ITALIAN EDUCATION AND PEDAGOGICAL THINKING IN POLISH HISTORICAL-PEDAGOGIC LITERATURE The Italian education system and Italian pedagogical thinking have proud traditions. Italian education and its school system aroused and still arouse much interest among Polish educational historians, and numerous books and articles continue to be published on these subjects. these works provide the knowledge of the development of the Italian school system and Italian education across all historical periods; however, humanistic education issues and the meaning of Italy’s pedagogical thinking for the development of new educational concepts are discussed most frequently. Polish educational historians study Saint John Bosco’s and Maria Montessori’s views on education, providing critical analysis of education reforms introduced during Benito Mussolini’s rule. Polish academic works and popular science works published in the last two centuries, which are an interesting source of knowledge for Polish readers, give a compelling account of the Italian education system and Italian pedagogical thinking of the past. there is no doubt that Poles’ knowledge about the development of Italian educational ideals was significantly broadened by numerous historical and pedagogical publications. It should be noted that the most prominent Polish historians of education who speak Italian and know Italy’s archival sources and its rich academic literature had written about Italy’s education. As a result, their works have an important cognitive value, and they show that Poles not only had admired Italian education, but they also had been able to critically assess foreign pedagogical ideals. Additionally, the publications show that, in some historical periods, interest in the Italian education system and Italian pedagogical thought was great (notably, during the Renaissance), while in some centuries (such as the 19th century), it was scant.

The article discusses the period 1868-1914. At that time in Lvov, a pedagogical magazine entitled Szkoła (“School”) was published, in the columns of which one could find articles dealing with the problems of the Polish educational system in the Prussian and Russian partition zones. They were primarily letters and publications based on information obtained from brochures, newspapers and periodicals issued in the Grand Duchy of Poznan and the Kingdom of Poland. The news concerning Polish education published in Szkoła were non systematic and did not appear in cycles. Nevertheless, they possessed largely informative value for the readers of the periodical. They depicted the struggle to preserve the Polish language in schools, the questions connected with educating at an elementary and secondary level. Some papers provided information about schools for apprentices and schools of rural economics for girls. Galician autonomy created opportunities for freedom of  expression on various topics. Owing to this, the journalists printing their articles in Szkoła openly denounced the abuses of Germans and Russians, criticised Germanization and Russification.

The article presents some issues related to Henryk Rowids scientific journey to Leipzig in 1913. The purpose of this journey was to participate in a psychological and pedagogical course for teachers and to get acquainted with modern methods of pedagogical work with children in schools. The article presents Rowids comments on the development of research on the child and childhood in Western Europe, and on the rapidly developing scientific literature on experimental child science. The knowledge provided by Rowid was innovative and complemented the current state of knowledge about psychological and pedagogical research conducted in Germany. It inspired further work and studies on child pedagogy. Today, Rowids relation from his scientific journey to Leipzig is an interesting basis to a deeper understanding of the Polish scientific movement in the field of pedology at the beginning of the 20th century. It is also an interesting source of knowledge about the development of the scientific movement among teachers.

This article analyses the reviews of Polish books on the history of education and bringing up children in the years 1945-1989. It presents the ways in which critics reviewed new publications and shows the aspects which they paid special attention to. The reviews were published in the most renowned magazines among historians of education and raising children, such as ”Przegląd Historyczno-Oświatowy” (The History and Education Review), ”Rozprawy z Dziejów Oświaty” (Dissertations on the History of Education). Some of them were written by renowned specialists in the field. For contemporary historians, the reviews may constitute an interesting source of information on academic criticism from the times of the Polish People’s Republic. They may also bear witness to the hard work and efforts made towards conducting thorough studies into the history of education and bringing up children over various historical periods.

The article shows the development of Polish interests in the pedagogical mind of J. F. Herbart. In this work we chronologically presented the most important Polish publications on Herbart we drew attention to the change of its perception in different historical periods. There is no doubt that a large part of Polish authors esteem the educational Herbart and tried to popularize his ideas among Polish teachers. It is understood that the greatest interest in 'herbartyzmem' was in the nineteenth century but it declined sharply in the next century. This was associated with the development of new educational systems. The article is an important contribution to a better understanding of the reception of the German educational thought in other countries.