The Persistent Legacy of the Fallen Empires. Assessing the Effects of Poland's Historical Partitions on Contemporary Social Norms Regarding Education

Abstract

This paper refers to the historical experience of Poland in order to demonstrate the importance of former institutions on present regional differences in the norms regarding education. Previous studies revealed significant discrepancies between the scholastic achievements of students in different regions in Poland, ones that correspond to the partition of the country by its three neighbours (Austria, Prussia, and Russia), lasting from the late 18th century to the close of WWI. In particular, students in the former Austrian partition perform better than their peers in the two other regions. In this study, a self-designed survey of parents is used to operationalize different kinds of norms regarding education. As it turns out, parents from the region formerly under Austrian rule show more trust in educational institutions, more belief in the formative role of schooling, and less conviction in the material returns from education. The results show that contemporary discussions on the geography of educational achievements need to take into account the broad cultural context of education.

Norms in action? On the channels through which Poland’s historical partitions may still contribute to divergent educational achievements in the country’s regions

“…What do these results tell us about the transmission of norms towards education as a main channel explaining the ongoing gap between the former partitions? The evidence does not strongly support this line of reasoning, at least not in a way that corresponds to the contextual equilibrium effect defined by Angelucci and Di Maro [42] and that would corroborate the findings of earlier studies [2,41].…”

“…Previous research suggests that the persistence of an achievement gap between Poland's former partitions may be related to divergent norms towards education that emerged as a consequence of different policies administered by the 19 th -century empires concerning the cultural and political autonomy of the Polish population [1,2]. Although the difference in attitude towards education is, in fact, observed [41], the direction of causality is not clear. While the higher achievement of students in the Austrian partition may be explained by their positive norm towards education, the norm may also stem from the higher level of human capital.…”

“…The channels whereby regional differences in educational achievement have persisted in Poland offer a challenging and unsolved research puzzle. Past studies elaborate on possible explanations, pointing out regional differences in monetary returns to education [1,3], the positive framing of Polish identity in 19 th -century Austrian schools, as opposed to schools in other partitions [2], and the regionally uneven trust in the formative role of education, beyond its advantages as an 'investment' [41].…”

“…Bukowski [2] emphasised the positive framing of Polish identity by the Austrian educational system as a potential source of durable advantage of the former Austrian partition in terms of students' school achievements. If this intuition is correct, one should expect that the gap in achievements in history and Polish would be at least as large as it is for mathematics, or even greater, given that Herbst [41] noticed that parents here tended to care more about the formative role of the school than about the 'usefulness' of the skills it teaches.…”

“…Firstly, if the positive attitude towards education in the former Austrian partition originates from the opportunity to cultivate Polish identity and culture under Habsburg rule (as suggested by earlier research), then one could expect that the gap in achievements in history and Polish would be at least as large as that in mathematics and that it would be robust to the inclusion of additional covariates in the specification. Indeed, one could expect it to be even larger, given I noted [41] that parents in the former Austrian partition tended to care more about the formative role of the school than about the 'usefulness' of the skills that it teaches. In reality, however, as indicated by the present study, the effect of the Austrian partition on achievements in history and civic education is weaker than it is for other subjects.…”