New lessons in purpose of education

Catholic Education in the Light of Vatican II and Laudato Si’

by Dermot A. Lane

(Veritas, €7.99)

Education, as Dermot Lane is very well aware, is a contentious subject, with strong opinions being expressed on the quality and nature of general education, but also what many of a traditional mind see as a failure ‘to hand on the faith’. Of course, many rightly think that it is duty of parents to do that.

But this little book – the author calls it a paper – focuses on the nature of contemporary Catholic education in the light of two important publications: the Decree on Christian Education (1965), a document of Vatican II, and on the very recent Laudato Si’: On the Care of Our Common Home (a document which has already received great attention from The Irish Catholic).

Dermot Lane takes an approach which will be unfamiliar to many, but which he hopes will prove fruitful. Laudato Si’ spoke with concern about the “anthropocentrism” of the earlier outlook of both the clergy and the laity. We are called to have a care for the whole of creation in a serious manner – something that the Irish middle classes have difficulty with sometimes.

Understanding

This calls for a new understanding, a new understanding which must lie at the centre of what Catholic education intends to achieve. The key to this is ‘a new anthropology’ – but not the anthropology which so often involves itself with other societies, but a theological  anthropology which focuses on the purpose and nature of man in relation to the world around him, of which he is not the overlord but the sharer.

This calls for a new appreciation of education, one which will seem strange, I suspect, to those who complain about the present situation. But we have to live in the present and prepare for the future. This requires new approaches.

This short publication should be read and appraised by everyone concerned with the nature of education. It provides a foundational notion of the purpose of education. Education is no mere matter of getting children into a good job; it is essential in the creation of good citizens and mature Chrstians, both of which at times seem in short supply.