The twofold aim of this paper is to describe the specificity of education in Poland and to explore the potential and the limitations of the concept of cultural codes for investigating this specificity. With reference to Max Weber's methodology of ideal types, and following the inquires of Sowa (2011), Leder (2014) and Hryniewicz (2015), as well as with reference to contemporary research on education in Poland, I distinguish three types of cultural codes: the folwark, the totalitarian and the modernisation code. The analysis using the concept of cultural codes consists of reinterpreting the existing empirical data on education in Poland. Its potential lies, therefore, in providing a framework for gathering and understanding diverse phenomena, analysed separately in many dispersed studies. The argument conducted in the paper leads to the conclusion of the exhaustion of educational imaginary in Poland. However, the concept of cultural codes is found to be useful in the work leading towards rejuvenation of this imaginary.