In Częstochowa, two opposition figures from the communist era began a hunger strike on September 8 in defense of Polish schools. This extreme form of protest is a response to the arrogance of the Minister of Education in Tusk’s government, Barbara Nowacka, who ignores the voices of society, parents, and religion teachers speaking out against her radical school reform. The protest by Jan Karandziej and Stanisław Oroń is part of a broader dispute over parents’ rights, memory, Polish identity, and Poland’s future. A hunger strike always carries a real risk to health. Such an extreme gesture is undertaken when the stakes are high and those in power no longer listen to words.

Karandziej stated that the strikers want to “awaken a million consciences” to stimulate social oversight over what is taught to children. Every totalitarian regime always wants to control schools, where the minds of children and young people are shaped, in order to impose the regime’s ideology on future generations. This is demonstrated by the French Revolution, the Nazi regime in Germany, and the fascist regime in Italy, but above all by communist regimes around the world, starting with the Soviet Union.

Unfortunately, even today in countries perceived as democratic, certain political circles want to impose a radical left-wing agenda on societies. This is happening in Poland, where the current Polish government is the most radical, left-wing, and anticlerical since the democratic changes of 1989. This character of the government is particularly visible in the activities of the Ministry of National Education led by Barbara Nowacka, a radical feminist, atheist, supporter of the “right” to abortion and state funding for in vitro fertilization (including for single women), and in favor of the adoption of children by same-sex couples.

On the one hand, the current minister is trying to eliminate all patriotic content from school curricula and to eliminate or marginalize religious education hours; on the other hand, she is introducing a new subject called “health education”. This euphemism masks sex education, aimed at the early sexualization of children and adolescents, while also promoting gender ideology.

At the heart of the school controversy is the question of the role of parents. They are the first and most important educators of the child, the strikers point out. This does not mean that parents should independently design the core curriculum or decide on every single textbook page. The school should play a supportive role for the family; it does not replace it and cannot usurp its fundamental rights. The state has the obligation to guarantee a common level of education, student safety, and access to reliable knowledge. However, the line is crossed when a public institution stops limiting itself to teaching and begins shaping a child’s worldview differently from or in contrast to that of the parents, during a period of life when children and young people are highly vulnerable to any new ideology, fashion, and propaganda.

Education is not neutral. Every decision about what to teach and what to omit is based on a specific view of man. Similarly, eliminating religious, patriotic, or classical content does not create a neutral school. It creates a school based on different values to shape the “new man” desired by today’s left-wing radicals.

Recently, Nowacka took another step: without consulting parents or teachers, she imposed the so-called “planetary diet” on schools, which sharply differs from the diet of Polish people. The “planetary diet” is a concept developed by the EAT-Lancet Commission and funded, among others, by entities investing in alternatives to animal protein. As Polish Member of European Parliament Patryk Jaki pointed out, “we must ask ourselves whether this is really just about children’s health and the planet’s well-being, or if it also reflects specific economic interests. I have not found any other European Union country that has implemented such a radical model in schools on a mandatory basis. Of course, elements of this diet can be found in many countries: more vegetables, less sugar, whole grains, and there is nothing wrong with that. The problem is that these are not new solutions; the controversy mainly concerns the reduction of animal products and the mandatory introduction of plant-based meals”. For children in Polish schools, this disrupts their eating habits while also dealing a severe blow to Polish livestock farmers. The new “planetary diet,” based largely on plant foods, has also been severely criticized by Mateusz Morawiecki: “Come to your senses,” thundered the former prime minister, accusing the government of implementing changes without social consultation.

Today’s debate on education in Poland and the commitment of “Solidarność” activists on this front is not pure coincidence. Education and schooling were among the areas that the communist system attempted to subordinate to the state. The family, the Church, and independent culture defended the sphere of human freedom during the communist era, just as the “Solidarność” trade union did. History does not repeat itself in the exact same way, and today’s democratic Poland cannot be mechanically compared to the Poland of the communist regime. Unfortunately, the mechanism of temptation remains similar: any authority may want to believe that children belong to the state (meaning those who govern) and that they have a greater right than parents to shape new generations.

The Italian article was published on the ACI Stampa website