An initiative meant to modernise youth health education has turned into an ideological flashpoint. Was it always doomed to fail in Polish culture and amid the current polarisation?
 |
| Secondary school students prepare for final graduation (Matura) exam at a general education liceum in in Gorzow Wielkopolski, western Poland, 04 May 2023. EPA/Lech Muszynski |
Jennifer Wawrzyniak’s 14-year-old son is one of three children in his 17-person class who attend the newly state-introduced health education curriculum at a school in Bodzyniewo, in west-central Poland. In a village of only around 200 people, his participation drew ridicule from his peers, who wondered why he would sign up to the “sex education” program.
“My parents made me,” the boy, a member of a local football team, would shrug, and eventually the mocking stopped, his mother recounts.
Still, she feels disappointed that so many parents fell for a fear-mongering campaign by some politicians and the media, who painted the curriculum as a secret scheme to demoralise children, rather than a sensible program that introduces them to simple ways of managing their health in a variety of areas.
There are no controversial topics in the program, she insists: “We all live in a small village, and the parents know our school! They know that every school year here starts and ends with a Holy Mass! They know the health education teacher, too! It’s the same teacher who runs the biology class.”
This is not the first time that Poland’s sharply polarised society has shown distrust towards a new curriculum dreamt up by the country’s politicians. In 2022, the then-education minister, Przemyslaw Czarnek, representing the previous conservative government, introduced a highly controversial and politicised “History and the Present” (Historia i Teraźniejszość, or HiT). The new government of Donald Tusk started gradually winding down that program last year, a process which is expected to be finalised in the school year of 2026-2027, according to local media.
 |
| Polish Education Minister Barbara Nowacka |
Poland’s Ministry of National Education introduced this health education program to be taught in primary and secondary schools from September 1. It was supposed to be a “modern” way of introducing children and youth to topics such as managing emotional and physical health.
The program was first publicly communicated in the spring of 2024. Initially, it was meant to be mandatory. However, it quickly caught the attention of political groups and the media in Poland, sparking ideological divisions around whether the new subject was a secret plot of leftist propaganda to sexualise underage children.
As a result, the Education Ministry declared this year that the new class would be voluntary for now, just as the religion class is. Yet the change only caused more confusion and questions about the value of the program and its real purpose.
Poland’s right-wing president, Karol Nawrocki, tweeted in late September that he wouldn’t allow his son to attend the “innocent-sounding” subject that is actually a way to “smuggle ideology and politics into Polish schools.” A few days later, the mayor of Warsaw and Nawrocki’s recent political opponent in the Polish presidential race, Rafal Trzaskowski, posted on Facebook that his son would be attending the “well-needed” program.
The divisions were exacerbated by the media, with journalists catching out right-wing politicians (opposing the curriculum) who proved unable to explain simple ideas, such as the differences between menstruation and ovulation. Some were asking: if you, as adults, do not understand simple terms, how do you expect to teach your children about it?
Only one of the 11 points included in the program, which is available to read online, relates to sex education. Other areas discussed included mental and digital health, among other subjects.
This didn’t stop an overwhelming number of parents from withdrawing their kids. One of the schools BIRN talked to saw less than 2 per cent of its pupils sign up for the class.
The wide variety of subjects and the Education Ministry’s communication chaos may be the very reasons behind the failure of this program, says Agata Kostrzewa, a communications expert who researches public discourse at the University of Warsaw.
“It includes mental and physical health, but there is also ecology, and even ethical-philosophical questions involved. It’s so wide, so vague, so general, and leaves so much room for interpretation that you have no idea what it’s about.” Kostrzewa tells BIRN.
According to Kostrzewa, Poland’s left-wing minister of education, Barbara Nowacka, who was appointed to office following the last parliamentary election in October 2023, has not been particularly successful in presenting a coherent vision for the “modern school” – a slogan she has repeatedly used and declared she’s aiming for.
“If I were an average parent, I’d wonder what the word ‘modern’ actually means? Is it about providing schools with better equipment? Or is it about teaching our children how to – let’s say – work with AI so they still have a job in the future. Nowacka comes in and the first thing she does is say ‘no homework’,” says Kostrzewa, referring to one of the first ordinances from the new minister from last year, where she banned homework in primary schools. That change, similar to the health education program, sparked fierce debate and controversy across the country.
Kostrzewa believes the Education Ministry represents a “command-and-control style approach”, where the elites come up with random ideas and impose them on citizens. “And it’s only adding fuel to populist and conspiracy theory narratives that are filling the gaps for the people who may be neutral about the subject itself, but have no clear information or do not feel included in the discussion,” the researcher says.
The framework and the curriculum for the new subject were developed by an interdepartmental team that includes a sexologist, a teacher, and a priest running a foundation focused on patients’ rights and health education, according to the ministry’s website.
The principal of one of the primary schools in Suwalki, in north-eastern Poland, who asked to remain anonymous, notes there are no school textbooks for the subject, which leaves sceptical parents concerned about the contents of the program. It was his school that saw only 1.5 per cent of the students sign up for the program.
The institution even struggled initially to convince any of the teachers to agree to teach the class until the biology teacher stepped up, he adds.
“I think there is a lot of chaos and confusion among the parents and the teachers,” he says, adding that parts of the program content are covered in other subjects, such as biology and physical education.
The principal also points towards the lack of information, a lack of preparation, and the informational inconsistency about whether the subject would or would not be obligatory as reasons for the low attendance across the country.
Zoe Adanowska, whose 16-year-old son does not attend a health education program in one of Warsaw’s schools, says she doesn’t like the idea of a state interfering in the education of children when it comes to such personal subjects as sex.
Although she’s aware that children can get misleading or harmful information through social media, she believes it should be a parent’s role to decide what they should or shouldn’t be taught at a certain age. Adanowska says she doesn’t trust in the qualifications of the “random people” suddenly assigned the role of health and reproductive guides at Polish schools, and thinks resources should rather be allocated towards giving parents the tools to support their kids through adolescence.
“It would be much more effective to provide parents with support and tools that help them address important subjects with their children in an individually thoughtful way and at the right time, rather than simply forcing them to send their kids to a class where children with different levels of readiness, sensitivity and cultural backgrounds are given a single, top-down narrative,” she says.
Kostrzewa argues the program would see much more success if the Education Ministry had a better strategy of consulting, introducing and communicating their ideas. “In a true democracy, the initiatives should be bottom-up. The government should pick up on the issue, and then consult with many stakeholder groups over a longer period of time,” she says, adding that both no homework and health education may be perceived as substitute solutions.
Yet the health education program is expected to be continued in the next school year.
In January, the former health minister, Izabela Leszczyna, was cited by local media as saying that “even the best ideas… don’t pan out well. I’m convinced that this year is the time to convince the entire society, all parents, that health education is very important and beneficial for their children. I’m certain we will achieve this.”
Poland’s Ministry of National Education didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment about the low attendance rate and the future of the program.
