Introduction

Abstract

This chapter opens with an overview of the outstanding features of the personality of Janusz Korczak (1878–1942) and his accomplishments as a world-class educator. There is a broad consensus among educational thinkers, researchers, and practitioners familiar with his life, writings, and educational practices that he was at once one of the outstanding humanist educators of the twentieth century—some would even say, in the annals of human history—and an exceptionally gifted, path-breaking social-pedagogue of international standing. The well-known American developmental psychologist and moral philosopher Lawrence Kohlberg places Korczak among those exceptional humanists and great moral educators, such as Socrates, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr., who reached the highest possible stage of moral development. Korczak’s originality as an educator is embodied in the system he developed and implemented, which enabled abused, emotionally and intellectually deprived children from broken families, who suffered from considerable social-interpersonal pathologies, to undergo significant processes of self-reformation over a period of six to eight years by virtue of their residence in the two orphanages he headed. The effectiveness of this system under his supervision and leadership earned him worldwide recognition as an exceptionally gifted pedagogue and moral educator of the highest order. In many European educational circles, he was called the twentieth century’s Polish Pestalozzi after the famous Swiss social-pedagogue and educational reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827) whom Korczak himself greatly admired. In some very significant ways, once one accesses his educational theory and practices, it would be fair to say that Korczak is the twentieth century Polish equivalent of John Dewey (1859–1952).

 The chapter proceeds to characterize the nature of Korczak’s writings about basic issues in the fields of society, education, and pedagogy which is anecdotal and narrative, rich in thick descriptions of events, incidents, and actions, laden with details, and rarely footnoted and the difficulties his style poses to anyone seeking to present his philosophy and theory of education in a coherent linear manner. The chapter ends with a presentation of the book’s division into five chapters and a brief description of their respective themes and topics: Chap. 1 – “Introduction”; Chap. 2 – “Korczak’s Road to Radical Humanism”; Chap. 3 – “Janusz Korczak’s World-View”; Chap. 4 – “Korczak’s Educational Theory and Its Reflection in His Pedagogy”; Chap. 5 – “The Significance of Janusz Korczak’s Life and Legacy for Education Today”. The chapter concludes with an explanation of the book’s methodology, characterized by efforts to discuss issues in the philosophy and theory of education in accessible language combining systematic discourse with the warm, friendly, personal tone of Korczak’s writing. In the appendices at the end of Chaps. 2, 3, and 4, readers will find a selection of Korczak’s original writings related directly to the themes and issues raised in each chapter.