The education challenge
With the opening of another school year, the true nature and purpose of education is again in focus. Our problem is that very often we get stuck with the practical aspects of this human affair, while missing the essential.
I myself am not exempt from this to-do. Many parents come to pour out their problems about money and such things. No laughing matter at all. From time to time I emit a big whew when one says that he managed to enroll his 5 kids after so much trouble.
The schools and the public officials, of course, have their share of the fuzzy load school openings often involve.
The financial aspect has to be carefully checked out. The personnel needs, the training, and all sorts of preparation have to be attended to.
The bigger question of whether the present educational system can cover the concerned populace also has to be resolved. This is no negligible matter at all since we know we have a healthy, growing population.
This question, however, lends itself to many viewpoints, often muddled by militants and other ideologues who like questioning and protesting more than providing answers and solutions.
Different sectors of society have their respective take on this matter, indicating that education is indeed so very important as to involve everyone.
All these aspects are critical and indispensable. They are part of our human condition and should not be treated lightly. We are not angels who can operate unmindful of logistical requirements.
But neither should we just get glued to these considerations. Education has aims and objectives that far transcend these aspects. It's about our human spirit that has to be properly grounded and oriented, and able not only to cope with our material and human needs, but also to develop our human potentials.
Education focuses on what is distinctive to us as creatures. We are not mere animals, much less some organism living or inert. And even as a rational being, we are not simply meant to have a purely earthly destiny.
Education is meant to integrate the many aspects comprising our human condition, giving them the primal impulses to develop our dignity as persons and as children of God.
Thus, education goes much further than just giving us some training for basic skills. It even goes beyond acquiring very specialized and scientific knowledge, and sophisticated skills and technologies.
Education is to help us work out our true objective end and source of happiness. This is none other than to bring us to God. A good education is when one learns to find God in everything, and to relate things to God. An education that ignores this aspect or marginalizes it goes against its very nature.
Thus, with the way education is getting developed nowadays, we have to make a very conscious and concerted effort to guarantee that our educational efforts are in proper orbit.
There has to be a way, for example, to keep focused on education's authentic North Star amid the tendencies to fragment it up into so many fields and branches that their interrelationships, unity and direction get compromised.
In this regard, we have to lay the cards on the table that we have to start, proceed and conclude our educational efforts with faith, and not just with our own reason. Without this question properly settled, our education can go the way of random and aimless fishing.
Those involved in education—practically all of us, but more so to the parents and school and public officials—must keep this concern foremost in their minds.
They must be able to translate this ideal into a very workable plan that can be measured as much as possible. Those in the higher levels should see to it that they have the over-all picture clear in the mind. They have to monitor developments closely.
Pertinent offices should be put up, with their work load spelled out, and their relationships clearly delineated. The macro and micro aspects and requirements have to be dealt with properly.
In this regard, I would suggest an office that specifically takes care of the human and spiritual formation of the students. This, in fact, is a very important office with which all other offices should deal to assure a holistic development of the students.
(Fr. Cimagala is the Chaplain of Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City, Email: roycimagala@hotmail.com)