According to the Pope, "a successful education means learning how to rightly use freedom". "As children grow, they become teenagers, then young men and women": according to Benedict XVI, "we must accept the risk of freedom, but at the same time we must always be careful to help it correct our wrong ideas or choices. What we must never do, instead, is help it in its mistakes, pretend not to see them or, even worse, share them, as if they were the new frontiers of human progress". In the Pope’s opinion, therefore, "education cannot do without that authoritativeness that gives credibility to the use of authority" and that "is the fruit of experience and knowledge" but that "can be acquired above all through the consistency of one’s life and through personal involvement". In education, according to Benedict XVI, "the sense of responsibility turns out to be decisive: the responsibility of the teacher as well as the responsibility of the child, of the student, of the young man or woman who enters the work world. Those who know how to answer for themselves and for the others are responsible. Those who believe also, and above all, try to answer to God, who loved them first". According to the Pope, responsibility "is first and foremost personal, but there is also a responsibility that we share as citizens of the same city or country, as members of the human family, and, if we believe, as children of the same God and as members of the Church". ” “
