Commission of National Education - Effects

Effects

Although the Commission only operated for roughly 20 years, it managed to completely change the shape of education in Poland. The Enlightenment-based school programmes and books influenced a whole generation of Poles. Also, although education was still far from being universal, it reached a much wider group of people, including peasants. The thousands of teachers trained in lay teachers' seminaries became the backbone of Polish science during the Partitions and the generation educated in the schools created and supervised by the KEN became the most prominent personalities of the Polish Uprisings and of politics in Central Europe in the 19th century. In addition, the 27 elementaries textbooks and manuals published by the commission laid the foundations for Polish language terminology in chemistry, physics, logics, grammar and mathematics. They were used by all prominent Polish scientists and authors of the 19th century, from Adam Mickiewicz to Bolesław Prus and from the Lwów School of Mathematics to the Lwów-Warsaw School of History. The guidebook to chemistry by Jędrzej Śniadecki was used in Polish schools well into the 1930s.

It is often argued that because of the efforts of the Commission of National Education the Polish language and culture did not disappear during the Partitions of Poland, despite heavy Russification and Germanisation.