Health Education: How Poland’s New Curriculum Sparked a Culture War

Top down…

Poland’s Ministry of National Education introduced this health education program to be taught in primary and secondary schools from September 1. It was supposed to be a “modern” way of introducing children and youth to topics such as managing emotional and physical health.

The program was first publicly communicated in the spring of 2024. Initially, it was meant to be mandatory. However, it quickly caught the attention of political groups and the media in Poland, sparking ideological divisions around whether the new subject was a secret plot of leftist propaganda to sexualise underage children.

As a result, the Education Ministry declared this year that the new class would be voluntary for now, just as the religion class is. Yet the change only caused more confusion and questions about the value of the program and its real purpose.

Poland’s right-wing president, Karol Nawrocki, tweeted in late September that he wouldn’t allow his son to attend the “innocent-sounding” subject that is actually a way to “smuggle ideology and politics into Polish schools.” A few days later, the mayor of Warsaw and Nawrocki’s recent political opponent in the Polish presidential race, Rafal Trzaskowski, posted on Facebook that his son would be attending the “well-needed” program.

The divisions were exacerbated by the media, with journalists catching out right-wing politicians (opposing the curriculum) who proved unable to explain simple ideas, such as the differences between menstruation and ovulation. Some were asking: if you, as adults, do not understand simple terms, how do you expect to teach your children about it?

Only one of the 11 points included in the program, which is available to read online, relates to sex education. Other areas discussed included mental and digital health, among other subjects.

This didn’t stop an overwhelming number of parents from withdrawing their kids. One of the schools BIRN talked to saw less than 2 per cent of its pupils sign up for the class.

The wide variety of subjects and the Education Ministry’s communication chaos may be the very reasons behind the failure of this program, says Agata Kostrzewa, a communications expert who researches public discourse at the University of Warsaw.

“It includes mental and physical health, but there is also ecology, and even ethical-philosophical questions involved. It’s so wide, so vague, so general, and leaves so much room for interpretation that you have no idea what it’s about.” Kostrzewa tells BIRN.

According to Kostrzewa, Poland’s left-wing minister of education, Barbara Nowacka, who was appointed to office following the last parliamentary election in October 2023, has not been particularly successful in presenting a coherent vision for the “modern school” – a slogan she has repeatedly used and declared she’s aiming for.

“If I were an average parent, I’d wonder what the word ‘modern’ actually means? Is it about providing schools with better equipment? Or is it about teaching our children how to – let’s say – work with AI so they still have a job in the future. Nowacka comes in and the first thing she does is say ‘no homework’,” says Kostrzewa, referring to one of the first ordinances from the new minister from last year, where she banned homework in primary schools. That change, similar to the health education program, sparked fierce debate and controversy across the country.

Kostrzewa believes the Education Ministry represents a “command-and-control style approach”, where the elites come up with random ideas and impose them on citizens. “And it’s only adding fuel to populist and conspiracy theory narratives that are filling the gaps for the people who may be neutral about the subject itself, but have no clear information or do not feel included in the discussion,” the researcher says.

The framework and the curriculum for the new subject were developed by an interdepartmental team that includes a sexologist, a teacher, and a priest running a foundation focused on patients’ rights and health education, according to the ministry’s website.