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Speaking
of "challenges of education" may mean that the complex and new
realities, which contrast and make it difficult, provoke it. However, it
may also mean that education is a courageous answer to the problems that
we must face.
Facing three powerful waves
Compared to the past, education today –the family,
the school and generally all the institutions and persons that worry for
a healthy growth and a good quality of life of everyone, above all, the
generation that starts walking along the not easy paths of life- must
face three "powerful waves". These waves, during the latest decenniums,
have questioned the individual and collective existence.
A kind of "silent revolution" followed the
sixty-eight contestation against the social and family
authoritarianism and conservatism of the existing social order. The said
"silent revolution" –with an awesome and often shocking rapidity-
triggered vast and deep processes of change, of crisis and innovations
in the cultural traditions of values, in interpersonal and social bonds,
in the institutional structures and procedures, above all in individual
and communitarian ethos. It emphasised the subjective rights and the
individual auto-realisation. In this way the institutional, the
objective, the "we", the common good and the truth became values
difficult to know before actuating them.
With the domineering technological innovation of
the digital, after half of the 90s, the ways and forms of
interpersonal and social communication changed. The cell phones,
internet, the computer networks have dilated and increased the speed of
communication, up to breaking up the wall of time and space. However,
they have also circulated "simulative" horizons and virtual worlds,
which risk to make us lose the sense of reality and of time, causing us
to remain shut up in the solitude of our room, or at most, to
participate in sharing friendships and "virtual" communities. These are
very much restricted and perhaps without request of assuming concrete
responsibilities, causing a kind of solitary socialisation and a society
restricted to the blog or a face-book. The life of the
youths and their learning take place in the "non-places", namely in
meetings, in the happening, in the square, in the small wall, in
the stadium, sailing on internet, chatting, sending sms, rather than in
traditional "places" of growth, such as the family, the school, the
parish. The teen-ages are more techno-ages".
The beginnings of XXI century have made us aware of
living in the complexity of a globalised world and its
ambivalence. The socio-economic structures have changed the
international entrepreneurial activity and world market, but also the
social values of reference; efficiency, functionality, utility,
productivity, subjective well-being. Life and culture are ever more
dominated and unbalanced on the economic, on the public, on the social
security, on individual or party well-being, up to obsession. The
universalization of life and culture caused by globalisation may reset
the cultural differences, as well as the perspectives of truth and human
value, thus provoking personal fragmentation, cultural relativism, or
cultural fundamentalist absolutism. The developments and possibilities
of biotechnologies point out ameliorative technical-genetic
interventions, but also post-human anthropological possibility, or
beyond human. This hints the idea of being able to "produce" or to
"clone" man. The person vanishes in its "ontological" consistency.
Before being a theological statement, we experience "nihilism" as a
deep, interior sense of nothingness of self and the world. It is said
that it becomes "the disquieting guest" of the youths, but also of many
adults, of many couples, of many familiar relations and "sad passions"!
At the end, the old and radical "question" imposes
itself: Who is man, what does "humanly worthy" mean? With tremendous
actuality, the three famous questions of Kant come back: "What can we
know, what can we do, what is there to hope for?" It becomes
indispensable to re-think and, I would say, to ref-found the basic
anthropological concepts and values. In his latest encyclical Letter,
"Caritas in veritate", the Pope warns us, "Without truth it is easy to
fall into an empiricist and sceptic view of life, incapable of rising to
the level of praxis" (CIV 9).
For a life "sweet scenting of Gospel"
Education is a strong point for the solution of
today’s anthropological question. A deep "education utopia" is in the
heart of many men and women. It is the utopia of humanity signed by
growth and development, by radical capacities of interiority and
freedom, beyond the natural determinisms; a humanity, individual and
people, stretched towards individual destinations of common values. A
humanity as fruit of subjective and communitarian constructive capacity
and commitment, in the perspective of that "love civilisation" whose
seed God has planted in every people, in every culture, deep in the
heart of every man (cf CIV 33)." "Intelligence and love are not in
separate compartments: love is rich in intelligence and intelligence
is full of love" (CIV 30).
This asks us to believe in man and in what is human.
This means that we must pass from the affirmation of subjective human
rights on to a culture of them, as well as to an active and responsible
commitment to all: singles and nations, economists and politicians,
according to the different social parts, caring for man, respecting and
promoting concrete persons: especially the least ones. As educators, as
families, as education communities we cannot remain satisfied of being
transmitters, animators, experts: we must be witnesses in an imperative
way, namely capable of that teaching through direct exemplarity and
provocation of good, honest, faithful, responsible, open and trustful
life.
2. In the Letter to the dioceses and to the
city of Rome, dated 21st January 2008, with reference to His
Encyclical Letter Spe salvi, Benedict XVI reminds us that "the
soul of education, as of the entire life, can be only reliable hope (…).
In fact, a crisis of trust in life is at the root of the crisis of
education". Here we understand the education importance, not only the
civil one, of a life "sweetly scented of Gospel" and we really believe
in the Gospel beatitudes, since we are persons capable of love rich
in intelligence and intelligence full of love" (CIV 30).
It is time to fly up high
Education is not so much an action of the educators
"on the" and "for" the pupils; it is rather a function of the educative
relation between the educators and his pupils. These are not objects,
nor users, but active subjects and responsible protagonists for what is
given to them, from the first steps of socialisation and schooling: at
school, in the family or in the parish. This is why it is an opportune
pre-condition, the communication "platform" to welcome and be welcomed,
to know how to listen to, how to stay in dialogue and to abide by its
"rules".
The educator must know how to accompany and how to
walk together. He must have the sense of limit, without claiming that
those he enters into educative relation with be, from the very beginning
and always- "clever" and "educated". He must not expect that they may be
at his image and similitude; he must know to mediate, to provoke, to
stimulate, to push towards a taking of position, the decision to say
"yes" to one’s life, as well as to the life of others and of the
community.
In the Letter to a woman professor, the boys
of Barbiana remember that in their schools they had learned how to face
problems and to help one another, "You do less than this with your boys.
Your never ask them anything. You invite them only to make their own
way". Baden Powell, a practical and pragmatic English educator, in his
testament invited the scouts "to leave the world a little better than
the way they have found it".
In school and in the family, as well as in the parish
and groups, in general during the initial and permanent formation, it is
time to fly up high. We need to be in the perspective of:
1)
a pedagogy of answering the need of the boys’ growth, as well
as of a valid and meaningful proposal;
2)
a pedagogy of
personal development, but better than a
pedagogy of the end to be achieved, we
mean to be conscientious, free, responsible and sympathetic persons;
3) a pedagogy of
service on behalf of the educators for the learning of boys/students,
but also a pedagogy for the service, namely a pedagogy of arousing, of
vocation/mission, that may stimulate to know the common and one’s own
talents, as well as the resources of the contexts referred to. We
need also a pedagogy that pushes to participate in the service, in
reciprocal help, in co-operation for a society with a human look, for a
development historically sustainable by all and everyone of us, and
evangelically: for the salvation of the world, walking towards the
Kingdom of God in which justice and truth will finally and completely
dwell!
Jesus the educator
Seeing closer, here we can discover the beautiful
educative simplicity of Jesus the Master. He does not wait for us to go
to Him, he rather comes towards us, becomes the Good Samaritan,
witnesses to the mercy of the Father. He welcomes persons by their name
and surnames, in their diverse and concrete condition of life, never in
series or in abstract. He dialogues with them, makes questions also to
those who nurture prejudices about him. He understands always, never
condemns even when he does not justify. He pushes persons towards
something better and more valuable, according to capacities,
possibilities and everybody’s talents, as well as according to the
demands and the urgency of the Kingdom: go and sin no more; do this and
you shall live; sell everything, come and follow me; I shall turn you
into fishermen of men; pray the owner of the harvest… …
Carlo Nanni
Pontifical Salesian University
Piazza Ateneo Salesiano, 1 - 00139 Roma
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