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Polish Adventists Plan Internet Home School Project

plan to establish an experimental Internet education program for home-schooling has been welcomed by Poland's Ministry of Education, according to Seventh-day Adventist Church sources in Poland.

Endorsed by the Polish Adventist Church, a self-supporting foundation was established to prepare and operate an open learning education method based on the Internet. The venture aims to reach Polish-speaking children in the country itself and abroad.

Joe Smoczynski (right), a businessman who initiated the project, says the venture represents a partnership between a self-supporting ministry run by the Adventist Theological Seminary in Podkowa Lesna, the local church, and the Christian Internet site, Service Hope.

The open learning system is based on significant parental involvement. The new program will provide the administration, structure, techniques, material, and teacher involvement in order for parents to guide their children through the compulsory educational years.

In its initial stages, the school will offer a program for the first three grades of a K-12 schooling. "We hope to be ready [with the additional curriculum] in a couple of years, but the initial stages of creating the project are behind us," says Smoczynski.

Educators involved in the project say the program will provide a solution for parents who are committed to their children=s education, but who are in circumstances where they need to stay at home. Wladyslaw Polok, president of the Polish Adventist Church, says the combination of the church=s 100-year-old tradition of home-schooling and modern technology "will bring us in the forefront of compulsory education in Poland." He says the project would benefit many sections of society, including the thousands of Polish families living abroad, such as diplomats.

"Our Christian-based open learning method is going to be the leader showing the standards by which students should be assessed," adds Polok.

The school will offer its program to everyone, but it will be based on principles of Adventist education, says Zdzislaw Ples, rector of the Adventist Seminary in Podkowa, Lesna. "By using the Internet we can monitor the student's progress with custom-written software and guide parents while maintaining government standards are met," he says.

The school is expected to be directly registered with the Ministry of Education as an experimental program. Ministry officials have requested the foundation to provide the required documentation for formal approval of the new school. Virtually all schools are registered in the local district or county. It is rare for permission to be granted for an experimental school with a standard government education grant. The organizers say that since they are an Internet school for compulsory education, they cannot register in the district or county because they do not fulfill the local legal educational requirements. For more information about the Internet site Service Hope, go to: www.nadzieja.pl.
                                                         --Adventist News Network

Enrollment Rises in Adventist Schools
Worldwide enrollment in Seventh?day Adventist educational institutions grew by11.4 percent last year, reports Humberto Rasi, education director for the General Conference.

Rasi says he thanks God that many families in 145 countries "recognize the importance and value of an Adventist education." All educational statistics will be included in the soon?to?be?released 2002 issue of World Report: Adventist Education Around the World, produced annually by the church=s department of education.

Rasi says one notable statistic is the significant increase in secondary school enrollments??up by some 56,000 students. More than half of these new students come from homes that profess other faiths, he says. AThis gives an opportunity for Adventist teachers and students to share their biblical convictions with the homes these students represent.@

The total number of faculty, administration and staff grew by 5.2 percent number of educational institutions operated by the Adventist Church grew by 4.8 percent last year, from 6,064 in 2000 to 6,335 in 2001. There are nearly 1.2 million students attending Adventist educational institutions worldwide.          --Adventist News Network

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