Archbishop André Vingt-Trois of Paris has called for a pact of “complicity” to be forged between family and school to accompany youth in the “journey” that will lead them to the “fullness of the human personality”. The archbishop made this proposal in the homily he gave in recent days during a celebration in the church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris marking the centenary of the Catholic école normale, founded in 1906. “Today he said many adults hesitate when faced by the educational adventure”: “they withdraw from the task of education; often they even refuse to bring children into the world. They hesitate, perhaps because they are not sure of the light that they could transmit or because they don’t know whether their way of life is the right one for their children. This hesitation is not in itself culpable. It is rather a form of suffering, of distress that corresponds to the fundamental questions posed to us in life”. The archbishop then made his proposal that a pact of complicity should be forged between family and school, given that both are finally responsible for the educational process. That means explained Archbishop Vingt-Trois that the trust that children have in their family needs to be combined with the trust they learn to place in their teachers”. But the unity between them stressed the archbishop is unfortunately becoming “ever weaker”, since “the child learns one thing at school and its opposite in the family”. That’s why the participation of parents in the “daily life of the school” is so important: it is he said an essential precondition for the success of the educational task”.
