Discussions on Pedagogy as a Science

The article deals with the problem of theoretical and methodological awareness within pedagogy. The author begins by observing that Polish pedagogy was cut off from the pre−war Polish tradition and from the European tradition for a number of years after World War II. He then proceeds to review the problem of theoretical and methodological awareness in European (especially Italian and French) pedagogy in the last few decades. The aim is to join the mainstream of European pedagogy. His foremost concern is with the question whether pedagogy can be regarded as a science. He stresses the complexity of the problems pedagogy deals with and the need to take an integral view of man's education. The next problem taken up concerns theoretical and methodological awareness within pedagogy, which is affected for example by the social and political situation, by cooperation between pedagogy and other disciplines (some models of such cooperation are mentioned), and by whether pedagogy is viewed as a single discipline or as a complex of educational disciplines. In the concluding part of the article the author states the existence of a connection between pedagogy and culture and suggests that the present crisis of theoretical and methodological awareness in pedagogy is partly due to the fact that European culture, the "paideia" in European culture, is going through a crisis