Faith, culture and ‘holy days’

It is the weekend of Easter. For many in the West these few days have become another ‘holiday weekend, a time to relax the body and mind—which, of course, is necessary—with apparently little thought of the deep significance of the events which Christians celebrate. This is another reminder of a chasm in contemporary culture: the loss of the connection between the feasts of the Christian calendar and the life of the traditionally Christian nations.

In educational terms, this seems to be another indicator of an increasingly illiberal individualism which tears people away from what is held in common towards overly-personalised constructions of values. Such an approach bears ‘fruit’ in the idolisation of choice—which is not a bad thing per se—but runs the risk of placing the individual against the community and hence reducing morality to a menu of choices.

Authentic liberal education should foster the ‘unity’ in the ‘unity-in-diversity’ which is one of the marks of a good society. Of course this leads inevitably to debates on what constitutes the bedrock of the sought-after unity. As we munch away contentedly at our Easter eggs and traditional Easter cakes, this question should not be far from our mind.

Happy Easter.

Very strong words from Pope Francis on education

In a speech (11 April) to a Delegation of the International Catholic Office of Children, Pope Francis gave one of the strongest critiques of some aspects of modern education that we have heard from any Pope in living memory:

I would like to express my rejection of all types of educational experiments with children. One cannot experiment with children and young people. They are not laboratory guinea-pigs. The horrors of educational manipulation that we experienced in the great genocidal dictatorships of the 20th century have not disappeared; they keep their currency under different clothing that, with the pretension of modernity, force children and young people to walk on the dictatorial path of the “single thought.” A great educator said to me just over a week ago:“ Sometimes one doesn’t know if with these projects – he was referring to concrete projects of education – you send a child to school or to a camp of re-education.

It would be good to ponder these words and ask the question: to which forms of education was he referring? Many teachers recognise the ideological pressures on them to conform to (and indeed promote in the classroom) the ‘new orthodoxy’ with regard to climate change, reproductive rights and reform of marriage laws. Similar pressure comes from those who see education in stark neo-liberal terms as a market-place where pupils are trained in the  skills necessary for a modern economy.

Those who thought that the papal interest in the ‘educational emergency’ had disappeared with Pope Benedict’s resignation better think again. Pope Francis has shown once again that he is 'in continuity' with Pope Benedict and the wider Catholic tradition: indeed, Pope Francis's use of language—and we can be sure that these were carefully chosen words—suggests that he wishes this debate to remain at the heart of the Catholic Church’s engagement with modern society.

Read the full speech here, courtesy of www.zenit.org: http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/pope-s-discourse-to-the-delegation-of-the-international-catholic-office-of-children