Controversial new conservative school textbook to be sold in Polish post offices

A controversial new high school textbook – which has drawn criticism for its conservative content relating to family life and Black Lives Matter, among other things – yesterday went on sale in post offices around Poland.

Meanwhile, the country’s human rights commissioner has become the latest to voice concern over the book, including a comment relating to the rights of gay people.

The publisher has responded to the controversy by announcing it will remove a passage seen as denigrating children born through IVF. But the author – a former politician from Poland’s national-conservative ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party – has condemned “censorship” and says he would not change a single word.

The textbook is for a new subject, History and the Present, that is being introduced for high-school students this week. The most controversial passage refers to the “decay to the institution of the family” caused by “medical advances and the offensive of gender ideology”.

Children are being brought into the world “separately from the natural union of man and woman, most preferably in a laboratory”, it asserted, with sex being treated “as entertainment and the sphere of fertility as human production, one might say breeding”. It then asks: “Who will love the children produced in this way?”

Opposition leader Donald Tusk was among many who criticised the content, resulting in education minister Przemysław Czarnek suing him. The father of a child born thanks to IVF also vowed to sue the minister as well as the textbook’s author, Wojciech Roszkowski, an academic who served as a PiS MEP from 2004 to 2009.

This week, the head of PiS’s parliamentary caucus, Ryszard Terlecki, revealed that, as well as being available through normal channels, the textbook would also be sold in 3,500 branches of Poland’s state post office.

“Let us nurture the reliable knowledge of young Poles and defend against manipulations from the enemies of Poland,” he wrote on Twitter while revealing the news.

In addition to their statutory activity, post offices also stock a range of magazines, books and knickknacks – although school textbooks are not usually available. Under PiS, the post office has faced criticism for selling books seen as aligned with the ruling party’s political interests.

Meanwhile, Poland’s human rights commissioner, Marcin Wiącek, has written to Czarnek in response to complaints he has received about the book, saying that many teachers and parents feel that it does not meet the requirements for school materials.

Apart from the controversial passage seen as referring to IVF, Wiącek notes that the author contrasts “the rights of a normal family” with “the rights of homosexuals”. He also points to “drastic photographs” used as illustrations, questioning whether they are appropriate for first-year high school students.

Last week, Free School (Wolna Szkoła), an initiative opposed to the government’s education policy, launched an interactive map of schools not currently planning to use Roszkowski’s textbook. Some intend to use an alternative textbook that is yet to be approved, others will not use any, and the rest will make a decision in September.

Following the wave of controversy, the publisher, Biały Kruk, issued a statement announcing that it had decided in consultation with the author to remove the passage seen as relating to IVF, despite “not agreeing with the criticism and incorrect interpretation”.

It is not clear, however, when this change will be made, as the first issue of the book has already been printed and is on sale. Days after publishing its statement, the publisher posted an invitation to sign a petition in support of Roszkowski, who had faced “numerous attacks falsely accusing him of belittling children conceived through IVF”.

Roszkowski yesterday told Interia that he would not write anything differently, calling the storm the book has created “a certain offensive, manipulation of public opinion, a kind of preventive censorship”. He conceded, however, that he would perhaps explain his intention better in the controversial passage, which he said was not about IVF.

History and the Present was launched by Czarnek to replace the subject Knowledge about Society. Despite the new school year starting today, so far Roszkowski’s textbook is the only one that has been approved by the ministry.

Since being appointed in 2019, Czarnek has drawn criticism over his ultraconservative stance on issues such as gender roles and LGBT rights. He has condemned LGBT pride parades for “promoting deviancy” and said that those who do so “do not have the same rights” as “normal people”.

In a new poll by United Surveys for Wirtualna Polska published today, 63% of Poles said that education has changed for the worse under Czarnek’s control and only 17% said that it had improved.

Main image credit: Cezary Aszkielowicz / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Ben Koschalka

Ben Koschalka is a translator and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.