SPRING TIME!!!
I love my garden in spring - blue sky, green grass and flowers blooming. Peaceful days with the sun so bright encourage to act lazy ^^
After some hesitation when I performed the role of a teacher for the first time, I have to conclude that it was a long long long time ago - when I was a child. It happened on the play ground as I was always the child who explained the rules of all games to other children. I was considered among my friends as a one who possesses a knack for pinpointing the precise steps others should take in order to get results. Later on I was exercising my patience when teaching my younger cousins how to write, count or read the clock. When people ask me to help them learn something, I have the patience to start at the very beginning and the determination to see them through to the successful completion. I remember that when I was in secondary school and we were to write a test in chemistry I always stayed after the classes in order to explain the material to my classmates. The fact that I love explaining things didn’t give me an idea that I should be a teacher. It was a subconscious desire and I hadn’t admitted it until the final grade of my secondary school. When I was 19 I realised that I want to follow my mother and grandmother and become a teacher. It came to me as a sudden insight, but it had always been on some remote corner of my consciousness.
My first teaching experience in classroom settings happened when I was doing my observation in the secondary school. One of the teachers was absent and my mentor was to take care of his students. She gave me keys to a classroom and asked to conduct a lesson. I was shocked and obviously stressed. How to conduct a lesson without preparation? I didn’t know the class. I had no idea what they had done before... Next step – spontaneous improvisation. I checked in their notebooks what they had done before – fortunately it was the beginning of a school year, so it were some basics. I came up with some exercises and we played a few games. I had an impression that 45 minutes lesson lasted 5 minutes. The students were nice and co-operative, which left me with a good impression. I perceive it as a valuable experience. I like people and I feel comfortable working with students, which helped me handle this unexpected situation. I know that being a teacher wouldn’t make me rich, but it would give me a lot of satisfaction.
The world of politics is dominated by men. There are not many women involved in politics. I think that underlying reasons of this situation are the pre-determined social roles assigned to women and men in societies all over the world. This is a stereotypical view that women lack self-confidence to pursue a career in politics. However, this opinion may be reshaped when we consider some of the great women in politics such as Margaret Thatcher, Hilary Clinton or Indira Gandhi.
In fact, I don’t like politics. In my opinion, it divides people and provokes quarrels. That is why I share my political view only with several people. Although I’m not a committed supporter of Polish politicians and I don’t blindly agree with their decisions, I would call myself a patriot. I love our country and Polish people. That is why I have decided to describe somebody from the Polish political scene.
The woman that I’m going to write about is not a politician, but she is said to be the most politically influential person on the Polish political scene.
Jadwiga Staniszkis (born April 26, 1942)
Jadwiga Staniszkis is a Polish sociologist and political scientist, essayist, a former Professor of Sociology at Warsaw University and at the Institute for Political Studies of PAN (the Polish Academy of Sciences) and the lecturer at the Business School, a Polish campus of National-Louis University.
She is the granddaughter of the agricultural engineer Witold Staniszkis. Jadwiga Staniszkis studied sociology at the Warsaw University Faculty of Philosophy, obtaining a PhD in 1971 (her thesis was honoured as the best of the year). In 1978, she completed her habilitation in the humanities, in the department of sociology. Since 1991, she has been working as a university professor.
After her graduation, Staniszkis worked at the Department of Sociology at her alma mater. She actively contributed to political life at the university and was dismissed from the university for attending the protests of students and intellectuals against the communist government of the People's Republic of Poland during the 1968 Polish political crisis. She was imprisoned for her participation for several months. Jadwiga Staniszkis is a former advisor to "Solidarity", she specializes in political sociology and the problems of transformation in post-communist societies. She is the author of many books and articles published both in Polish and in translation, including "Poland's Self-Limiting Revolution" (Princeton 1984) and "The Dynamics of the Breakthrough in Eastern Europe" (University of California Press 1991). She is the author of several books on phenomena of socialism. Her first book about the dialectics of socialist society was translated into Japanese, but the Polish manuscript was confiscated by the secret service (SB) and lost. Her second book on the Solidarity movement has never been translated to Polish due to controversy, although it was published in French (two years before 'original' English edition). The fate of her book about the dynamics of transformation in Poland was similar, as it has not been published in Poland. Most of her works have been published after the transformation of the political system in Poland.
Staniszkis presents explicitly the problem of communism and describes the theory of communist transformation in East and Central Europe. She explores the complex nature of this system and of the retreat from it, placing emphasis on the institutional and epistemological divisions between communism and post-communism, as well as on the internal logic underlying the multiple changes which took place within the post-communist system - a logic that, again, clearly bears character traits of the system that preceded it historically."Communism collapsed in 1989 like a house of cards. That this happened quite so simply was a slap in the face, for both the victims of the regime and those in charge - and especially for the most numerous group among them: the opportunists," writes Jadwiga Staniszkis in the introduction to her book.
Jadwiga Staniszkis is a political scientist widely recognized both in Poland and abroad. Moreover, she is an incredible individual. When I listen to her stories about her personal life I’m totally amazed by her personality. I don’t know any person with such a unique personality. She enjoys solitude – sometimes she spends a few hours in a bus just to get to the seaside and have a walk. She talks about physical abuse which she has experienced as a reason for self-analysis. When asked about her present husband, Staniszkis said that she was not sure whether she writes about him in a chapter “Feelings” or “Animals” in her latest book.
I hope my description would encourage some of you to get to know more about Jadwiga Staniszkis. I strongly recommend an interview with her available HERE.
