THE POLISH EDUCATION SYSTEM TODAY: AN INTERVIEW WITH KATARZYNA POTYRALA

It is without doubt that education and teaching is a key to a better life quality of society. Many countries accentuate education quality, keeping the latter a priority of all education system. The Polish education system has faced various changes over the last few years. The Polish education system is close to the Lithuanian system, it distinguishes itself in deep traditions. It is always interesting what challenges are encountered abroad, how the education process is organized, what teaching and learning environment looks like, what challenges the 21st century education meets. One can notice that school, municipality and community collaboration is extremely vivid in Polish schools, a very great attention is devoted to history and geography, patriotism and citizenship education. This is also very important for Lithuanian education. Both Lithuanian and Polish education become not resistant to the influence of globalization. As Duoblienė notices (2011), globalization leaves less and less space for separate states to solve problems, especially in education sphere. For example, regardless that Poland is a much bigger state than Lithuania concerning both territory and population, similar problems are characteristic of both countries. For example, in Poland the same as in Lithuania are observed poor demographic tendencies, emigration and other.