Barely born, more still babbling than talking, and already everyone is saddling her with a job for the next bimbalion of years. Architectural education. She is the one who is supposed to deal with most of the spatial and investment degeneration of our country. Wunderkind and Wunderwaffe in one. Carry in, carry out, sweep up.
After all, it's hard to have a debate about architecture lately, in which - when there is a lack of constructive ideas - the refrain does not sound: "Hey, is this by any chance a task for architectural education? Changing stupid regulations? Well, maybe, but ideally it's education nonetheless. Reforming the education of architects? Er, yyyy, pre-beach universities, just need to upskill the public. Compulsory landscape resolutions? Coercion is communism, fascism, Zandbergism. Let's educate and we'll see.
Then flies a ritualistic series of sighs about the lack of money, processing forces, grantmaking and the school system, which keep architectural education in perpetual infancy. And at the end of the debate - lest, out of sadness, the panelists do seppuku with a tulip fashioned from an allotted water bottle - encouraging information about the educational programs implemented by the IARP and, ever bolder and better, by the NIAiU.
Finally, everyone, barely alive, but alive nonetheless, disperses - to the next discussion. In between, the Pole, waiting for the cloister of education, continues to change the face of This Earth, builds a record 222,000 housing units in 365 days (that was in 2020), and educators are figuring out how to push the knowledge of architecture into schools more and permanently. And if they succeed with the cloister, who knows, maybe a pilaster of knowledge or a risalite of skills will be smuggled in as well.
But these are combinations that make no sense, because, after all, the more strongly we interact with some aspect of reality, the more it cannot be in a Polish school. Sex, the next question or call the (pro)superintendent. Climate crisis? That what? Ecology? Well, after all, there are still some animals alive. There will be nothing about society either, as WOS is to give way to "history and the present" talks. We will probably learn that if it were not for Sobieski the Bolshevik at Grunwald, it would not be what it is now.
Similarly with architecture. Why does man need this knowledge? Titus, the chimpanzee, the one from Papa Chmiel's comic strip, was humanized in dozens of ways, from scout, through more or less serious professions, but never through architecture, at most through historic preservation. And what? He came out as a human being - in one of his last books he reached the heights: he was promoted to supporter.
Finally, let's be clear, the school has other tasks than dealing with real problems. The more empiricism contradicts something, the more it is pushed into students' heads. After all, that's what catechists take the money for.
How about educating adults, then? From politicians and bureaucrats, to architects (really - some can't hurt), to ordinary citizens? They seem to be the ones who, here and now, have an impact on the space around us. In theory - get away with it, in practice - take cover who can. If, despite the evidence, tens of thousands of old bulls don't believe in covid, vaccines, climate change and the globalization crisis, then convince such that with space and architecture is different than they think. They'll get chased by an SUV, suffocated by smog and chewed up by a French bulldog.
And so it is that we live in a fairy tale, where reality and knowledge are one thing, and we are another, and perhaps even more fifths through tenths. Until one begins to believe in chemtrails - a conspiracy theory about suspicious fumes being sprayed into the atmosphere. We are on a high. Something is apparently preventing us in Poland from seeing reality and then taking the plunge.
So what about our architectural education? It's simple. Ban it.
"What are we going to debate at the debates?" - the panelists will probably be outraged. Wrong. After all, nothing works on a Pole as well as bans. If you forbid him, he will do spite, and so that a fly will not even squat. The secret sets, the flying university, the underground state sometimes worked better than today's authorities or universities. And, conversely, the more compatriots get something into their heads, the more it doesn't go there. In some high schools, more than 70 percent of students have already retreated from religion. The left's strongest electorate is among the young fattened by school patriotpapka. Well, now imagine what would be the effect of lessons on architecture squeezed into an already swollen school curriculum.
It would be easy to ban, because architectural education is a subversive activity. Once a person realizes what he is living in, his level of happiness and support for authority will evaporate. So: ban, because, indeed, architectural education is necessary, although - let's not kid ourselves - it is not the solution to all problems. Secret sets devoted to architecture and urban planning will start immediately. Teachers will start smuggling educational programs from other countries. The illegal trade in popularizing literature will take off on the darknet.
And at the popular level, the memory of the "architects of the exiled" will flourish. "Czeslaw Bielecki - we remember!". And on the walls: "MPZP Pany", "Wuzetka is a k...". And then there are those knits: the Quadrant House on the calf, the Szczecin Philharmonic Orchestra on the beat, and a circular and a coal wheel on the chest. "Death to the balcony thresholds," will shout from more than one sweatshirt. The press will report on the alignments of fanatics of KWK Promes with the supporters of the medusa group. Architecture and urban planning will enter the mainstream.
And to complete the work, signs will be added at border crossings:
POLAND - ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM IDEOLOGY FREE ZONE.
