Ten proposals for education in the 21st century

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An education for the common good and the development of people, open and pluralistic, humanistic and open to globalization. The contents and methods of education of the future are open and carried out in a network. A doctrinal education would be obsolete, at the service of a single ideology, a political party, a single religious confession… Education with unique plans and programmes, closed content, repetitive methods, memoristic slogans and uncompromising discipline would be obsolete. This principle derives from putting the person and the common good at the center of the education system.
2. An education at the service of families, as parents are the first and leading educators of their children, while the other educational institutions (schools, ICT, non-formal education institutions) collaborate with them. The family’s contribution to the education of children cannot be replaced. Therefore, parents should not be deprived of the right to choose the type of education they want for their children, which implies an open offer with various alternatives in school and after-school education. According to this principle, States are guarantors of education, as a universal right, but they are not the sole managers of it. This allows families to be empowered and supported so that they can choose or create intermediate educational instances that collaborate with the family and the state in their teaching role.
3. An education that prioritizes personal growth and individual identity, which can teach you to think and choose, that educates people’s feelings, will and freedom. Plural to admit different ideas, beliefs, political and religious affiliations. It is not enough to ensure coverage by decreasing quality, nor to prioritize school promotion over personal development. The challenge is to reach everyone, but not in the same way; promote everyone, but not at the same time; help everyone, but respect the one who doesn’t want to be helped, and let anyone who doesn’t want company walk alone.
4. An education that guarantees and prioritizes growth in moral and civic values. Education should not ignore the importance of marriage, family and other intermediate institutions necessary to build a harmonious and comprehensively developed society. The education of the person cannot be limited to instruction, but it is necessary to educate people for respect, love, fidelity, work, coexistence, politics, etc. Therefore, it should provide for a formation of values and appreciative that contemplates ethics and aesthetics, good and truth, beauty and harmony, interpersonal relationships and individual interiority.
5. An education that prioritizes life, love and fraternal social relations, which overcomes a competitive, hedonistic and consumerist vision that worships materialism. This principle requires working together with the family for sex education that is not limited to the physiological, biological and reproductive aspects, but requires a reference to the relational dimension of people, open to love, responsibility, freedom, fidelity, life, happiness and complementarity of the human being.
6. An education that guarantees training in the social and solidarity dimension of the person, which involves collaboration, honesty, truth and professional coherence to train citizens with ethical values, not only for coexistence with urbanity, but for coexistence that allows to build with all a society and a nation where all are recognized and valued.
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. An education open to change and promoter of them. The postmodern world is dynamic and it is necessary to prepare for rapid and profound transformations. This dynamism occurs not only in science and technology, but in new generations that need new spaces. It is not enough to educate for children and young people to insert themselves into society; it is necessary to educate for change and social transformation. Changes in today’s world are fast and unlisted.
8. An education that promotes ecology, the care of the common home, respect for the lives of people (throughout their development), animals, plants… Education for the creation of human and social environments conducive to dignified life and healthy coexistence.
9. An education in which, together with the State, various and different actors can intervene: parents, civil institutions, association of educators, sociocultural environment, particular initiatives. This principle of subsidiarity implies that education is not an exclusive monopoly of anyone, therefore it cannot be paternalistic or authoritarian (because it generates dependence and servileness), but is liberating and promoting change. The model is the transformation of real society and not so much the reproduction of an ideal society according to an ideology or political system. Education is always a public service that must benefit the educated themselves and the common good of society.
10. An education whose ultimate objective would be the good of the educated (whether children or adults), the development of their mind, will, feeling, freedom, responsibility. Learn to think, to do, to be, to want and to decide. Skills for coexistence and for the relationship with yourself, with nature, with others and with transcendence. Then fraternal personal relations will allow us to establish a more just, developed, harmonious and peaceful society.

Tenths for a friendly teacher
Brother Jesus Bayo M., FMS
If you don’t run school
in this twenty-first century,
connects with each
on the web that challenges you.
Although many today it hurts,
education has changed.
Accumulated content
it no longer serves the student,
because it’s more interesting
be networked.
Sharing knowledge,
create as a group the science
and have a good conscience,
with reason and feeling…
Well, if you don’t lay a foundation
truth and love,
will lack color
that banking education
that becomes doctrinal,
but it’s lost its value.

Teacher’s Prayer
Gabriela Mistral, Chilean teacher and poet

Sir! You, who taught, forgive me for teaching; to bear the name of teacher, which You carried on Earth.
Give me the unique love of my school; that even the burn of beauty is not capable of stealing my tenderness of all moments
Master, make me enduring the fervor and passing the unseanctant. It rips from me this impure desire for justice that still troubles me, the petty insinuation of protest that rises from me when I get hurt. I am not asleep by misunderstanding or saddened by the forgetfulness of the students I taught.
Give me being more mother than mothers, so I can love and defend like them what is not flesh of my flesh. I can make one of my girls my perfect verse and leave in it nailed my most penetrating melody, so that when my lips do not sing anymore.
Show me your gospel possible in my time, so that I do not give up the battle of every day and every hour for it.
Put in my democratic school the glow that loaded over your run of barefoot children.

Make me strong, even in my helplessness as a woman, and as a poor woman; make me despicor of any power that is not pure, of all pressure other than that of your fiery will upon my life.

Dude, come with me, hold me! Many times I will have only You by my side. When my doctrine is more chaste and my truth burns more, I will run out of worldly people; but You will then oppress me against your heart, the one who knew enough of loneliness and helplessness. I will look only in your gaze for the sweetness of approvals.

Give me simplicity and give me depth; Free me from being complicated or banal in my daily lesson.

Give me to lift my eyes off my chest with wounds as I enter my school every morning. Don’t bring to my desk my little material cares, my petty pains every hour.

Shake my hand in punishment and let me know more in caressing. Rebuke with pain to know that I have corrected by loving!

Make me spirit my brick school.

He’s wrapped in the flame of my enthusiasm, his poor atrium, his naked room. My heart is more column and my goodwill more gold than the columns and gold of rich schools.

And finally, remind me from the paleness of Velázquez’s canvas, that teaching and loving intensely on Earth is to reach the last day with longinos’ spear from side to side.

 

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