FlyingUniversity
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http://www3.uj.edu.pl/Muzeum/Smoluchowski/rodzina/z%20Zofia%20i%20Jadwiga.jpg
Organized in 1882 by Jadwiga Szczasinska-Dawidowa (1863-1910), the Flying University was a secret academy for young women wanting to take college-level courses but unable to travel out of Poland for study. Initially about 200 students were involved, but that number grew to 1000 in a few years. Marie Curie and her family were involved from the very beginning. The classes were held in private residences around the city. They were taught by professional historians, philosophers, and scientists.1
This underground college, so named because students and professors had to keep moving from one location to another to escape surveillance by the police, attracted the finest minds in the country. Though divided into two socialist factions-one advocating national independence and the other an international socialist alliance within the Russian empire-they were united in their determination to keep alive Polish history and culture, which the Czar was determined to stamp out. Those who were caught spent a few weeks, months, or even years in a prison cell, or in exile in Siberia. 2
The FU attracted the support of radical professors, such as Wladyslawa Smolenski, Adam Mahrburg (1855-1913), or Ludwig Krzywicki (1859-1941), and Jan Wladyslaw David (l859- 1914), the philosopher, Jadwiga Szczawinska-Dawidowa's husband. In time, four separate faculties were organized, and diplomas were issued at the end of courses as rigorous as anything offered in the public sector. Maria Sklodowska-Curie was but the best known of the graduates. After 1906, when the Flying University was legalized, it took the name of the 'Society for Scientific Courses', and in 1919 the 'Free Polish University'. It still has its imitators today.3
The secret gatherings of the Flying University provided social as well as academic opportunities. Zofia Nalkowska, a precocious fifteen-year-old who wanted to be an emancipated woman (and who would become a wellknown novelist), kept a diary of the sessions at the Dawids. apartment during the time that Korczak was there. in one entry she notes that the girls were really dressed up, but that she looked as attractive as any of them in her brown dress, which gave her a good figure. She tried to concentrate on what Dawid was saying, but sometimes found herself glancing over at the boy with the nice smile who had asked to borrow her notes. 4
In the mid 70's and early 80's the Flying University was re-formed by dissident intellectuals in Communist Poland. More details to follow, but here are details of a few faculty members:
[edit] Links and Bibliography
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1from: http://www.hypatiamaze.org/marie/cbiop2.html
2from: http://korczak.com/Biography/kap-4.htm
3from: http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~koby/political/education.html
4from: http://korczak.com/Biography/kap-4.htm
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