Mission land” “

Europe, the third millennium, the challenges posed to those who continue to believe in education as integral growth of the person, in education as in mission, Catholicism and culture, Church and State: all these problems were touched on by Msgr. MICHAEL MILLER , Secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education in speaking to the seminar of bishops responsible for Catholic schools and representatives of the European Committee for Catholic Education (ECCE). He began his address by identifying the greatest problems faced by the challenge of teaching in Catholic schools in Europe today. CULTURAL PROBLEM. “The start of the third millennium – said Msgr. Miller – presents itself as a period of new challenges and great opportunities in the sphere of education. These challenges are linked to the globalization of markets and culture, the problems of innovation in the field of bioethics, and the need to understand what is meant by a just and integral human and social development. Secularization and the dictatorship of relativism are becoming ever more widespread in Europe and throughout the West, and have the effect of removing education from the fundamental questions about the meaning of life, the quest for God and the moral order. This tendency will increasingly impoverish man”. This situation represents the context in which the huge network of European Catholic schools have to work and, at the same time, their main “mission land”. EDUCATING, IN WHAT? “The European Commission has developed a particular approach to the way in which education should be conducted, thinking that it may contribute to the continent’s progress. In the White Paper Teaching and learning: towards the cognitive society, three factors are identified that ought to have great importance on the future of education: the globalized economy, the information society and technology. These are real prospects, but they are shortsighted. “What most frightens me – continued Msgr. Miller – is the excessive emphasis placed on the computer-based and technological aspects of education. This is giving rise to a perceptible fragmentation of knowledge that is not at the service of the integrity of the human person. Postmann, a famous American expert in educational science, warned us of the end of education”. The risk is of ending up as “weak subjects, fragmented persons”. We need, on the contrary, “to prepare the young for the new world of work, without ignoring the fundamental objectives of education in the transmission of values. This is the deepest challenge for schools at the start of the third millennium”. THE SERVICE OF CATHOLIC SCHOOLS TO THE COMMUNITY. “Catholic schools are more than ever necessary, due to the unique contribution they can make to social life”. This need, according to Miller, is at the basis of demands for their proper recognition. “Already Vatican Council II, in Gravissimum Educationis, maintained that parents must be made really free to choose the school they think best for their own children. From this, and from the recognition of the important role that Catholic schools play in society, derives the obligation of the State to support them with public subsidies, as happens – to a greater or lesser degree – in many European countries”. TEACHERS. Teaching is not any old job, but a form of “witness” and a “vocation”. That, according to Miller, is the specific feature of the teacher’s role. “They must be models for students, and witnesses of the Gospel. If we want European youth to experience the beauty of the Church, the Christian example set by teachers then becomes crucial”. They must perform their task “in a spirit of communion”, “supported and encouraged by the whole community, by families, by priests and by bishops”. ECCE: fact file Created in 1974 as regional committee of the International Organization of Catholic Education (IOCE), the European Committee for Catholic Education (ECCE) is a non-profit-making international association. It brings together the Catholic schools of 25 countries in Central, Western and Eastern Europe, representing 30,411 schools (primary and secondary) and 7,147,879 students (figures for 2004).