Article
In the 2024/2025 academic year School Without Borders is planning to expand its activities and offer a multidisciplinary project entitled “Kabul-Warsaw”. The project’s aim is to reverse the standard approach whereby young learners are expected simply to conform to the receiving country’s educational system. The goal of the project is to develop a canon based on the dialogue between the two cultures and develop accompanying, unique learning materials.
During the first phase of the project, in cooperation with SWB partners and an Afghan history teacher, Mr. Walid Formoli, School Without Borders will invite its Afghan students to suggest their own reading canon and their own interpretive approach. External experts will be invited to talk about Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, Persian poetry, the 1979 Soviet Invasion, and other culturally significant moments of Afghan history Participants will be invited to share their own family stories, about those landmark events. The project will also include the Polish intellectual context, e.g., the Polish romantic poets and their fascination with Persia, the reaction against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan by Solidarność Walcząca, and other opposition groups of the 1980s.
The second phase of the project will be devoted to developing a learning tool, whose format will be determined by the actors involved. The product should be comprehensible to broader audiences, facilitate informal education on the political history of Afghanistan and Poland, be aesthetically pleasing, and intellectually stimulating.
Updated April 2024
