The decree requiring Polish in schools and courts

The decree requiring Polish in schools and courts becomes a point of leverage in the village’s dispute over a proposed school: Antek presents its written authority as grounds for insisting that instruction take place in the villagers’ own language. The scene sets an official document, read aloud but not understood by many listeners, against a public demand that the school speak plainly to the community it is meant to serve.

The Decree and the School Meeting

At the meeting, the Voyt rings the bell and asks the crowd to listen while the Notary reads the document concerning the proposed school. The Notary reads slowly and clearly, but the villagers interrupt to say they understand nothing and demand that it be read “in our tongue.” The difficulty is not merely the pace of the reading: the formal proceedings have not yet made the proposal intelligible to the people expected to accept it.

The language dispute sharpens into a claim about who has authority to determine the school’s language. Antek insists, “in our school, they must do their learning in our tongue.” His wording makes the school a local institution whose language should belong to its pupils and community, rather than an arrangement imposed from outside.

Antek’s Appeal to Written Law

Antek supports that demand by invoking the decree itself. He declares that the tsar has decreed “that schools and courts are to be in Polish,” and adds that the villagers should therefore heed the tsar. The argument is pointed: Antek uses the authority of the state’s own written order to resist the school arrangement being discussed by officials. His appeal does not depend only on collective anger; it presents the villagers’ demand as legally grounded.

When the Prefect questions him, Antek points to the papers on the table and says, “It’s clear as a bell in the decree, so the law’s on my side.” The gesture connects his spoken challenge to the written document before the meeting. Rather than treating the papers as the exclusive property of officials, he makes their wording part of the villagers’ argument.

Language, Identity, and Public Authority

Antek’s later explanation to the Squire makes explicit the national meaning he gives the demand. Asked how the idea of a Polish school came to him, he answers, “Why, we’re Poles, not Germans or some other sort.” The school question thus joins the practical matter of comprehension to a declaration of collective identity. In the meeting, the villagers’ demand to hear and learn in their own language is at once a response to an unreadable official proceeding and a claim about who they are.

The episode also stages a contest between different kinds of authority. The Notary’s reading supplies the formal procedure; the decree supplies the written legal ground Antek invokes; and the gathered villagers make their understanding and consent impossible to take for granted. The text shows Antek turning language into political action: he cites a rule, points to the document, and insists that its promise apply to the school being proposed. The decree matters in the scene not simply as a statement of policy, but as a resource with which the villagers can challenge the officials’ handling of their education.