Uważność a kulturowe zachwyty w edukacji

This article tries to estimate the importance and nature of challenges faced by humanistic research on admiration in light of mindfulness as defined by Jon Kabat-Zinn. The author seeks to establish to what extent mindfulness and the resulting admiration are present in the current school and university education system. The text ponders on reasons why admiration tends to be either absent or only flickering in the school reality. Examples of educational situations are analysed to show that admiration is often not required, taking into account the conditions for it to appear. The ‘undeserved’ admiration that wells up in response to typical school activities gives hope for it to be more frequently present at school and more consciously initiated by the teacher. The discussion is based on the author’s own study and content analysis of statements of Polish philology students from the University of Silesia in Katowice. Key thematic fields are defined to introduce and describe the nature of admiration, a largely underappreciated but extremely important experience in modern culture.