Social Order. Between Expectation and Reality

Abstract

This study refers to the ‘decalogue of renewal’, a concept generated by the Polish social opposition movement in 1980–1981 reconstructed by Piotr Sztompka, and later applied by Zbigniew Kwieciński as one of the benchmarks (criteria) of good social order. The study aims to establish to what extent the expectations of that mass social movement, largely included in the ‘decalogue’, have been met and ‘modernised’ after three decades in Poland’s transformation. Which of the decalogue values influence what contemporary young adults think about social order? The study also seeks to assess the level of social order in today’s Poland. To this end, a survey was conducted in 2020 at one of the universities in Pomerania, Poland. The empirical material was collected using an opinion questionnaire developed by Kwieciński (1987). Young people (education students) were asked to make two assessments of the level of social order on a six-point scale. In the first, the respondents evaluated to what degree they recognised the listed social life values as their own and therefore worth the effort to achieve their implementation. The second assessment was intended to determine to what extent a given value is currently present in Polish social life. The unfolding analysis is founded on concepts of socio-cultural evolutionism and isomorphic mechanisms of social development. Such an approach seems pedagogically justified as it allows us to consider social and educational processes in terms of developmental stages, and thus, build a relatively universal framework for studying not only individual and social development but also the level represented by members of society. According to Habermas’s and Kohlberg’s hypotheses on developmental isomorphism of an individual and society, well-integrated within the insights of the evolutionary model, the vast majority of people are incapable of moving beyond the development stage currently represented by society. Our study revealed a deficit in social life values perceived as desirable by young adults, as well as only a limited interest in community values among students. Consequently, it may be concluded that the three decades of ‘modernisation’ processes in Poland have not contributed to a transformation of attitudes and value systems represented by individuals and institutions, in particular those responsible for education.