My Polish Alphabet: R for "Red Belt"

 

 

"Red Belt" (Czerwony Pas) was one of the songs that we sang with my primary school girls' choir. One of the two I can recall.

The song about Hutsuls (Carpathian highlanders) living their happy and free lives in the Carpathian Mountains is quite old and known both in Poland and Ukraine. I like the changing tempo of the tune - from slow to a faster one. It is also one of the traditional songs that used to be sung by many generations on both sides of the Polish/Ukrainian border. The piece comes from a drama (published in 1843) written by Józef Korzeniowski, Polish writer who lived in the area that was part of Poland then. Nowadays, it is western Ukraine.

A traditional version of the Red Belt

 More modern version of the song by a contemporary folk group

Our choir director was also our Music teacher, a man in his early thirties.  As I have already mentioned in one of my previous posts, the Music curriculum in Polish educational system is related to general knowledge of music, its history, composers and their main pieces + basic understanding of notes and musical notation.  The choir was an extra/after classes activity, officially not mandatory. However, if the teacher said you had a good voice/musical ear, you had to participate in the choir activities to get an A in Music.

So we did sing at school assemblies and once even participated in a regional school choirs competition. I cannot remember what the outcome of the latter was, though. Our teacher was quite good at his profession, he played the piano during the Music classes and accompanied the girls' choir. We had the songs sheets, with lyrics only, as singing songs/notes was not part of the school subject curriculum. We simply followed the musical instructions given by the teacher and the melody played by him on the piano.

During the summer break, the teacher was part of the music band on the Stefan Batory passenger liner, that regularly cruised between Poland and the USA. At that time, traveling to the Western countries including the US was not a thing that everybody could do. Mainly those people whose jobs required crossing the border were allowed to do so. The man must have been a good piano player to get a job on that passenger cruiser and/or perhaps had some "connections" that helped him achieve that.

Stefan Batory

Somehow, my girlfriend and I did not see that particular side of it all and we were not impressed that the man managed to see the States every now and then. We found it rather funny and peculiar that an honorable teacher was also a band musician on a boat. These days, I look at it differently, but being kids, we found it weird and rather undignified.

Another thing that made us little girls laugh was the teacher's socks that he tended to wear quite often.

It was the time of the "Interkosmos" mission project, when the international astronauts crew made their first spaceflight. Our teacher seemed to like wearing colorful socks with the "Interkosmos" logo on them. I do not know whether anybody else noticed that, but we, silly girls, did.

Wherever the man is these days, I wish him all the best. I liked the choir days/time.

The other song I can recall we sang with the girls' choir was a Polish version of Joan Baez's song "Donna". The Polish lyrics made it an anti-war song. Somehow, I can still remember the song words.

(My free translation into English)

One life you have,
who will you give this flower to,
do not go across the river,
you will perish there.
One life you have,
who will you give this flower to,
when a shot will come from across the river.

People, people do not perish,
you will save the world.
People, people, I pity you,
It is the war that is to perish.

Dona, Dona...

PS
Years ago, when I was still working in Poland, one day, I happened to wear a t-shirt with the word "Texas" on it. During a class, some students of mine started giggling "O - Texas, Texas". I guess, my Texas t-shirt was in their eyes an equivalent of the Music teacher's Interkosmos socks.

Credits: 

Stephan Batory ship photo: By Wolfgang Fricke - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=103579976

P for Primary School

The end of school and graduation season makes me think about the state school system I have gone through.

In Poland, at least at my school time, the end of the school year/ graduation was not a big deal. Adults worked, kids studied and everybody was expected to do their part well. No end-of-school parties, or big graduation ceremonies. You just brought your school certificate/diploma home, and your parents were pleased if the final results were good, but nobody made a fuss about that. The school year simply ended and kids were happy. That was all.

My kindergarten graduation day

The exception was the high school prom, I will write about that another time, though. This time I am going to focus on the primary school level.

I need to explain the difference in the meaning of the word "class" regarding the school system. Here in the US, a class = all the students of the same year. In Poland, a class is a formally assigned group of students of the same age/born in the same year. In my school time, it was about 30/33 kids in class. Later, the number was lowered to about 23. Anyhow, the students of the same class/group do the mandatory curriculum subjects together throughout all the years at a particular school. There are many classes/groups of students at each level/year. They are labeled with a number (=school year) and a letter (=group name), eg. class 1A = group A/grade 1.

In the US, each town/city has its independent school district. In Poland, there is one Department of Education (the equivalent of a school district) in each voivodeship (region/the equivalent of a US state). The departments in the country follow the regulations set by the Ministry of Education.

The law defines that for students aged 7 to 18, studying at school is mandatory. They cannot leave school/drop out before the age of 18. If they do quit their schooling, parents are fined then.

The school year starts on 1 September. Two months of summer holidays time finish then. School gala dress worn by kids on the first/last day of school and on school holidays is/was a white shirt and dark (black or navy blue) skirts/ trousers.

The annual photo day - grade 6. At that time, each class in our school had an emblem (a badge sewn on the white shirt). In our case, the emblem (a boat) was sea related. On a regular school day, as all the school kids at that time, we wore blue school uniforms that parents bought at clothes stores. The lady in the photo was our "home teacher" (sea below), she also taught us Arts.

Grade O (preschool) - kids at the age of 6 - organized at schools and kindergartens. This grade is optional, most children attend it, though.

Grade 1-3
The same teacher teaches one group of children for three years. When I worked at the early primary education level, I taught kids all the subjects including Maths, Polish (reading and writing), Environment (elements of Botany, Biology, and Geography), Music (singing, musical notation, and playing percussion instruments), Crafts, Arts, and PE.
These days, from the first year at school, the little ones are also taught a foreign language, usually English.

Grade 4
Transitional year. Subject teachers take over. The norm is that the same teacher works with a group of students till grade 8 - the end of the school.
Maths (including Arithmetic, Algebra, and Geometry) are taught by the same Math teacher,
Polish (all language areas, reading, writing, grammar, and literature) is taught by one teacher also. Other subjects we had were Biology, Geography, History, Arts, Crafts, and PE. One of the teachers who works with a particular class/group is also their "home teacher" who controls attendance and stays in touch with kids' parents.

Grade 5
More subjects were added: Physics, Chemistry, and Russian. Nowadays, Russian is not part of the mandatory curriculum. Instead of that another Western European language is added.

Grade 8
We had one more subject - Citizenship Education (something like Civics). Among others, we learned a lot about the history of our city.

The modern curriculum is a bit different, there is also IT, of course. As I mentioned before, all the curriculum subjects are mandatory. When I was a student, we had to get positive grades in all of them to pass. It is different now. Whoever failed, repeated a year. However, there is/was no summer school. Nowadays, the ones who fail, in order to pass/get to the next grade, do an extra exam at the beginning of the next school year.

Another difference - there is no recess of the type it is in American schools. Instead of that, there are 5, 10, minute breaks between the classes/lessons. Usually, there is also one 20-minute break during which lunch is served in the school canteen. Kids whose parents decided to pay for the meal, have it in the canteen. The weekly menu is prepared by a school dietitian. The meal is usually the same for all kids and consists of a bowl of soup, a main course, a fruit drink (based on cooked fruits) + a dessert (yogurt or fresh fruit). Other kids bring their lunch from home and have them in the school halls.
When I was a student, there were no vending machines at schools and no cafeteria. I did not like the school meal so I always had my sandwiches/lunch prepared by my mom We had no lunch boxes, though.

School photo day - grade 8

Music classes include singing, learning about the history of music (listening to various music pieces), and basics regarding musical notation. No bands and no instruments playing in regular schools. If one wants to play the violin, for example, they go to a local state music school and have to pass an entry exam to study there. Schools of that type have classes in the afternoons two or three times a week.

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When I was a primary school student, all the learning was theoretical. In Chemistry and Physics classes we only observed science-related experiments done by the subject teacher. We had no labs, and no frogs cutting in Biology classes either.

There have always been Clubs (such as Sports or Choir) = optional classes that take place after school hours.

Oh, and one more thing. In Poland, there was/is no such thing as school detention time.
No school buses at least in city schools, either. Going on a field trip - a school rents a coach/paid by parents, using public transportation is also common.
No showers in older schools - you washed yourself at home.
No school mascots and no school sports gear that you get at school. The dark shorts and white T-shirts which we wore in PE classes were bought by parents in regular stores. Sometimes there was a problem with the white shirts, I do not know why they were not always available.

Instead of the yearbooks, there was an annual photo day. Class/group photos were taken then.
We had no school auditorium either. All gatherings were held at the gym.

Well, we did not have some things, but we did have fun and the quality of the school education was really good.

Any questions regarding the primary school level?

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This post is part of "My Polish Alphabet" which is about people, places, and things that come to my mind when I think about Poland.

Cherry Spring Country School

Not long ago, on 11 September, we visited the old Cherry Spring School, which was built in 1885. The school pavilion was constructed much later, in 1935. The latter was used for school performances/gatherings and classes were run there as well.

 

Visiting an old classroom makes us think about all those students and teachers who learned and worked there. Unfortunately, most often the teachers are not remembered and their names are gone with the wind. I have tried to find the names of the educators who worked at Cherry Spring. Well, at some point Miss Cora Petmecky taught there.

Once a teacher, always a teacher - a blessing or a curse?

 

 

The curtain (made of canvas) was purchased in the 1950s.

 

Best student in class

I know, teachers should like all the students equally. I did try to follow that rule in the past. These days, that best student is my favorite one. Rules do not apply here. 😊

Song

Sometimes I wake up in the night with a song on my mind. Usually, the song gets stuck to me for some time until I hear it sung by a singer. Recently, it has been the song which starts with  "Jedno życie masz..."/"One life you have...". I learned it at primary school, and I sang it then with the school choir. Most of the lyrics I had forgotten, that was only that one verse:

 

"Jedno życie masz, komu dasz ten kwiat, nie idź za rzekę zginiesz tam"/

"One life you have, who will you give that flower to, do not go across the river, you will perish there."    

 

 I remembered that the original version in English was sung by Joan Baez, so I looked for a video on youtube.

Interestingly, looking for the Polish version of "Dona, Dona", I also learned that it is actually a traditional Jewish song with lyrics in Yiddish.

 

Well, there is always something new to learn. I like the red dress by the way.

The Polish lyrics were not about cows going to slaughter, though. It was more like an anti-war song.
 

Finally, it is, I found the words I had learned at school.

 

"Jedno życie masz, 

komu dasz ten kwiat? 

Nie idź za rzekę zginiesz tam.

 

Komu dasz ten kwiat? 

Życia swego kwiat? 

Kiedy zza rzeki padnie strzał? 

 

Ludzie, ludzie nie gińcie,

Wy ocalicie świat.

Ludzie, ludzie szkoda was. 

To wojna zginąć ma.

 

Dona Dona Don..."

Which is

 

"One life you have,

Who will you give that flower to?
Don't go across the river,

You will perish there.

 

One life you have,

Who will you give that flower to?
The flower of your life?

When the shot from across the river will be fired.

 

People, people do not perish,

You will save the world.
People, people do not perish,

The war is that one to die.

 

Dona Dona Don..."

 

 
I did not manage to find any live version of the song sung in Polish (with the particular lyrics mentioned above), so the song is still here Dona Dona Dona Dona...