Exploring the Verbal and Nonverbal Messages of Children Through Janusz Korczak’s Lens

Abstract

ABSTRACT Janusz Korczak (1878?–1942), an outstanding Polish pedagogue, theoretician and practitioner, conducted systematic research on the language of children, as evidenced by their verbal statements and the description of nonverbal behaviour included in his pedagogical works. The article presents the results of the analysis of the most important pedagogical text by Janusz Korczak, i.e. How to Love a Child. The Child in a Family (1919) in which he descried how a child communicates with an adult (mainly mother) from birth until reaching adulthood – initially, among others, by shouting, vocalizing and then babbling, single words, and finally utterances, and all this to build a relationship with an adult who often does not understand the child’s speech and is not their ally in the process of communication. The article also discusses the polyphonic nature of the monograph of the great educator, in which the voice was mainly given to the child.