries appear in my school, I see chaos and disorientation, on both sides. The fact that children would feel lost and scared is obvious and understandable, but this is the reason why school staff should be prepared, responsible, aware—while at present I assess this preparation as non-existent.” (Polish teacher, W125).
There are three types of experimental educational support provided to foreign students in Polish schools. This help refers to children who do not know the Polish language or their knowledge is at a level that is not sufficient to take advantage of school education. The support includes the following: free Polish language classes in the form of extracurricular lessons; extracurricular compen-satory lessons in particular subjects conducted for the period of twelve months26; support from a person familiar with the language of the student’s country of ori-gin employed as a teacher’s assistant, e.g. as a cultural/intercultural assistant for
232010—BST 2010/II—research project realised by E. Dąbrowa and U. Markowska- Manista, Maria Grzegorzewska University in Warsaw. More: (Dąbrowa and Markowska- Manista 2009, pp. 140‒150).
24In 2014/2015, categorised interviews were conducted with teachers concerning the readi-ness of Polish schools to accept students from Arab and African countries.
25The abbreviation reflects the numerical order of the interview.
26The total number of additional Polish language lessons and compensatory lessons cannot exceed five hours a week.
a period not longer than one calendar year. However, in school and educational practice nothing is black and white. While analysing urgent problems and con-troversies, we have to take into consideration a range of overlying variables and conditions. For teachers, the possibility to gain new knowledge and skills as well as acquire and develop new competences is of key importance in this aspect:
From the point of view of the implementation of intercultural education, the teacher should enter various roles: that of a partner, a counsellor and a mediator. Polish law guarantees foreigners freedom to preserve their culture, customs and language. For a teacher working with a foreign student, knowledge about the influence of culture on both the teacher’s and foreign students’ behaviour, as well as the behaviour of their parents, is very important. Much can come as a surprise when working with foreign students. The teacher’s behaviour can be misinterpreted by foreign students, on the other hand, the behaviour of children of different nationalities may be incomprehen-sible for the teacher and the children’s peers (School pedagogue, W11).
Since school is a place of encounters, it is also a place of new communication situations as well as new dimensions of the teacher’s educational work with Polish and foreign students. It is also a place where both positive and negative relations between students of various cultural origins are shaped. School is also where the processes of socialisation and acculturation take place, which in the case of foreign children are frequently connected with experiencing a sense of alienation, culture shock as well as difficult situations and conflicts. These chal-lenges arise from the differences in cultural experiences, lack of linguistic compe-tences, unfamiliarity with Polish cultural script and a different system of cultural norms and social patterns of behaviour. These experiences (mainly culture-based conflicts, language barriers, social maladjustment which, in extreme and rather frequent cases, result in the exclusion of children) were pointed out by school head teachers in a survey study in 2012, identifying them as problems of foreign students (Szybura 2016, p. 115).
At times, the very system of education and the rules followed at school are alien and incomprehensible for foreign students and their parents. These ambiguities and unfamiliarity with the cultural norms of behaviour on both sides generate a num-ber of “battlefields” in formal education and the procedures present in the space of school as a postmodern institution. They are connected with the failure to recognise foreign students’ problems with acclimatisation, problems present between students from various cultures or turning a blind eye to these problems, i.e. failure to react adequately to these types of negative behaviours.27 These educationally difficult
27These problems were addressed by Joanna Konieczna-Sałamatin (2008, p. 64).
situations are caused by lack of knowledge, additional responsibilities, helpless-ness, reluctance and surprise. They also result from lack of preparation of teachers and school staff to accept foreign students, primarily refugee students, who “do not know the Polish language, […] require a lot of additional work which teachers do not always have time for, do not attend extracurricular Polish language lessons, despite the fact that schools organise them. The students sometimes leave school without notice and disappear without trace, they are irritable or aggressive or quite the contrary-reserved, sometimes they behave strangely, they do not do their home-work, do not cope with the curriculum, do not read required texts, skip lessons and hide in the cloakroom or the library, they do not have textbooks, during breaks they gather in the corner in closed groups, and their parents do not come to parent- teacher meetings” (Piegat-Kaczmarczyk et al. 2013).
There are two sides to this coin, as not only “[…] lack of motivation to learn, rebellion against the situation which young people cannot influence, emotional instability brought on by experience […] aggravate didactic problems” (School pedagogue, W5).
On the other side of the coin, there are “yesterday’s teachers” who “teach today’s children to solve the problems of tomorrow in schools of the past”. This sentence appears on many websites with reference to the situation of Polish schools, urgent educational problems and the problematic preparation of teachers to work in schools of the 21st century.
In interviews referring to the readiness of Polish schools to accept students of Arab and African origin, teachers stressed that they do not have theoretical know-ledge about the countries and cultures or didactic experience of working with foreign students. First and foremost, they do not have the knowledge of foreign languages at a communicative level. This “hinders basic interpersonal communi-cation. I can also see significant deficiency in the knowledge about their [foreign students’—author’s note] system of values, varied attitudes toward education, school and teachers. These students frequently interpret the reality in a different way, which often results from the fact that they have experienced a lot in their short lives” (School pedagogue, W5).
First of all, we have to start with language. I think it is the greatest barrier, as wit-hout the knowledge of language communication and understanding are impossible. I do not understand the child, the child does not understand me. In this situation, it is impossible to teach anything. Additionally, we have to bear in mind that these chil-dren used to live in conditions that are unimaginable for us, and both they and their families fled as their lives were threatened (Polish teacher, W1).
The respondents also pointed out that the following problems might arise: rejec-tion of the refugee student by peers, lack of tolerance for otherness, distinctness, fear on the part of Polish students that their class might be ridiculed because of the presence of refugee students, language barrier, conflict, aggression, physical and verbal violence (ridicule, insults), lack of motivation to learn on the part of foreign students, isolation of foreign students, rebellion against the situation, lack of tolerance on the part of parents as well as racism.
School also faces the challenge of stereotyping not only among students, their parents, but also teachers. After all, labelling and stereotyping have always been present at school: “In the past, there were speckies, fatties, the red-haired, while now there are foreign children, so it has always happened.”28 Foreign children, visually distinct and unable to speak Polish are located “in between”, in the space of those who are Alien. They are treated as “exotic others”,29 and, at times pushed to the margin and ridiculed. The struggle with the stereotypes of cultural distinct-ness refers to a number of other dimensions, namely:
• the presence (or absence) of education that discriminates (or does not discri-minate) otherness and distinctness in the space of school;
• education on the contact point of cultures, beliefs and worldviews—as educa-tion that requires effort and a re-adaptaeduca-tion of scripts which were developed for years but are no longer valid;
• transmission of knowledge and skills and the acquisition of competences by monocultural teachers to be able to work in a multicultural school class (important aspects: awareness and explanation of the context of differences);
• support, i.e. the presence (or absence) of cultural assistants and the complica-ted cooperation with Polish and foreign parents;
• difficulties in the system of education with reference to the practices of finan-cing and supporting integration processes as well as training prospective tea-chers to work in a multicultural class (the autonomy of the university and national frames of qualification vs. the availability of curricula and subjects that expand knowledge in the area of education for students with special edu-cational needs, education of foreign students, etc.);
28Fragment of an interview with A. Bobyko, Skuteczna walka z dyskryminacją wyzwaniem UE, http://www.polskieradio.pl/9/540/Artykul/1323407,Skuteczna-walka-z-dyskryminac-ja-wyzwaniem-UE, accessed: 06.09.2016.
29More about the category: “exotic others” (Górak-Sosnowska and Markowska-Manista 2010, pp. 457–471).
• survival in a multicultural class (who are the scapegoats labelled as “dirty”,
“infidel”, “savage” and “black”), i.e. how to survive the period of adaptation to the conditions of Polish schools and how to move from migration culture shock to return culture shock;
• (un)used potential of culturally distinct students and the capital of diverse groups;
• (in)ability of migrant students and their parents to actively and creatively parti-cipate in the life of school and the local environment;
• the life of school and the local environment as places and spaces of daily func-tioning that create, construct, integrate foreign students and parents with the students and parents from the dominant society.
Conclusion
It would be a mistake to think that to understand means to avoid difficulties (Janusz Korczak 1919).
Intercultural education and communication take place on various levels and are processes that involve teachers, students, parents, education authorities and the local environment of the school. The process refers to communication between all the abovementioned actors all of whom are of key importance to the school. It involves the transmission of knowledge, shaping of attitudes, acquisition of new skills and competences in the culturally and socially transforming school space.
Key elements of this process stressed by Alfred Holzbrecher and Ulf Over (2015) include:
• teaching a new attitude to diversity at school, oriented at the resources and cul-tural capital of students, one that is in accordance with current challenges,
• shaping the new dimensions of school culture in the conditions of social and cultural diversification, implementation of the content of intercultural educa-tion in the context of migraeduca-tion transformaeduca-tion,
• language education connected with the acquisition of intercultural competen-ces, intercultural work of the school with parents as important partners in the process of upbringing and education,
• using the experience and life stories of teachers and parents (from other cultu-ral circles) as agents of change,
• international and intercultural cooperation in educational space referring to the implementation of projects with schools abroad, schools for minorities as well as student exchange in the projects of partner schools,
• education of teachers oriented towards the acquisition of intercultural compe-tences and education about diversity based on experiencing diversity.
Intercultural opening of the school, i.e. using the potential and resources of diverse cultural groups—foreign children and parents, migrant children and parents and re-emigrants, as well as trusting the motivation of students and aut-hentic involvement in the process of learning and teaching both on the part of students, teaching staff and parents, are key factors contributing to a peaceful coexistence in the local environment. They are also important elements aiding the development of a safe space in which students with individual adaptation pro-blems and originating from various socio-cultural contexts receive a chance for support, cooperation and subjective participation in school life. Intercultural ope-ning of the school also involves the postulates of inclusive education that “requi-res a broad vision of ‘Education for All’, conducted out of concern for varied needs of students, including those particularly exposed to exclusion and margina-lisation (…)” (Błeszyńska 2006, pp. 8–11).
The number of children who migrate and flee (accompanied or unaccompa-nied by families) to the European Union is increasing. Consequently, the num-ber of migrants inside the EU is growing. This process exposes a broad range of issues referring to migrant children and education. Migrant, re-emigrant and refugee children are part of Polish schools as school classes become increasingly more culturally heterogeneous, while students come from various cultures, speak different languages, demonstrate varied levels of skills and special educational needs. Contemporary education cannot contribute to the reproduction and legiti-misation of social inequality. It is to expose racism, xenophobia, stratification and marginalisation that perpetuate social inequality as well as aggravate the proces-ses of discrimination and exclusion.
According to national and international legislation regulating access to educa-tion, all children have a right to actively participate in the process of education.
In order to change the traditional educational approach in such a way that
In order to change the traditional educational approach in such a way that