Shner, 2021, Janusz Korczak and Yitzhak Katzenelson: Two Educators in the Abysses of History
This article follows a question about the role of education and children in our long struggle for peace: can education be the endeavor that will bring about peace among men? It explores the answer Janusz Korczak, a 20th-century world-known educator, gave in theory, literature, and practice in his life work. Many wrote about Korczak, but most of it was about the last chapter of his life: his heroic struggle for the welfare of hundreds of children in the dying Warsaw Jewish Ghetto. People know about his last march to the death train that took them to Treblinka (August 5, 1942). However, few know about his inspiring educational thinking and his idea of all human solidarity around the cause of children. Korczak searched for a milieu that would accept all men as equal, will wipe away the old dividing lines of faith, nationality, race, social status, and gender, and create a world of harmony and peace among all. In King Matt the First (1923) Korczak described the naïve efforts of children to establish a kingdom of peace where boys and girls, Europeans and Africans, rich and poor, settle their matters just and rationally. Only the adults fail them cynically and return society to the known reality of wars. The novel was translated into more than 30 worldwide languages. It is the story of Matt – a ten-year-old prince who becomes king after his father dies and then tries to establish a children's kingdom and implement several social reforms – describes in a literary way Korczak's utopia of children's emancipation that he tried to implement in his orphanages. It places the blame for the failure of the children's kingdom on adults, not on Matt, who as a child, is too naïve to be aware of the plotting of people around him. One must respect children’s qualities and their limitations. A central idea in Korczak's worldview is that children need adults' honest guidance to lead full lives. Korczak is using a children's book as a vehicle to express his most inspiring ideas of all human solidarity. It is a source of inspiration for generations of educators. Children around the world read the book. This article invites the readers of the novel to discuss the relevancy of Korczak's legacy for peace education today.
