Why education?
Education is the legacy of our family. It forms the groundwork for a life of purpose and fulfilment. Today more than at any other time we must overcome the small mindedness of nationalism, antisemitism, populism, and other forms of fundamentalism through an education in the cultural arts. The time is now to reinstate a Renaissance approach to education. Poetry, philosophy, music and art must be seen every bit as important as technology.
Education does not promise a life without difficulties or without political unrest. It can however lead to independent thought.
Our Mission
The Sichów Educational Foundation is dedicated to promoting holistic education that contains universal values based on aesthetics, the dignity of Man, depth psychology and the recognition of the world as a sanctuary that must be respected.
In accordance with our mission statement, our educational programmes are organized for adults and children. Our natural woodland is ideal for ecological exploration, for self-study and meditation. We encourage professors to bring their students for intensive disciplinary studies, such as week-long courses in painting and drawing. Our full-time staff tailors catering and lodging services to meet your group needs.
We are also the ideal property for the one who is writing a thesis and needs a peaceful environment, composing a piece of music, or starting a novel. Our self-catering rooms offer small, private kitchens providing a personalised and individual framework in which to create.
During the war, our forebears were sent to concentration camps because they were protecting the professors suspended from their duties at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. They were also planning to start an underground educational facility here at Sichów. The way they resisted was by remembering what is important; philosophy, religious studies, poetry, music, art and science.
A September evening in 1940, Krzysztof and Zofia Radziwiłł were out on the Sichów terrace with Rector Konstanty Michalski, reading Plato’s dialog Laches,or how to instil virtue, specifically courage; the overcoming of fear. “Courage is the knowledge of what is terrifying” and indeed terrifying events were happening in the world outside Sichów. Krzysztof recalled the family motto, “In ardua tendit virtus” (In adverse times courage appears). They did not know that only a few hours later the Gestapo would arrive and arrest them. The lesson from Socrates served them well in their ordeals.
Can the Socratic wisdom thrive again? Ecologist and philosopher Henryk Skolimowski writes,The human being has been forsaken if not downtrodden in most systems of modern philosophy…. Hence the urgency of the Socratic renaissance to bring about and enshrine the axis mundi of the human as the alpha point of all our pursuits; while continually remembering that this human is not a selfish individual but a cosmic being.