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 La sfida educativa - Il Volume - English version - Introduction 
Introduction   versione testuale
Among past societies there was a broad consensus about education; today it is becoming, more than anything else, a challenge. Until recently it was almost taken for granted that one generation was responsible for the education of newcomers, in accordance with traditions inherited from previous generations. Today, to a greater or lesser extent, we are all aware that this automatic assumption is disappearing, with all the risks, but also with all the opportunities, that this entails. Social diversity and increasing individualism have enormously expanded the capacity for people to choose. But at the very moment in which it has become crucial to have an educational approach based on awareness and responsibility, capable of promoting a stimulus among younger generations for personal study, it seems as if our society has abdicated its educational duty. In the pursuance of sterile neutrality, it has abandoned young people to their solitude; they are increasingly prone to violence and vulgarity and increasingly incapable of making sense of their lives. Adults, themselves disoriented and exhausted, seem to watch impotently over the difficulties of their children, fearful of exercising their educational responsibility; those who have the courage to do so often achieve disappointing results. This produces growing pessimism, found more or less everywhere, about the very possibility of educating.
Behind this educational problem, which is the main reason for this report-proposal, we see above all a new anthropological issue emerging. This, let it be said, is the problem of a culture which for too long has failed to cultivate its human aspect and which today is beginning to become slowly aware of the dangers of such failure. In the words of Cardinal Camillo Ruini: “if our concept of man changes, and all the more so if man’s situation itself should change, then in turn the concept of education changes and all of our educational parameters are compromised, or at least greatly altered. In my view, this is precisely what is happening, even though many people are not yet aware of it.” It affects therefore the idea we have of mankind, of liberty and of the very future of our national community.
We live in a society in which it seems that everything is possible without distinction, where any idea or lifestyle whatsoever seems to have the same value; where technical and economic powers seem set on emancipating themselves from every human consideration; where wishes seem to become rights and outward appearance seems to take the place of ethical conduct. But this is only one side of the story. Indeed, this paradoxical mixture of functionalism and weak thought, where everything is free and everything seems to yield to the most rigid necessity, is in turn falling apart, emphasising the urgency once again for a new reflection on the anthropological bases of every social organisation, and therefore on man and his dignity. The triumph of diversity, exalted as a pretext for affirming the right to do whatever we like at whatever level, is in fact now capsizing under its own weakness. If everything is equally possible, then even the difference becomes indifferent. We wanted our own ego above all to be independent and free, and instead we fumble around in the dark, finding it increasingly difficult to give meaning to our liberty, while society seems to move in its own direction, as if people did not exist. From here there is a paralysing “sense of drift” (in Toynbee’s words), the growing deterioration of any significant relationship, and a growing desire to escape from reality.
If people are left to themselves, as the sociologist Émile Durkheim had guessed, they are destined to become victims of their endless desires. We need education for this reason and we need teachers capable of teaching. But it is difficult to have both of these unless there is a body of values, of wisdom and even, let it be said, a tradition considered worthy of being passed on and for which, being considered as good, it is right to require rigor, effort, discipline and confidence in the future. Above all, it is difficult to educate without having in mind a model of mankind, of human experience, capable of constituting a purpose worth striving for. Examples of this can be found among those parents, teachers, men and women of good will who exercise their educational responsibilities every day with enthusiasm and passion, spreading trust, hope and joy in life. They can also be found among those many young people who are still capable of finding pleasure in study and in living, who experience a shared life which has nothing of the squalor so often talked about, who invest part of their time in working voluntarily to help the elderly and young in need, reminding us that there are still good reasons for hope.
The main purpose of this report-proposal is to reconsider the crucial anthropological aspect of education and, more in general, to examine the existential, social and cultural situation of people today, in the light of Christian anthropology and experience. The sense of the “proposal” around which the report is constructed, as described in the first chapter, is an attempt to emphasise the productive character of education in the light of an anthropology centred upon the relational character of man. In the other chapters it is sought to examine the theoretical and practical effectiveness of education in specific contexts in which human life is born, grows up and expresses its creativity. Attention is focused here upon the family, school and Christian community as the primary figures in education and also, it has to be said, as places of intentional education, explicitly intended as such, focusing also upon certain aspects of society – work, business, media, entertainment, the consumer culture, sport – which have an undoubted influence upon educational processes, but which in turn need to be educated in order to better express all of their human and social significance.
Using the large quantity of empirical research carried out in these contexts over recent years, a summary of which we present in the last chapter, we have sought to put forward a realistic picture of the situation in education today, taking into account not only the problems but also the opportunities. In certain contexts, without claiming to reach any conclusion, we have also sought to identify the priorities and to put forward useful practical suggestions for overcoming specific difficulties; we have done so without losing sight of the deep anthropological reason for which, in our view, education has become a problem today, indeed a true “emergency”.
On the basis of this awareness, we would like to promote a sort of alliance for education in our country, in the various places in which we know that education is crucial. We are motivated by the hope of stimulating a debate which takes into consideration the Catholic viewpoint and which is able to interest the widest possible section of the population. The question of education is too important to be left in the hands of a few people; it is perhaps the most important public question, in which the destiny of the nation’s entire community is at stake. In this respect the Comitato per il Progetto Culturale della Chiesa italiana (Committee for the Cultural Project of the Church in Italy) feels the need to make its own contribution.

The Report-proposal on education has been prepared by the Comitato per il progetto culturale (Camillo Ruini, Angelo Scola, Ignazio Sanna, Ugo Amaldi, Paola Bignardi, Dino Boffo, Francesco Botturi, Francesco D’Agostino, Fiorenzo Facchini, Lorenzo Ornaghi, Andrea Riccardi, Paola Ricci Sindoni and Eugenia Scabini). The work has been coordinated by Sergio Belardinelli, Paola Bignardi and Francesco Botturi. In addition to them, the various chapters have been written by Laura Bovone, Giorgio Chiosso, Edio Costantini, Pierpaolo Donati, Armando Fumagalli, Claudio Gentili, Guido Gili, Luisa Ribolzi, Paola Ricci Sindoni, Milena Santerini, Giuseppe Savagnone, Eugenia Scabini and Paolo Terenzi. In order to make it easier to read, it has been decided to avoid academic technical language and references to bibliographical notes. With the exception of the last chapter, which contains an extensive bibliography on the principal empirical research carried out over recent years relating to the various topics which have been examined in the report-proposal, other chapters are limited to providing a short bibliography of references.