In a room on the first floor of an ordinary nine-story building, which we were given as a club for working with children, hung a charcoal-drawn portrait of Janusz Korczak. He attracted the attention of passers-by. And for us he was a kind of pedagogical icon.
Janusz Korczak was born on July 22, 1878 into a family of Polish Jews, and in the same place, in Poland, he created his legendary Orphanage for children. And then concentration camps with gas chambers were built there. One of them, Treblinka, became the final destination for him and his children.
Korczak was not married. His choice is children. He was engaged to them for life. He would be a doctor and treat everyone, including the wounded in the war. He also wrote books. It was Korczak who was the first human thing I read about pedagogy. It turned out that one can speak about children in a simple and clear language, not to lisp, not to be smart, but to talk everyday, but lively and subtly. Few knew them as well as the “Old Doctor”. Precisely children, not ideas about childhood. Their inner world, their strengths, weaknesses and peculiarities. Few people knew and felt like that. And what is significant: Korczak himself was not a “big child”, who remained in the children’s world and was akin to children. Rather, he was a stalker. Not all adults are allowed into childhood, a kind of reserve of human existence. Only those who truly feel the fragility and value of what is there can get into the security zone. Who himself, despite his age, is akin to this zone. Who, like a sensitive barometer, is able to capture the vibrations of the soul, the painful changes in the growth of a child. Children grow up and leave the zone. Stalkers-teachers stay to protect childhood.
Janusz Korczak “How to Love a Child”
The humanist Janusz Korczak was merciless towards adults. It is bitter and ashamed when you recognize yourself in the many everyday situations that he writes about.
Korczak was a true, sincere and unselfish defender of children. After all, children need protection: both from themselves and from the aggressive world of adults. It is symbolic that once in the ghetto, he and his children literally protected themselves from the real life that was outside the walls of their boarding school, creating for the children the illusion of another – familiar, peaceful, fair.
Korczak said simple, banal things: one must love a child, respect his personality and his weakness, recognize his right to make mistakes, the right to live for today and be himself. And his words were not at odds with his own deeds. Korczak was not a saint, although his own life was similar to the gospel. He was just kind and honest, smart and patient with children. And, when required, was with them to the end.
Janusz Korczak preferred not to show the children the way in life, but offered them to make their own choice. He did not teach “truth”, but urged everyone to search for it on their own. When at the age of fourteen they left the Orphanage, he admonished them thus1:
- We do not give you God, for each of you must find him in your own soul.
- We do not give the Motherland, because you must find it with the work of your heart and mind.
- We do not give love to a person, because there is no love without forgiveness, and forgiveness is hard work, and everyone must take it upon himself.
- We give you one thing – the desire for a better life, which does not exist, but which will someday be, for a life of truth and justice. And maybe this desire will lead you to God, Motherland and Love.
1 From a 1919 speech known as “The Farewell”.