Report on ICT in Education in the Republic of Poland

Abstract

The history of Poland dates back to 966, when the first ruler Mieszko I was baptized and converted to Christianity. His son was crowned to become the first king of Poland. In the twelfth century Polish lands went into the period of fragmentation, which lasted for 150 years, just to become united again at the end of the thirteenth century. In the sixteenth century the Kingdom of Poland started to have close relations with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which led to the creation of the Republic of the Two Nations (the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth)—one of the largest countries in the political history of Europe. The end of the seventeenth century was the country’s golden age, but then it went into a period of decline and it ceased to exist at the end of the eighteenth century due to three partitions conducted by its neighbors. In the meantime, some vestigial forms of the country emerged from time to time, but Poland did not regain its independence until the end of World War I, at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Second Polish Republic existed until 1939, the beginning of World War II, when its lands became occupied by German and Soviet armies. After WWII Poland found itself behind the Iron Curtain and governed by the communists (in 1952 the country’s name was changed into the Polish People’s Republic). The Polish United Workers’ Party ruled in Poland until 1989. In 1980, after massive strikes, Solidarity trade union emerged (whose leader, Lech Walesa, became later the president of Poland). These events began the process of democratization and economic reforms, which allowed the Republic of Poland to join NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004.