Education: What the Church expects

BY MARK POTTERTON

Vatican II outlined the purpose of Catholic education and the way it is best achieved—a process that puts parents at the forefront. MARK POTTERTON explains.

There has been a lot said about Catholic education lately, as well as in the past. Everyone has a view and, in a way, everyone is an education expert by virtue of having attended school or having had children at school. This interest does indicate the intense concern that most South Africans have for education.

Catholic schools form a tiny part of the education system in South Africa. The recently published department of basic education statistics note that there are 25851 ordinary schools in South Africa with just over 12 million pupils. These statistics dwarf the 346 Catholic schools with their 173300 pupils. The question some might ask is exactly what difference such a small school grouping could make?

The Second Vatican Council declaration on education, Gravissimum Educationis (“The Importance of Education”, issued on October 25, 1965), is one of the shorter documents of the Council—and still provides inspirational guidance today.

The document comments briefly on each aspect of education of interest to the Church. A few central principles stand out.

One key principle is that all people have “an inalienable right to an education that is in keeping with their ultimate goal, their ability, their sex, and the culture and tradition of their country, and also in harmony with their fraternal association with other peoples in the fostering of true unity and peace on earth”.

The purposes of such an education include the development of the students’ physical, moral and intellectual endowments, leading to mature responsibility, including a “positive and prudent” sexual education; instruction in the knowledge and skills necessary to discourse with others and promote the common good; and the motivation to appraise moral values with a right conscience and to embrace them with personal adherence, together with a deeper knowledge and love of God.

Another key principle in Gravissimum Educationis is the right, of all Christians, to a truly Christian education which includes that the baptised become ever more aware of the gift of faith they have received; that they develop ever more perfectly into “the mature measure of the fullness of Christ”; and that they learn to bear witness to the hope that is in them and to assist in the Christian formation of the world, contributing to the good of society through natural powers redeemed by Christ.

 

Parents have given children their life and are obligated to educate their children. They must therefore be recognised as the primary and principal educators.

Vatican II points out that the parental role is so important that “only with difficulty can it be supplied where it is lacking”, as the family is the “first school of the social virtues that every society needs”, and the Christian family is not only the first experience of wholesome human society but also of the Church.

The Council reminds parents “of the duty that is theirs to arrange and even demand that their children be able to…advance in their Christian formation to a degree that is abreast of their development in secular subjects”.

Parents have “the duty of entrusting their children to Catholic schools wherever and whenever possible and of supporting these schools to the best of their ability”.

Catholic schools are seen as Church-based institutions, they are “the privileged environment in which Christian education is carried out”. They also have a missionary orientation through which they make a significant contribution “to the evangelising mission of the Church throughout the world, including those areas in which no other form of pastoral work is possible”.

One of the most important messages in the declaration is that the Church and her schools depend upon teachers “almost entirely” to accomplish her goals.

Teachers are called to be witnesses “by their life as much as by their instruction bearing witness to Christ, the unique Teacher”, and “the work of these teachers, this sacred synod declares, is in the real sense of the word an apostolate most suited to and necessary for our times and at once a true service offered to society”.

This is an important message for us in South Africa—we can’t reconstruct our education system without teachers.

In celebrating the 50th anniversary this year of the inauguration of Second Vatican Council, we are reminded that Catholic schools play an important role in society and are a vitally important part of the evangelising mission of the Church.