Open letter to popular Polish weekly magazine

At the beginning of September one of the most popular conservative weekly magazines in Poland published an article about homeschooling as an alternative for educational revolution in Polish public schools. We have debate about sexual education, promotion of gender ideology in Polish school, books and that article encouraged to thinking about homeschooling as a serious alternative for public education.

There was just one sentence which I didn’t like. The author, who is a Catholic activist, wrote that the biggest group in Poland that educate their children at home because of their  faith and worldview are “fundamentalist protestant cults”. So you can see why a lot Catholics in Poland think that we are cults.

In reaction to that, I wrote an Open Letter to that Magazine and the author of the article, I expressed my gratitude for seeing positive aspect of that education but as a pastor and a parent I had to correct that mistake. I was surprised when magazine published my letter which wasn’t short and the author wrote a public apology under that letter.

Homeschooling in Bartosiks family

We homeschool Zuzia (the 4th grade) Janek (the 2nd) and Maja (the 0 class). The challenge is getting bigger and bigger not only because of the difficulty of working on three different levels, but also planning their time for developing their gifts and talents. Lack of curriculums for homeschoolers as well as schools experimenting on pioneers make homeschooling more time consuming and a bit stressful for Jola. We have no Christian School in Gdansk and formally our children are students of Christian Primary School in Poznan. It’s 200 miles away and they have to pass exams in the School in order to move to the next level. In January Zuzia is going to take three of five exams that she is obliged to take this school year.

Although it is a challenge for us we can see good fruits of it: knowledge and character of our kids and in our character. Besides teaching our children at home Jola gives English lessons 2 afternoons a week after my work. The news of the month is that we’ve got a dog! Children were very consistent asking us for it for years (about 4 years!) so we gave up. Nala sleeps in the hall and everybody at home has a duty to walk her out at least once a day. It seems we are going to get fit :) 

"Homeschooling as alternative for contemporary school" in Gdansk

On Saturday (9th of March) we had the conference "Homeschooling as alternative for contemporary school" in Gdansk. It was great time. 35-40 people participated in that but  150 people also listened and watched it online thanks live transmission.

We had 4 lectures:

Pawel Bartosik - "Homeschooling as educational opportunity in Poland"

Andrzej Polaszek - "Homeschooling in Polish law"

dr Agata Hofman - "Homeschooling in practice"

Jaroslaw Pietrzak - "Christian School as place of support for homeschoolers"

After the lectures we had 1,5 hours of discussion (Q & A).

HERE you can see more pictures.

About our homeschooling in popular Polish magazine

We debuted in the illustrated popular in Poland magazine for women :) It is a special edition "Moment for You". In the new issue they published an article (and pictures) about our family in the context of our homeschooling. This is actually my wife's Jola interesting story on this subject, which (according to the idea of the editor) starts with our engagement 11 years ago :-)

I published some photos below. Homeschooling in Poland is still something exotic but every year more and more families decide to live this way. In March 2013 we want to make a conference about Christian education and Christian homeschooling in the place of our Services. Please pray for that project and development of Christian education in Gdansk and in Poland.

We continue homeschooling

In September we officially started 2nd year of homeschooling of Zuzia (7 years old) – our oldest daughter and the 1st year of our son - Janek. We are one of 2 families from Gdansk who practice homeschooling so weren’without troubles and doubts. Today we thank God for this opportunity! Thanks God in May Zuzia passed her exams in Christian School in Poznan where she belongs and we’are going to start the same educational way for Janek after holidays. In September also the second family from our church (Piotrek and Kasia Ciunel) started homeschooling of their oldest son – Michal.