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Andrzej Frycz Modzrewski’s Proposals for Public Education Reform in On Improving the Republic

education public schools poland lithuania

January 21, 2026

Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski’s ideas about education reform are quite similar to those presented by later classical liberal thinkers, particularly Adam Smith. These similarities shed light on deeper connections between republican and classical liberal ideas. 
Introduction
Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski’s On Improving the Republic1 is not just a political work but also presents education reforms that are still resonant for today. Many of these are quite similar to ideas presented by later theories of education reform by classical liberal thinkers, particularly Adam Smith. This essay introduces Modrzewski’s ideas about education reform to modern classical liberal scholarship and demonstrates that his similarities with Smithian ideas are neither superficial nor coincidental but instead shed light on deeper connections between republican and classical liberal ideas, especially pertaining to education reform.

Modrzewski’s Sociopolitical Context: Mid-16th Century Poland-Lithuania
By the mid-16th century, the personal union of Poland and Lithuania under the Jagiellon dynasty was one of the largest nations in Europe. It was also one of the most diverse ethnically, linguistically, and confessionally, with Catholicism, Protestantism, and Eastern Orthodoxy competing for privileges from nobility. Absolutism was never widely accepted in Poland-Lithuania, which elected a king with the consent of the nobles2 who sent representatives to a national parliament called the Sejm. Many of the more powerful nobles—the magnates—and the leaders of the church acted as miniature sovereigns over local territory, making laws, raising taxes, and gathering armies, with many strong enough to challenge the king. The executionists—a loose ideological and political coalition of largely Protestant and moderate Catholic nobles from the middle and lower nobility—sought to reform the system by challenging the king, the magnates, and the church by drawing upon classical republican concepts of the Commonwealth. Modrzewski was recognized as “the main ideologist and theoretician” of the executionists,3 and like other members of his coalition, he viewed the reform of churches and their role in education only as a moral question. However, he went further than many others, arguing that churches themselves should finance educational reform.
[A]lthough it seems to kings and bishops that they stand upon a higher level of human life than these, and although by the splendor of their station and wealth—like the rays of the sun—they overshadow and obscure other ranks, nevertheless, if we wish to judge fairly, the teaching estate may justly vie with the highest orders when it comes to services rendered to the commonwealth. For the schools have uncovered the sources and causes of all virtues upon which, as upon a foundation, the laws by which the state is governed have been built.4
For schools to overcome this “overshadowing and obscuring” by the kings and the bishops, Modrzewski proposes three broad areas of reform: that church funds should be properly used, that teachers should be recognized and incentivized, and that students should be selected according to their aptitude.

Modrzewski’s Proposed Reforms
The entirety of Book V, Chapter II of On Improving the Republic is dedicated to Modrzewski’s critique of the waste of church funds. He argues that both “bishops and rulers of human affairs” are to defend the “teaching estate by every possible means”. In so doing, both ecclesiastical and secular leaders share the responsibility to provide “the necessary means both for students—who have nothing from which to pay the cost of their studies—and for the fair remuneration of teachers”. He argues that the wealthy spend large sums of money “on various furnishings, splendid houses, luxurious banquets, and other unnecessary things” that would be better spent on education.5 Here, Modrzewski essentially argues that schools are public goods that are socially useful. Modrzewski argues that, even though religious institutions should be large supporters of education, the funds may go to secular education “in the academies” or “in the monasteries themselves by hiring special teachers for that purpose”. In this, Modrzewski is arguing for publicly funded centers of secular learning, but not necessarily ones that are funded through public taxes as we would understand it today. Rather it is a kind of redistribution away from those who are wealthy, noting that “[a] similar ordinance ought to be made concerning those who possess very large ecclesiastical incomes; they too should contribute something to the support of students.”6
However, like Smith in the Wealth of Nations, Modrzewski realized that public funds for education would incentivize teachers to work less. Smith warned against the danger that “the temptation of man is always to be at leisure and ease”7 Modrzewski warned that “some are unfit to fulfill their duties while others prefer to enjoy honors without labor rather than devote themselves to arduous work” as well as that “the learning of certain distinguished men of the colleges bear no proper fruit under the cloak of idle freedom”. Modrzewski proposes a similar solution: that “ecclesiastical benefices henceforth be granted to [learned men] for the faithful performance of their duties”.8 Whereas Smith cautioned that giving all teachers a salary would disincentivize their work ethic and thus some private mechanism such as fees would still be needed,9 Modrzewski asserted that a public salary was sufficient enough, but that it should be dependent on their actual work. Furthermore, Modrzewski argues that no work should be set to a fixed salary but should always be dependent on the quality of work conducted.
[N]o fixed or unchanging salary [should] be assigned to anyone for his work. No one should receive a set wage regardless of how he performs his duties; rather, payment should be higher or lower according to how well he fulfills his task.
 This rule ought to be observed without exception in every secular and ecclesiastical office.10
While Modrzewski argues for a broadening of education, both secular and ecclesiastical, he also recognizes there are downsides to universal public education, in that the students need to be either incentivized or required to work. He advocates for what is essentially the equivalent of work-study or tuition-for-service education programs today, where the student’s tuition is either defrayed by working through their program of study, or where students are obligated to work in some public service capacity to pay it back.
The welfare of the Commonwealth requires that, after these incomes have been assessed, it should be determined how many students each monastery ought to maintain.
 Such students ought to be sent to the academies, or else taught in the monasteries themselves by hiring special teachers for that purpose.
 They might, in turn, sing psalms in the churches or perform other duties.
 They should also promise service to the churches or to the Commonwealth and later fulfill that promise.11
While Modrzewski is in favor of expanding public education, paid for by the wealthy and the churches and supervised by both secular and ecclesiastical authorities, he does not advocate for universal education. Rather, students and teachers both need to be selected according to merit. Modrzewski thus anticipates modern educational solutions in many countries where public tertiary education is free, but only once the students have proven their abilities. He also argues for further specialization for the best students beyond basic schooling.
Above all, care must be taken for teachers and for pupils: teachers should be generally recognized as competent for their work, while pupils should be chosen according to their abilities—lest some prove as fit for learning as asses are for playing the lute.
 For this often happens when boys are sent to school against their natural inclinations and talents […] After pupils have been selected according to aptitude, care must next be taken that, when they have completed the course of the elementary school and mastered the arts of the trivium [the foundational arts of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic], each one should devote himself to the study that pleases him most and in which he can best excel.12
In calling for further specialization and publicly funded, selective education rather than universal education, Modrzewski also anticipates two other problems of modern education, empty credentialism—where students seek the status and reputation of “being educated” rather than learning anything of value—and “degree inflation” wherein making school public and universal also lowers the value of education itself. 13 Rather, Modrzewski is arguing that possession of an “education” is not in itself sufficient, but that teachers and students should both be incentivized with reputational rewards or honors, something that Smith also recognized.14
[B]oth teachers and students [are to] be encouraged to learn[ing] by the hope of honors.
 For it is a common fact that those who neither see in an endeavor some advantage
 nor hope for due reward, are seldom stirred to undertake any distinguished action.15
Modrzewski’s educational reforms thus hope to ensure: that teachers are qualified and well-funded from public incomes, especially from churches; that students who receive free tuition are qualified based on merit and have to contribute labor to their institution or to the public after their educations are finished; and that both students and teachers receive additional rewards and honors. Modrzewski’s final recommendation is certification of learning by professionals in the field to ensure competence. He argues that:
It would therefore be to the profit of the Commonwealth if no one were granted the dignities that belong to learned men unless he presents some proof of his learning and obtains the recognition of educated persons for himself and his studies. Men should be chosen, as it were, to act as critics and public censors of the learned, that neither Cumanian asses16 may so easily deceive us, nor those truly devoted to learning be deprived of the honors due them.17
Scholars of Smithian theories of education note a tension between his Theory of Moral Sentiments, which employs a model of education as socialization that is necessary for human behavior, versus Wealth of Nations where Smith might be interpreted as supporting education as a form of public good but worries that lack of private market forces and personal incentives will diminish the quality of education for students.18 One way to square the circle is that Smith seems to carve out an intermediary category of publicly provided goods that are locally self-managed and self-financed, such as bridges and toll roads.19 Though Modrzewski’s classical republican approach is much more romantic about the moral good of education and the importance of educators than Smith is, his proposals for reform seem to fit this idea of schools as local public goods financed from local institutions—in this case churches—but he also retains enough private incentives for teachers and students to remain effective, even if they are not driven by market forces per se. Churches in Modrzewski’s time were not just major sources of sociopolitical power and wealth, they were also pipelines for employment opportunities, and many of his proposals are reminiscent of public-private partnerships and corporate or private institutional relationships with schools today.



  1. jhiggins@wpia.uni.lodz.pl. All translations are the author’s own unless otherwise indicated.
  2. Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski. 1953. O Poprawie Rzeczypospolitej. Introduction by Łukasz Kurdybacha. Warsaw. Państwowe Instytut Wydawniczy. Hereafter: On Improving the Republic.↩︎
  3. Anna Sucheni-Grabowska. 2009. Wolność i Prawo w Staropolskiej Koncepcji Państwa. Muzeum Historii Polski: Warszawa, pg. 74.↩︎
  4. Daniel Stone. 2001. The Polish Lithuanian State, 1386-1795. University of Washington Press: Seattle and London, pg. 40; Wacław Uruszczak. 2014. “Prawo celem polityki w Polsce Jagiellonów.” Krakowskie Studia z Historii Państwa i Prawa 1, pg. 168.↩︎
  5. On Improving the Republic, Book V, Chapter I, pg. 592.↩︎
  6. On Improving the Republic, Book V, Chapter II, pg. 596.↩︎
  7. Ibid., pg. 597.↩︎
  8. Adam Smith. 1904. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Edited and with an Introduction by Edwin Cannan. Volume II. London: Methuen, Book V, Chapter 1, Part III, Article II, pgs. 250-251.↩︎
  9. On Improving the Republic, Book V, Chapter II, pg. 601.↩︎
  10. Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter I, Part III, Article II, pgs. 265-266.↩︎
  11. On Improving the Republic, Book V, Chapter II, pg. 604.↩︎
  12. On Improving the Republic, Book V, Chapter II, pg. 597.↩︎
  13. On Improving the Republic, Book V, Chapter III, page 604.↩︎
  14. For an introduction to the problem of credentialism, see: Randall Collins. 2019/1979. The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification. The University of Michigan: Ann Arbor, pgs. x-xi.↩︎
  15. In keeping with the theme of introducing private incentives to the public process of education, Smith notes that in the ancient world excellent students were granted “small premiums and badges of distinction” as rewards, and that practice should be revived. The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter I, Part III, Article II, pgs. 270-271.↩︎
  16. 603↩︎
  17. Modrzewski is using a Greco-Latin idiom about those “who bear themselves with more pride than their rank warrants”. See: Collected Works of Erasmus. 1982. Volume 33: Adages i to Iv100, translated by Margaret Mann Philips. University of Toronto Press: Toronto, pg. 290.↩︎
  18. On Improving the Republic, Book V, Chapter IV, pg. 606.↩︎
  19. For debate on this tension, see: Scott Dylie. 2024. “Adam Smith on Education Funding,” in Daniel B. Klein and Erik W. Matson (eds.) Just Sentiments: 22 Smithian Essays. CL Press: Vancouver, pgs. 219-229, James R. Otteson. 2023. “Adam Smith on Public Provision of Education.” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 45(2): 229-248, and Jack Russel Weinstein. 2013. Adam Smith’s Pluralism: Rationality, Education, and the Moral Sentiments. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.↩︎
  20. Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter I, Part III, pgs. 214-215, 222.↩︎