This article examines the jubilee book Nasz Plon [Our Harvest] prepared by editors of the Warsaw weekly magazine [Children’s Friend] (1861–1915) to mark the golden anniversary of its first issue. Set to appear in April 1911, its publication, plagued by various delays, did not take place until the following year. The volume, edited in a rather unprofessional manner (probably by Jadwiga Chrząszczewska), was full of errors ranging from misprints to all kinds of factual blunders. Yet, despite its faults it has a special place in the history of the Polish press: it was the first jubilee book of a children’s magazine and thus a notable sign of the rising social status of the children’s magazines.

The Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences: Technical Sciences (Bull.Pol. Ac.: Tech.) is published bimonthly by the Division IV Engineering Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, since the beginning of the existence of the PAS in 1952. The journal is peer‐reviewed and is published both in printed and electronic form. It is established for the publication of original high quality papers from multidisciplinary Engineering sciences with the following topics preferred: Artificial and Computational Intelligence, Biomedical Engineering and Biotechnology, Civil Engineering, Control, Informatics and Robotics, Electronics, Telecommunication and Optoelectronics, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, Thermodynamics, Material Science and Nanotechnology, Power Systems and Power Electronics.

Journal Metrics: JCR Impact Factor 2018: 1.361, 5 Year Impact Factor: 1.323, SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) 2017: 0.319, Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) 2017: 1.005, CiteScore 2017: 1.27, The Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education 2017: 25 points.

Abbreviations/Acronym: Journal citation: Bull. Pol. Ac.: Tech., ISO: Bull. Pol. Acad. Sci.-Tech. Sci., JCR Abbrev: B POL ACAD SCI-TECH Acronym in the Editorial System: BPASTS.

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of maternal and paternal languages on the development of a bilingual child’s language. It is assumed that a mother’s language has the greatest influence on a child’s language. In addition, maternal language is responsible for the largest part of the variety in the language children understand and use as well as the development of bilingualism. We also believe that fathers influence the language of a home and mothers influence the language of a child. In our analysis, the focus is on the quantity and quality of exposure to the given languages, the pattern of language used by parents, the language of formal instruction and the style of parentchild interaction. Over one hundred and fifty case studies were under examination depicting various language constellations, such as e.g. Polish and English, Polish and Russian, Polish and German, Polish and Ukrainian, Polish and Belarusian, Polish and Italian. Hence, with this paper we hope to be able to better understand cross-linguistic influence on bilingual speakers.

The purpose of the study is a synthetic presentation of the development of children’s magazines in Poland from their creation to the end of World War I. The main focus of interest and research are magazines for younger and older children (up to 15 years of age) published in the Polish language across the ethnic and historical Polish territories. Periodicals published in this area in other languages (German, Russian, Belorussian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Yiddish, and Hebrew), one-days and calendars, school magazines, scouting and ethical magazines, and of course youth and student press were omitted. In the course of the research, it is established that 177 titles addressed to young recipients appeared in the examined period, 25 of which were published in the years 1824–1863, and 152 in the subsequent period.

The text deals with the counterfactual thinking of preschool children. The theoretical justification for the research can be found in the nativist concepts of Alan Leslie and Alison Gopnik, which assumes that even very young children have a natural ability to accept the strangest creations of the imagination and to connect them together into one amazing whole. During the research, recognizing children’s metaphorical meanings required me to act as an interpretively involved observer-as-participant. In doing so, educational interventions enabled me to be situated within the observed phenomena, in close relationship with the children being studied. The observation, meanwhile, embraced the spontaneous activities of the children engaged in symbolic playing and the effect of these activities (mainly artistic concretizations). The liberation of counterfactual thinking in preschoolers being induced with literary texts. The collected material has allowed me to draw conclusions applicable to educational practice.

Childhood is a category which came to social awareness and scientific research relatively late. The discovery of childhood can be associated with the names of different thinkers and educators. In this article, I will undertake an attempt to reconstruct selected views about the child and childhood coming from J.J. Rousseau and J. Korczak. The first figure is said to be the discoverer of childhood in modern Europe, while the second one is the discoverer of childhood in Polish education, and a progenitor of the modern meaning of childhood. The analyzes that I conduct shows the evolution of understanding of this category.

The first part of this article focuses on one strand in the history of the weekly magazine Przyjaciel Dzieci (The Children’s Friend) under the editorship of Jan Skiwski (1892–1911), i.e. the gradual revision of the rules concerning the selection of its literary content, laid down by his predecessor Jan Kanty Gregorowicz (1867–1890). Skiwski modified them without abandoning the principles and artistic models of 19th century realism.

The second part of this article examines the content of the main sections of the weekly magazine Przyjaciel Dzieci [The Children’s Friend] (1892–1911), i.e. popular science; travel, geographical and ethnographical materials; biography; a section called “teaching actions”; and religion. Also covered are miscellanea, practical tips, puzzles and cartoons, as well as new sections “About the World” and “Educational Games and Entertainment”. Finally, the article looks at a review published by Poradnik dla Czytających Książki [A Guide for Book Readers] in 1901, whose author claims that some of the information in Przyjaciel Dzieci is outdated or obsolete.

In the text, a polemic is undertaken against the model of the child expected in Polish institutions of early childhood education, and which appropriates the rationalities producing social practices. The source of this model is in the logic of standardization whose cognitive and effects on identity are criticized by the author. Identifying the sources of validation of the practices normalizing some children and stigmatizing others, who do not meet the requirements of the cognitively rigid and morally trivialized standards, the text points to developmental psychology as a discipline which potentially triggers this form of oppression. In conclusion, the author describes briefly a number of examples of educational solutions in which an attempt has been made to move beyond the discourse of standardized quality in child education.

The paper describes the political use of symbols of childhood and orphanhood in the current policy of the Russian authorities. At the beginning of the Bolshevik regime, homeless children (bezprizorni) became a subject of interest for the security apparatus organized by F. Dzerzhinsky. At that time, A. Makarenko developed his innovative pedagogical approach. These activities were designed to create a “new Soviet man”. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia again faced the problem of homeless children. After several years, however, children and orphans are now being used as a symbol of vulnerability in the government policy of the Kremlin. As an answer to the so-called “Magnitsky Act”, the Russian authorities implemented the “DimaYakovlev law” prohibiting adoptions of Russian children to the United States. In addition to this, the child as a symbol of innocence and vulnerability is an invariant element in the policy of the Russian authorities. This combines symbolism associated with bravery, dedication and sacrifice, allowing justification of the current political course of power in Russia.