Drogi życiowego sukcesu : perspektywa pedagogiczna (Akademia Ignatianum w Krakowie, 2020)
In the common language, the subject of “success” is often discussed. Success is associated with a person’s particular achievements that are admired by others. The term is also discussed by representatives of humanist, social or economic sciences. Within social and humanist sciences, success is being discussed by sociologists, psychologists and, recently, also pedagogues. In pedagogical sciences, especially extreme cases are analysed – the success of a talented student and the success of a person who experiences various kinds of failures, i. e. success in resocalization. The way of understanding different kinds of success we experience every day is not a very popular subject though. We can even ask whether, in everyday life, a person is conscious of the fact that he/she achieves success? What is the influence of such success on themselves and their environment? These and similar questions made me consider the way of understanding success by those who are getting closer to it through their daily work. I have been trying to learn about the pedagogical meaning of success to attempt to transfer it later onto the area of upbringing. In the research, which is based on the biographies of a person with physical disability, a sportsman, a businessman and an actor, I have posed the question: what does it mean to be a man of success? While considering the meaning of the term “success”, it is worth emphasizing that it is referred to a person who, due to his/her work, in compliance with the valid law, i. e. through moral actions, is convinced that he/she has obtained material or spiritual goods that are meaningful for them. Thus, success becomes not only a theoretical or ideological category, but also a form of practice of social life. Its value is, first of all, the fact that it influences a person’s identity and their responsible functioning in the world. This, in turn, shows that success is connected with the person’s everyday life and it results from their long-term actions aimed at the achievement of established objectives. My observations indicate the need for a multifaceted analysis of not only what a person believes to be success, but also the way to achieve it and, most of all, an analysis of the opportunity to support the person in achieving success. This direction of the research should be particularly interesting for teachers/pedagogues who are obliged to help young people on their way to maturity and independence. Such way of thinking about success is to encourage teachers to pay attention to the individuality of both the students and the experiences the pedagogues analyse. Pedagogical reflection on the analysed reality seems to make teachers/pedagogues more sensitive to the existing structures and levels of coexistence of various factors that make it easier to understand the phenomena taking place during a person’s development with regard to the success he/she achieves. The implications – pedagogical references, elicited in the course of the research that is carried out, are to indicate this reality. The formulation of such implications is to place emphasis on the new pedagogical knowledge related to the meaning of success achieved in life. The use of such knowledge may provide innovative inspirations for releasing new educational initiatives that motivate the students to establish inspiring objectives in their lives. The research has shown how success can be understood. According to the analysed people, success is based on many different factors that form specific categories. They make it possible for us to conclude that the achievement of success should not be connected with one meaningful event, but with a series of events that reveal the meaning of the actions a person takes up. Taking up such actions enabled the authors of the analysed biographies to indicate the values significant in their everyday life.
Keywords: pedagogika; language commodification; language policy; politics of language; Russian language; sociolinguistics