The essay is devoted to the relationship between the design of school furniture and other interior design elements in the open-air school (école de plain air) in Suresnes (designed by E. Beaudoin and M. Lods, 1932–1935) and the pedagogical and social assumptions accompanying its construction. The functioning of the school and the role that furniture plays in this program are discussed, as well as how the furniture design responded to the interesting pedagogical program of the international outdoor school movement. The second part of the text discusses the main trends in the design of school furniture in France in the interwar period. Architects’ theoretical views on the problem of so-called “new education” in the design of school buildings and their equipment (mainly texts and projects by Maurice Barret, published in “Architectured’aujourd’hui”). Trends in furniture design are presented against the background of the pedagogical concepts of that era: Maria Montessori’s pedagogy and progressive trends in teaching, under the influence of which class spaces began to be designed as rooms with flexible functions, thanks to features such as light, multi-functional school furniture using modern shapes and materials.
The article by Apolinary Garlicki, a history and geography teacher from Przemyśl, and later a member of parliament during the Second Polish Republic, was published in installments right before the outbreak of the First World War in the local periodical “Ziemia Przemyska”. A lecture which was an incentive to write that article had been delivered by Garlicki on 17 May 1914 at the city hall in Przemyśl during the meeting of the Adam Mickiewicz Folk University. The essay is written from the point of view of a historiosopher. One can see here a reflection on the books that Garlicki read. They were not only the works by Adam Smith, from which he started his discussion, but also books by the theoreticians of progressive education, a trend in pedagogy at the turn of the 20th century, focusing largely on the significance of the environment in the practical upbringing of children and youth. The author leads the reader through various historical periods and makes references to many contemporary events – the social policy of the USA, the increasing significance of Japan, the Balkan wars etc. Garlicki discusses with ease not only the meanders of history but also the latest issues in sociology, psychology, economy, political science, making no attempts to hide his fascination with Darwinism and presenting its results in the growing nationalism and competition between nations in the early 20th century. The lecture helped Garlicki to write two books on the then fashionable theme of eugenics: Co to jest eugenika? [What is eugenics?] (1917) and Zagadnienia biologiczne-społeczne [Biological and social issues] (1924).
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