Abstract
This article presents an educational programme designed to explore the multicultural history of Poland. Targeting Jewish and non-Jewish students of Polish heritage, the Polonia Programme (PP) was conceptualised with the aim of applying the tools of experiential education to initiate a new approach to examining one of the world’s most challenging and fraught historical narratives. The programme, piloted in the summer of 2014, takes two groups of young people from the United States to Poland each year. It features a combination of formal lectures and interactive tours, complemented by structured and semi-structured discussions. The destination of this particular tour, with these particular participants, both challenges and reinforces accepted notions of “heritage tourism” within an experiential educational framework. This framework enables a sense of group connectivity which allows students to be, perhaps, more open to alternative narratives about the past. The authors of this article, who were involved in evaluating the pilot launch of the Polonia Programme, found that the programme’s experiential approach succeeded in encouraging participants in the pilot cohort to challenge ideas about their definitions of and preconceptions about “who and what counts as Polish”. For many, the experience shifted their understanding of Poland towards one which took its multi-ethnic and multicultural history into account. Several discovered new perspectives on their own identity and heritage, while others reached a new understanding of the shared histories of Poles and Jews. The experiential nature of this programme also allowed students to encounter difficult histories: experience, then, became a vehicle for more challenging conversations and deeper learning.
Résumé
Rencontrer le passé dans le présent: étude exploratoire du tourisme patrimonial éducatif – Cet article présente un programme pédagogique consistant à explorer le passé multiculturel de la Pologne. Destiné aux jeunes juifs et non juifs d’origine polonaise, le Polonia Programme (PP) a été conceptualisé de sorte à appliquer les outils de l’apprentissage expérientiel afin d’amorcer une nouvelle approche pour examiner l’un des faits historiques les plus complexes et sensibles qui existe. Testé au cours de l’été 2014, ce programme accueille chaque année deux groupes de jeunes résidant aux États-Unis et en Pologne. Il consiste en une association de cours magistraux et de visites interactives, complétés par des débats structurés et semi-structurés. Le lieu de destination de cette visite spécifique accomplie par ces participants spécifiques interroge et renforce à la fois dans un cadre d’apprentissage expérientiel les idées reçues sur le « tourisme patrimonial » . Ce cadre favorise un sentiment de lien avec le groupe, qui aide les élèves à être éventuellement plus ouverts aux versions différentes du passé. Les auteurs de l’article ont participé à l’évaluation du projet pilote du Polonia Programme et constaté que l’approche expérientielle de ce programme a réussi à inciter les participants du groupe d’essai à remettre en question leurs définitions et préjugés quant à « qui et quoi est considéré comme polonais » . Pour la majorité d’entre eux, l’expérience a modifié leur vision de la Pologne pour tenir davantage compte de son passé multiethnique et multiculturel. Certains ont découvert de nouvelles perspectives de leur propre identité et patrimoine, tandis que d’autres ont développé une nouvelle appréhension du passé commun entre Juifs et Polonais. La nature expérientielle de ce programme a en outre permis aux élèves de se confronter à des passés difficiles: l’expérience devient alors un vecteur pour des échanges plus exigeants et un apprentissage approfondi.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Names of people, most places, as well as the name of the programme have been changed for reasons of protecting their identities.
The Solidarity movement grew out of the foundation of the Solidarność trade union at the Gdańsk shipyards in 1980. The movement clamoured for workers’ rights and social change, and the Soviet-run government tried to crush it by introducing martial law in 1981, which was not lifted until 1983.
For more information on the MOTL programme, see https://motl.org/ [accessed 17 November 2016].
For a critique of the survey, please see http://www.tabletmag.com/author/magdalena-gross [accessed 17 November 2016].
The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews is located on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto. For more information, see http://www.polin.pl/en [accessed 17 November 2016].
The Jewish Community Centre of Kraków was set up in 2008. For more information, see http://www.jcckrakow.org/en/ [accessed 17 November 2016].
The annual Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków is held in late June or early July and lasts 10 days. For more information, see http://www.jewishfestival.pl/en/jewish-culture-festival/ [accessed 17 November 2016].
An intervention which is less history-based, but related to the noted framework was enacted 20 years ago. Samuel Gaertner, John Dovidio and Betty Bachmann (1996) discussed how in-group identities in multi-ethnic settings could combat some stereotyping and racism, while James Liu and Denis Hilton (2005) discuss how events are “selected” into in-group identities.
Students were recruited through individual professors in contact with the parent organisation. Most were recruited by professors in related fields (such as Polish history). Most students were from the mid-west region of the United States where a large portion of Polish-Americans reside. The majority of the participants were female (65%). One of us, Ari Y. Kelman, conducted in-depth interviews during the final two days of the trip with all 35 students. These open-ended interviews lasted between 10–30 min. Of nearly 50 applications, 35 students were invited to participate and 30 attended. Selection was based on age of applicant, letter of application, and applicant's connection to their Polish heritage.
The Lemko are an ethnic minority in the Carpathian mountains. Their language is a Ukranian dialect. After the Second World War, there were forcible deportations of Ukrainians and Lemko by the Soviet government, displacing Lemko form this region.
The 1968 student-led freedom movement was shut down by Polish government and police. The 1989 freedom movement, which was called the Solidarity movement, was a coalition between students and workers led by Lech Walesa; other notable leaders included Adam Michnik and Jacek Kuron.
To protect participants’ identities, their names in this paper are pseudonyms.
References
Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem. Penguin.
Aviv, C. S., & Shneer, D. (2005). New Jews: The end of the Jewish diaspora. New York: NYU Press.
Bar-Tal, D., & Rosen, Y. (2009). Direct and indirect models of peace education. Review of Educational Research, 79(2), 557–575.
Bilewicz, M. (2007). History as an obstacle: Impact of temporal-based social categorizations on Polish-Jewish intergroup contact. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 10(4), 551–563.
Bilewicz, M., & Jaworska, M. (2013). Reconciliation through the righteous: The narratives of heroic helpers as a fulfillment of emotional needs in Polish-Jewish intergroup contact. Journal of Social Issues, 69(1), 162–179.
Blejwas, S. (1998). Jews in the mental world of Polish immigrants. Przewodnik Katolicki of New Britain, Connecticut. In T. S. Gladsky, A. Walaszek, & M. M. Wawrykiewicz (Eds.), Ethnicity, culture, city: Polish-Americans in the USA: Cultural aspects of urban life, 1870–1950 in comparative perspective (pp. 1907–1920). Oficyna Naukowa: Warsaw.
Bukowczyk, J. J. (Ed.). (1996). Polish Americans and their history: Community, culture, and politics. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Chatterjee, P. (1993). The nation and its fragments: Colonial and postcolonial histories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Davies, N. (2005). God’s playground: A history of Poland (rev. edn; 2 vols). New York: Columbia University Press.
Deak, I., Gross, J. T., & Judt, T. (2000). The politics of retribution in Europe: World War II and its aftermath. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Dewey, J. (2007 [1938]). Experience and education. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Feldman, J. (2008). Above the death pits, beneath the flag: Youth voyages to Poland and the performance of Israeli national identity. New York: Berghahn Books.
Gaertner, S. L., Dovidio, J. F., & Bachman, B. A. (1996). Revisiting the contact hypothesis: The induction of a common ingroup identity. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 20(3), 271–290.
Garton Ash, T. (2002 [1981]). The Polish revolution: Solidarity. 3rd edn. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Garton Ash, T. (2002b). Trials, purges and history lessons: Treating a difficult past in post-communist Europe. In J. W. Müller (Ed.), Memory and power in post-war Europe: Studies in the presence of the past (pp. 265–282). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Gross, J. T. (2000). Neighbors: The destruction of the Jewish community in Jedwabne, Poland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Gross, J. T., & Gross, I. G. (2012). Golden harvest: Events at the periphery of the Holocaust. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Gruber, R. E. (2002). Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish culture in Europe. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Huener (2003). Auschwitz, Poland, and the politics of commemoration, 1945–1979. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.
Kelner, S. (2012). Tours that bind: Diaspora, pilgrimage, and Israeli birthright tourism. New York, NY: NYU Press.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B. (1998). Destination culture: tourism, museums, and heritage. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Kolb, D. A., Boyatzis, R., & Charlampos, M. (1999). Experiential learning theory: Previous research and new directions. In R. J. Sternberg & L. F. Zhang (Eds.), Perspectives on cognitive learning and thinking styles (pp. 227–248). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Kolb, D. A., & Fry, R. (1975). Toward an applied theory of experiential learning. In C. Cooper (Ed.), Theories of group processes (pp. 33–57). London: John Wiley.
Kugelmass, J. (1993). The rites of the tribe: The meaning of Poland for American Jewish tourists. YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science, 21, 395–453.
Lehrer, E. T. (2013). Jewish Poland revisited: Heritage tourism in unquiet places., New Anthropologies of Europe series Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Lehrer, E. T., & Warchoł, J. (2014). Na szczęście to Żyd: Polskie figurki Żydów [Lucky Jews: Poland’s Jewish figurines]. Kraków: Korporacja Ha!art.
Liu, J. H., & Hilton, D. J. (2005). How the past weighs on the present: Social representations of history and their role in identity politics. British Journal of Social Psychology, 44(4), 537–556.
MacCannell, D. (1976). The tourist: A new theory of the leisure class. New York: Schocken Books.
Michlic, J. B. (2002). Coming to terms with the “dark past”: The Polish debate about the Jedwabne massacre. Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-semitism.
Michlic, J. B. (2006). Poland’s threatening other: The image of the Jew from 1880 to the present. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Porat, D. A. (2004). It’s not written here, but this is what happened: Students’ cultural comprehension of textbook narratives on the Israeli-Arab conflict. American Educational Research Journal, 41(4), 963–996.
Seixas, P. (1997). Mapping the terrain of historical significance. Social Education, 61(1), 22–27.
Steinlauf, M. C. (1997). Bondage to the dead: Poland and the memory of the Holocaust. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
Wertsch, J. V. (2002). Voices of collective remembering. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Wineburg, S., Mosborg, S., Porat, D., & Duncan, A. (2007). Common belief and the cultural curriculum: An intergenerational study of historical consciousness. American Educational Research Journal, 44(1), 40–76.
Witkowska, M., & Bilewicz, M. (2014). Czy prawda nas wyzwoli? Przełamywanie oporu psychologicznego w przyjmowaniu wiedzy o Zagładzie. [Will the truth set us free? Breaking the psychological resistance to new knowledge about the Shoah.] Zagłada Żydów. Studia i materiały, 10, 803–822.
Witkowska, M., Stefaniak, A., & Bilewicz, M. (2015). Stracone szanse? Wpływ polskiej edukacji o Zagładzie na postawy wobec Żydów [Lost chances? Influence of Polish education about the Holocaust on attitudes towards Jews]. Psychologia Wychowawcza, 47(5), 147–159.
Zubrzycki, G. (2006). The crosses of Auschwitz: Nationalism and religion in post-communist Poland. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gross, M.H., Kelman, A.Y. Encountering the past in the present: An exploratory study of educational heritage tourism. Int Rev Educ 63, 51–70 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-017-9622-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-017-9622-9