Drowned in Contempt, Entitlement, and Intimidation. The Preschool Education Teacher in Poland. An Online Discourse on Professional Position Through the Lens of Lived Citizenship

Abstract

The starting point for the issues addressed in this article is the feminist critique of citizenship universalism, along with one of the responses to this critique – namely, the concept of lived citizenship. The aim of the analyses presented in this article is to reconstruct the position of preschool teachers as it appears in discourse concerning the unfair treatment and positioning of this profession. The focus is therefore on the position of female teachers as citizens who, in their everyday lives, experience the consequences of state policy, as well as the consequences of social treatment and public opinion concerning their profession. The discourse examined emerged around a reader’s letter published on 3 October 2024 in the nationwide daily Gazeta Wyborcza, titled “We Have Drowned the Profession of Preschool Education Teacher in Contempt, Entitlement, and Intimidation.” The letter itself and the surrounding discourse were treated as material that enables insight into state policy, as it permeates the daily experiences of preschool teachers, while also revealing mechanisms of power. The material analysed consisted of the aforementioned letter and 370 comments written in response. The study employed Critical Discourse Analysis, with particular attention paid to the application of discursive strategies described by
Reisigl and Wodak. The analyses show, among other things, that in the context of state policy, the discourse in question is primarily a discourse by and about female citizens who are discriminated against compared to other groups of teachers and who are also undervalued by state policy. In relation to the positioning of the profession in public opinion, including that of parents, what is particularly visible are the lack of respect, the shifting of parental responsibilities onto teachers, the deprecation of the profession, and
the infantilisation of female teachers.