"Serce" heroiczne

For over 100 years, Edmondo de Amicis’s Heart seemed to be a top literary achievement, resistant to the passing time. Thus, the contemplation of the gradual change of its position is particularly absorbing. For the young generation, shaped by contemporary culture, it is no longer a famous or entrancing reading but a distant and uninteresting one. Shall we accept the seemingly irreversible fact that this work sinks into oblivion or shall we make an attempt to save it? It seems that present day values of Heart are rooted in its realistic layer, in the school events. There are three basic values: a positive image of school, the concept of patriotism, and the shaping of heroic characters, which are so important because they are presented infrequently in contemporary literature for children. Appropriately used, Amicis’s work still can be a source of valuable exemplification, both in order to shape positive attitudes of children and in order to “teach culture”. It is not meant, though, to change children’s preferences for particular types of books but to enrich them so that they are not narrowly limited, to prepare young readers to receive literature in various communicative situations and make them realize the various functions literature may have. The familiarization of children with the strategies and the code of choosing and interpreting works - a text as a fun activity, as a compulsory reading, i.e. aimed to fulfil certain educational purposes, but also a text as an element of cultural tradition, record of times and people, providing examples of right attitudes and values - seem to be indispensable for a proper literary education. It should be also used to fulfil one of the most fundamental-recently increasingly neglected- educational goals of schools, i.e. the formation of receptive audience, active participants of culture, both in its historical and contemporary forms.