The culturalization process of learners in the Polish-German borderland

Abstract

The issues explored in the article concern experiencing acculturation stress by children inhabiting Gubin (on the Polish-German borderland) whose parents decided to educate and fulfill school duties in the German cultural environment in the neighbouring Guben. It was assumed that methodical education in German school of Polish children who live with their parents in their homeland: (a) contributes to the children’s applying different culturalization strategies in different areas of life – these differences are visible mostly in the public and private sphere and they change with growing up; (b) becomes the source of permanent and/or recurrent enculturation stress, which children at primary education age are not prepared to manage in the psycho-physical (individual) and social dimension as they lack family support and the support from the receiving environment (culture). What became the basis for the undertaken discussion were the results of some studies conducted in the Polish-German borderland in 2004. They concerned the axiological preferences of I–III class children living in culturally diversified environments as well as some new phenomena, not observed in other regions. They encouraged the author of this study to provide a broader view upon the issues of the culturalization process and to repeat the studies in 2007 and 2017 in order to capture the relative dynamics of this phenomenon.