ABSTRACT
Polityka (Politics) is a left-leaning periodical and Poland’s largest news weekly. It has its origins in the communist past as an organ of the party’s more liberal wing. The magazine today is independent and has a slightly intellectual socially liberal profile, setting it apart from the more conservative Wprost and the glossier Newsweek Poland . The following article, full of human interest combined with sarcastic criticism of the educational establishment, additionally exhibits the tendency on the part of the Polish press to expect a vast knowledge of cultural commonplaces on the part of its readership with no further explanation needed, relying on shorthand reference to assorted national myths, institutions, personages and preoccupations (see the footnotes). As a check with a dictionary will show, the word bąk has many meanings, making for an especially provocative title when combined with the word polski.
