Mis-educative martial law : the fate of free discourse and the moral judgment competence of Polish university students from 1977 to 1983

Abstract

Poland is still a young democracy. The transition from an authoritarian to a democratic society happened only twenty years ago. It was not an easy transition, as the first author witnessed as a school student and later as an university student. The second author witnessed this transition in Poland from outside the Iron Curtain , as the border in Europe between the Western capitalistic, democratically ruled countries and the Eastern communist, autocratically ruled countries was called. He participated in an unusual longitudinal study of university students in Western and Eastern European countries. A research grant of the Humboldt Foundation to the first author made it possible to combine both viewpoints and discuss the democratic transition of Poland from two very different angles, not only from two different national backgrounds but also from two different professional points of view, namely moral philosophy and experimental psychology. The question from which we departed was of a general kind: How can the gap between democracy as an ideal and as a way real life be bridged? The answer to this question, it seems, cannot leave out the role of law and education.