Henryk Palkij

The paper presents educational trips of sons: Seweryn Józef (older) and Wacław (younger) from the viewpoint of their father Stanisław Mateusz Rzewuski – the Voivode of Podlasie, later the Great Crown Hetman. Seweryn’s travel through Germany, Belgium, France, Italy and Austria took place under the custody of Marcin Kawiecki in the years 1720–1723. Knowing his son, the hetman was afraid of the results of the trip, but he did not spare his time and costs to ensure its successful accomplishment. However, he did not expect his son to cause so much trouble to him. The incident in Brussels affected the further course of the trip and forced the hetman to keep reminding the son of his expectations. Seweryn’s attitude also made the whole trip much more expensive. Less turbulent was Wacław’s trip (from circa the middle of 1724 to circa Easter of 1727), which he made on a similar route, also under Kawiecki’s custody. The hetman was satisfied with its results, but he was concerned about his son’s passion for flute playing that had emerged in the meantime. The educational trips under consideration were an example of a typical educational path of a young nobleman, which comprised home education, school lessons and travelling abroad. Their aim was to prepare sons for active participation in political life and to reinforce the family’s position in the Commonwealth.

Effects of history and civic education teaching in junior high school are verified during both internal evaluation and external examination. After introducing a new core curriculum for general education, the junior high school examination was changed as well. In reference to History and Civics those changes were fundamental. A new separate part of the examination was created, which checks the level of knowledge and skills in the field of History and Civics classes. Now it is possible to analyze particular categories of skills more carefully as the number of tasks included in the paper has increased. Due to that fact, the analysis of History teaching results has become more objective. It is less applicable, however, to the results of Civics teaching. The paper analyzes categories of skills and individual skills from exams in the years 2012 and 2013 again. The objective of the research was to look for factors influencing the level of performance and the correlation between skills, knowledge and historical epochs which the tasks refer to.