Higiena szkolna w szkolnictwie ogólnokształcącym w Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej

Abstract

The reforming of upbringing and education that took place in the second half of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th centuries much owed to development of school hygiene, which inspired more extensive and deeper insight into school practice. It was also an incentive to search for more optimal organisational, programming and methodological solutions in the area of broadly understood education. Growing awareness of health importance as a basis of upbringing and education earned better justification from the school hygiene which was separating from general hygiene as the science dealing with health maintenance. The progress in pedagogy, linked with the development of experimental psychology at the end of the 19th century, harmonised with achievements in medical sciences. The development of the school hygiene was also related to gradual introduction of school obligation and dissemination of education which occurred in the second half of the 19th century. During the time of Poland’s partitions, care of the Polish people concerning issues of maintaining both the biological being of the Polish nation and the national spirit brought about that reborn Poland entered the period of independence with quite good achievements accomplished in the area of medicine, education and their joint part – school hygiene. What is more, cooperation of Polish doctors and pedagogues for the benefit of young Polish generation subject to education in or out of school that was operating under the country’s partition may be treated as expression of patriotic feelings and a kind of fight for the future of the Motherland.