When undertaking to write a few words on the subject of logistics education, I decided to focus not on the spectacular achievements of logistics managers, which are already relatively frequently described in literature, but on the beginning of the path that initiates of this scientific discipline travel. This seems all the more interesting as we are more inclined to write about the substantive content of the study program, about the desired “profile” of the graduate that we want to achieve after the entire teaching process is completed, and not about the path, often difficult, to reaching logistics honors. And this is undoubtedly a very fascinating issue, because reading the “golden” formulations contained in students’ answers can often bring a smile to one’s face. However, realizing how often they become excellent professionals in the future, I believe that such a presentation has enormous educational value. To achieve this goal, I would like to use the answers that appeared during the winter examination session for the subject “logistics” in the 2003/2004 academic year within the walls of the Faculty of Management and Economics of Services at the University of Szczecin. There is also no doubt that the issue most often raised by students in class is the desire to know the realities of the logistics sphere of business activity, so that it would be easier for them to understand the often complex theory of logistics. But is it easy to reconcile practice with theory? It seems that there is one certain, reliable “way” to answer such a question, which was found a few years ago in the duty room of the District Police Headquarters in Lublin. The following inscription was placed there: “Theory is when we know everything, but nothing works. Practice is when everything works, but no one knows why. Here we combine practice with theory – here nothing works and no one knows why…” (“Konkrety” 1998, no. 32). Students, by virtue of their “innate” ingenuity, often showed great flexibility in their answers, even greater than would follow from the content of the question itself.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 4/2005.