De viris mulieribusque illustribus

Teachers and Students from the Schools involved in the Project: Barbara Bibik & the students from Nicolaus Copernicus University Academic Junior and Senior High School in Toruń, Janusz Ryba and the students from Bartłomiej Nowodworski I High School in Cracow, Barbara Strycharczyk and the students from “Strumienie” High School in Józefów, Anna Wojciechowska and the students from Mikołaj Rej XI High School in Warsaw, and Katarzyna Marciniak, Faculty of "Artes Liberales", University of Warsaw. Presented at the conference Our Mythical History: Children’s and Young Adults’ Culture in Response to the Heritage of Ancient Greece and Rome May 22–26, 2019. A close collaboration with schools has been a crucial element and a source of joy to all the people involved in our activities from the very beginning of the Our Mythical Childhood programme. [...] it was only natural to us to consolidate our efforts with support from the ERC Consolidator Grant. [...] All four schools [“Strumienie” High School in Józefów, Mikołaj Rej XI High School in Warsaw, Nicolaus Copernicus University Academic Junior and Senior High School in Toruń, and Bartłomiej Nowodworski I High School in Cracow] accepted the challenge of presenting four important figures from Polish history who were well versed in the classical tradition and whose lives may serve as biographies of, indeed, the illustres. [...] Besides the educational value of the texts gathered in the present book, there is something of a similar, if not major, importance – namely, the brightness and the light of optimism that this task brings to the worldwide discussions on the crisis in education. As long as such tasks and challenges are undertaken by the new generations, there is hope. From the introduction by Katarzyna Marcinia