The author analyzed the scientific dissertations of Polish scholars for whom hermeneutics as a direction of contemporary philosophy, including the method of researching ideas, theoretical premises of education and upbringing, contributed to the development of contemporary pedagogical thought and methodological self-awareness. The qualitative research paradigm requires researchers to be competent in understanding and interpreting the phenomena they are interested in. The aim of this article is therefore to make educators aware of the need to see in the analyzed dissertations from the period of the totalitarian state the use of hidden hermeneutics by scientists as a result of the existing political censorship. The freedom to conduct scientific research, regained in Poland after 1989, contributed to the dynamic development of general pedagogy, the theory of education and comparative studies of pedagogical thought. At the same time, the author warns against escaping from the freedom of a part of the scientific community as a result of subordinating the political correctness to the interpretation of the theories studied or the results of empirical research.