The Nobility of Teaching

"I wanted simply to say what I think are the fundamental factors of the whole educative process. First, the value of tradition, which is the first factor targeted and censured where a power dominates in society, in the family, in civil society, and paradoxically, in religious society. At times, it can happen that ecclesiastical society, if it is lived as will for power, censures its own history. Second, the figure of the educator, which is the place where tradition becomes conscious and becomes a proposal, but it is a proposal that must offer companionship in its impact, and therefore in the comparison, and in the comparison show the reasons for the proposal itself. But this, the third factor, that is to say, the proof, the verification, is not mathematical; it is not a matter of logic; it stops short, as I said, on the threshold of the person's freedom. Here lies the drama of the risk of education. But whatever be the immediate outcome of your own loving passion (because as the Pope says, there is no demonstration of love for mankind like the educative commitment), the living proposal, in other words, the "I" of the educator, must be untiring, an "I"that is not halted by any circumstances of space or of time, nor therefore of age, nor by any exterior situation, not any kid of response." 

These remarks constitute the closing paragraph of a conference given by Fr. Luigi Giussani on The Risk of Education in 1985 in Milan Italy, (so the Pope mentioned would be John Paul II.) I think it is a remarkable summation of a conference about an incomparable book. It is a final paragraph that concisely packs in the density and depth of Giussani's wisdom on education with an image of the teacher as sacrificial victim. Educators (teacher, preacher, mother, father, Christian, etc.) are called on day after day to give all they have in them, and give it freely, in the face of rejection, indifference, opposition, and even persecution.  It makes me realize that if our teaching is not a "loving passion" that makes us pour ourselves out in self gift, we are doing our students, ourselves, and the Truth we hope to communicate, a tremendous injustice.

Pope Francis on Education

While living  in Argentina then Cardinal Bergoglio and Rabbi Abraham Skorka engaged in religious dialogue with one another. Their conversations on many current issues are recorded in a very relevant book, on Heaven and Earth. In these remarks on Education,  Pope Francis was speaking mainly from his experience of how schooling took place in Argentina. but it is fascinating to see how pertinent his remarks are when applied to schooling and education in the United States.

Bergoglio: In the Bible, God shows himself as an educator: "I carried you over my shoulders, I taught you how to walk", he says. The obligation of the believer is to raise their young. each man and each woman has the right to educate their children in religious values. The effect of the State in taking away this right can lead to cases like Nazism, in which the children were indoctrinated with values different from those of their parents. Totalitarians tend to add water to their own mill.

Bergoglio: Schools educate toward the transcendent, just like religion. Not opening the doors to a religious worldview in the academic environment cripples the harmonious development of children, because this concerns their identity, the transmission of the same values their parents have, which are projected onto the child. They are deprived of a cultural and religious inheritance. If in education you take away  the tradition of the parents, only ideology remains.  Life is seen with biased eyes, there is no unbiased hermeneutic even in education. Words are full of history, of experiences of life. When someone leaves a void, it is filled with different ideas from the family tradition; that is how ideologies are born...

 Bergoglio: There is a difference between a professor and a teacher. The professor presents his material in a detached manner, while the teacher involves others; it is profoundly testimonial. There is also a coherence between his conduct and his life. He is not merely a transmitter of science, as is a professor. We need to help men and women to become teachers, so that  they can be witnesses; that is essential to education.

on Heaven and Earth, Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Abraham Skorka  pp.128 - 132