PL
The paper addresses the issue of educational policy undertaken by the Ministry of National Education of Poland over the period of the last two decades. Drawing on the assumptions of critical pedagogy, the author analyses education macro-policy, the condition of educational institutions and various socializing environments and tries to reveal forms of violence and power embedded in them. The author claims that the Ministry negates democratization of education and neglects the values of democracy and democratic citizenship. He also reveals many sites and mechanisms of structural and symbolic violence that negatively affect the quality of educational processes. In his concluding remarks, the author argues that a truly public education should be based on the principles of decentralization, self-governance and subsidiarity.