To educate: a challenge, a project, a commitment

To educate: a challenge, a project, a commitment

The education of a generation of youths is an inescapable pledge of every society; it expresses and characterizes the culture of the people. The sudden changes of our times often provoke disorientation and considerable difficulties for those that have educative responsibilities and make such a commitment stronger and urgent. In the same school is noticed a deep malaise, a widespread effort by the teachers who in case they feel disoriented and lament the great difficulties to properly bring to completion the educative assignment and to see the results.
“To educate was never easy. The parents know it well, the teachers, the priests and all those who have direct educative responsibilities. Therefore there is a lot of talk about the great educative emergency validated by the failure that very often our efforts meet to form solid people, able to cooperate with the others and give a meaning to their own life” .
“We witness a loss of the meaning of the education strongly tied to the loss of values, above all of those that sustain life’s choices: family, work, and moral choices. Thus the education also suffers the malaise that afflicts our society: the widespread subjectivism, the moral relativism and the nihilism. The traditional catholic pedagogy strongly reinforces the centrality of the human person on his route to educate. A proper pedagogical structure aims at the integral formation of the man, bringing him in a systematic and critical way close to the culture and reality. Education must contribute to make the youths able to progressively open to the reality and to form a healthy and robust conception of life where the spiritual values, human and religious are not strangers”.
In this contest it is a big responsibility for everybody, aware that the world’s future depends in assuring the youths’ generation a proper formation. Therefore, we address those who have at heart the education, the Christians committed to teach and govern the schools, the administrators, the political decision makers.
Indeed, there is a lot do in the education arena and in the formation to be worth to carry on a prestigious tradition but, most of all, to build a better society, a community that truly has a human person as the centerpiece for its outlook and civil growth; there is a lot to do to uproot the various forms of violence and insure a better future for the generation of youths, often disoriented by false values and humbled by the lack of a proper job; there is a lot to do to fully enhance the many human resources, cultural, religious, environmental. This constitutes a pressing challenge to each of us. Therefore, we are all called to find again the courage to educate and help each other find the teaching strategies that best answer the many educative challenges that we face today.
Special importance has the role of the teachers, to them is always assured an initial formation and quality tenure, and at the same times a just social and economic recognition. Furthermore, it is necessary, to assure for every school community the needed resources to satisfy adequately the right to a full education of every person.
“The teacher’s role is not to just convey information or to provide a technical preparation to deliver economical benefits to society; education is not and must not be considered as purely utilitarian. But rather to form the human person, prepare him or her to live life in full – in a few words it concerns educate to wisdom. And the true wisdom is inseparable from the knowledge of the Creator because “we and our words are in his hands, every kind of knowledge and operating ability” (Sap 7, 16)…. Indeed, A good school offers a complete formation for the whole person” .
The educating service is a vocation and a gift. It gives the teacher the possibility to exercise the charity of the competence. “Education, as it aims to make the man more of a man, can be enacted authentically only in a relational and communal contest” . It is a service to mankind and at the same time to God. “Indeed, the glory of God is the man and the life of the man is the manifestation of God” . Therefore he cannot be self referent and individualist: the educator must know how to interact with his peers and all the other school operators, but also with the families (who are first responsible of the educative process), with the institutions, with the environment where he operates. Every educator must have first of all faith in life, enthusiasm, trust in his own efforts and enough competence, as well as a conscience to answer to a specific vocation. “The vocation is a call that requires a free and responsible answer. The integral human development assumes the responsible freedom of the person and the people: no other structure can guarantee such development outside and above the human responsibility” . There is a close connection between those who announce the good news and those who teach. Indeed, «there is the same attentiveness towards the person, there is an identical willingness to make oneself with love and constant caring, in order to blossom, in freedom, all his po¬tentiality » .
Therefore, every catholic action must be rooted in good because there is no true education if the educator does not nourish in good and does not promote the good of every person and every society. By the way, we like to remember the recent invitation that the Holy Father addressed to the youths, but it may properly be extended to all the educators: “Be like trees that sink their roots in the river of good! Don’t be afraid to fight the evil! Together, you will be like a forest that grows, maybe silent, but able to give its fruit, to bring life and renew in a deep way your grounds! “ . Particularly, the catholic teacher, operating in any school, must know and demonstrate with his life the values of the Gospel, respectful even of every pupil’s culture and environment; he is called to be in the scholastic community and in the civilian community a model of moral rectitude, social and cultural commitment, positive relationship, professional competence, operating dynamism; witness of wisdom, knowledge, justice and truth.
The presence of professional associations of teachers and scholastic catholic leaders is precious in order to promote, sustain and accompany the Catholics committed in the teaching field. It is a guarantee of quality for the teachers and for the schools where they operate. Therefore, we consider appropriate the promotion and diffusion (at a national and local level) of such associations, sites of human growth, cultural, professional and religious. Furthermore, we like to highlight that for all those who administer the school or teach, to belong in a professional association that constitutes a noteworthy resource to mature the human and professional competence, as well as evidence of a social and educative commitment.
The World Union of Catholic Teachers was born exactly to be a referral point for the teachers, for the association of Catholic teachers and for the school communities. It is, indeed, aware that only a dynamic and responsible interaction between the schools, between the teachers, between all of those who have at heart the future of the youth’s generation and that of the society can help to find ways and adequate strategies to overcome the various educative and social problems that we face today.
The WUCT is wanted, oriented and sustained by the teaching of the Church. It makes his the recent invitation by the Holy Father to have trust and courage: “To you, lay people, I repeat: have no fear to live and demonstrate the faith in the various areas of society in the many situations of the human existence, most of all in the difficult ones! Faith gives you the strength of God to always be trusty and courageous, to proceed with new decisions, to take the necessary initiative and give a more beautiful appearance to your grounds. And when you meet the world’s opposition, listen to the Apostle words: «Don’t be ashamed therefore to give your own account to our Lord”.
Therefore, asks to those who have the responsibility to become promoters and supporters of the professional associations of teachers and school leaders who have their roots in the culture and the catholic faith so that in every Country is an uniform commitment in favor of the education, uncover the courage and the joy to educate, every school strengthen its ability to direct and sustain the new generations on the road towards the future, becoming a privileged site where one learns to love life, experience those fundamental values that enhance the dignity of the human person, exercise a concrete pledge to build the common good.
Welcomes the international organization invitation for e worthwhile commitment in order to “build peace of the mind of the people” , particularly:
- promoting education to an active and responsible citizenship;
- favoring the development of intercultural competence in order to build a culture of comprehension, cooperation and peace, so that schools, teachers and pupils know how to operate and interact to build generous roads and fertile commitment of true peace;
- paying specific attention to the situations of poverty, marginalization and underdevelopment . For this purpose the WUCT considers the instruction for everybody a priority: every person has the right to receive an education – at least primary- free and of quality;
- caring for the formation of the young teachers so that they know how to look and let look to the future with responsibility, serenity and optimism, avoiding every temptation of false values and eluding patterns, that, promising to fill life, as a result may disorient, empty, alienate.
Every institution, every person that operates in the education field is called to be a symbol of hope, to believe in what is good and to promote it in every environment, to become a visible and believable referral point for the young generations and for the social community.
We are not afraid of the several challenges that we face. They constitute a pressing invitation to do better and more. It’s an invitation, especially, to find languages and actions that place the person in center stage; to know how to promote alive intelligence and tenacious will; to arouse, feed and sustain a heart that is at times conscious of the extraordinary beauty of the “human condition”, therefore “lover of life” and, at other times also actively “grateful”, or able to traffic, distribute and in some measure “give back”, perhaps much more fruitful from when was received, this life’s gift that he had.

Giovanni Perrone, Executive member

Gent, october, 2010