Does School Reform Have Legs? The Flourishing of Janusz Korczak's Pedagogy in Modern Israel

Educational Forum, The, Winter 2004 by Engel, Liba H

With the arrival of the 21st century, a serious reappraisal of the school reforms from the previous century emerged (Ravitch 2000, Angus and Mirel 1999, Kliebard 2002). For the most part, these reappraisals reflected skepticism about many of the reforms that were characteristic of the "progressive era," and, here and there, pessimism about the extent to which fundamental change can be wrought in the ways schools work. As a result, the successes and failures of school reforms are understood only partially at best. One way of furthering an understanding of the phenomenon of school reform is to examine in a case study format the way in which a revolutionary school change was implemented not only in its original setting, but also in a totally different milieu many years later. Such a study offers clues as to why certain reforms fade quickly while others have a more lasting impact-that is, they have "legs."

The radical pedagogical innovations that were undertaken by Janusz Korczak in Poland between the two World Wars are examined first. His basic ideas are outlined, and the central features of his pedagogy are described. Particular attention is paid to structural changes that were instituted.

In the second part of the article, the setting changes to a contemporary Israeli school that has undertaken Korczak's reforms. Through extensive fieldwork, I try to answer whether the reform ideas developed originally in a different era and cultural setting have flourished many years later on a new soil. The extent to which Korczak's ideas survived is considered, with particular attention paid to the structural mechanisms that most likely led to their survival. Though I am sympathetic to Korczak's overall reforms, the main purpose of this study is not to extol them, but to illustrate how certain reforms can be instituted and sustained successfully.

JANUSZ KORCZAK'S PEDAGOGY

Janusz Korczak was born Henryk Goldszmit in Warsaw, Poland on 22 July 1878. Like many of his reform-minded contemporaries, he did not concentrate on expressing a formal educational philosophy (Lifton 1997). Instead, he installed innovative organizational structures in his experimental schools as a way of promoting a new social vision. A physician, writer, and educator, he spent many of his adult years as the director of two orphanages in Warsaw. In Orphans Home (1912-1942) and Our Home (1919-1942), Korczak formulated and refined his unorthodox educational ideas. When the Nazis overran Poland at the outset of World War II, Korczak relocated his Jewish orphanage within the Warsaw Ghetto where he continued to direct the institution. Korczak is remembered for the final walk he took with his children on 6 August 1942-destination: the gas chambers of Treblinka.

Like other European school reformers, such as Maria Montessori and A. S. Neill, Korczak advocated educational experiences based on the child's natural order of development (Lifton 1997). These reformers turned to the children themselves as the pivotal points in school reform. The focus on the developmental principles guiding these reforms, however, has sometimes led to a gross underestimation of the social ideals that prompted them. Korczak and his European contemporaries brought new psychological insights that were not reflected in traditional schools. They also were inspired by a social vision that saw schools as the breeding grounds for a new democratic social order. Accordingly, they tried to replace traditional school structures with new forms of organization that would reflect the democracy they envisioned. Democracy would not simply be taught; it would be practiced in a school setting.

Toward this end, Korczak encouraged children to become actively engaged in their own schooling. Through authentic participation in the governance of the school, the child presumably would become socialized into democratic forms of living. The attainment of his social ideals would be achieved not by direct instruction, such as courses in civics, but rather by creating a living democracy in a school setting. By implication, at least, socialization into democratic processes in a school setting ultimately would have a beneficial impact on the larger social order.

In this respect, Korczak was not very different from his illustrious American contemporary John Dewey. Dewey (1915), like Korczak, was "child centered," a designation that fails to touch on the crucial social role he saw for his experimental schools. Dewey's Laboratory School at the University of Chicago and Korczak's Children's Republic (the name given to Korczak's pedagogical experiments) embodied an effort to build, in Dewey's words (1915, 18), a "miniature community, an embryonic society" where idealized social relations could be practiced and lived. Neill's Summerhill (1972), for example, also sought to create a lived democracy in a school setting by balancing the rights of the individual and community. While these reformers wanted the children in their schools to acquire skills and knowledge, they also wanted them to "learn" to think independently, take charge of their own lives, and become contributing members of their society.