The Person and Upbringing Within the Context of Anti-pedagogy and the Catholic Personalism Discourse

Abstract

According to anti-pedagogy, any form of upbringing aimed at something or someone only masks the object of the educated, making them essentially puppets, appropriately controlled from without. Any purposeful approach to upbringing appeals to attributes that make the pupil not turn out to be what he/she is, but what his/her educators would want him/her to be. This approach is in direct contradiction to personalistic pedagogy, which posits an ultimate reality and value in personhood by emphasizing the significance, uniqueness and inviolability of the person, as well as the person’s essentially relational or social dimension. By emphasizing the autonomous value of a human being as a person and in propagating this with full affirmation, one is thus postulating that programs of activities supporting its development are to be subordinated to personal and spiritual values, and not to economic and technical values. This article presents the contemporary discourse between anti-pedagogy and the personalistic pedagogy with a special emphasis on Polish authors.