VATICAN (CNS): “The (Covid-19) crisis has accelerated and magnified many of the issues and needs that we had identified and has uncovered numerous others as well,” he said, noting, “Concerns about health care are now accompanied by economic and social concerns. Educational systems worldwide have felt the effects of the pandemic at every level,” Pope Francis told participants at a meeting of the Global Compact on Education on October 15.
“The value of our educational practices will be measured not simply by the results of standardised tests, but by the ability to affect the heart of society and to help give birth to a new culture. A different world is possible and we are called to learn how to build it,” the pope said.
The Global Compact on Education was launched in 2019 and the pope invited representatives from the world’s religions, international organisations and humanitarian groups as well as educators, economists, scientists, policymakers, people from the world of art, culture and sports and young people to come to the Vatican in May.
However, the event was cancelled due to the Covid-19 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic and, instead, a mostly virtual event, sponsored by the Congregation for Catholic Education, was held at Rome’s Pontifical Lateran University.
In his video message, Pope Francis said that a superficial approach to education that relies solely on “standardised test results, functionality and bureaucracy” and that “confuses education with instruction” must be left behind.
The pope said that “we could never have imagined the situation that has developed” since he first called for the alliance (in 2019).
While online educational platforms have helped during the pandemic, they also “brought to light a marked disparity in education and technological opportunities” that has left many young people behind, he said.
“Recent statistics from international agencies have led some to speak, perhaps somewhat hastily, of an ‘educational catastrophe,’ inasmuch as some 10 million children were forced to leave school as a result of the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus,” the pope said.
He stressed that without a new cultural model that ensures “that the dignity of the human person is respected and protected,” health care measures will “prove inadequate.”
The pope said, “We are experiencing a comprehensive crisis that cannot be reduced or limited to any single sector. It affects everything. The pandemic has led us to realise that what is really in crisis is our way of understanding reality and of relating to one another.”
Pope Francis emphasised that education must be “transformative” and must offer a new hope that “can shatter the determinism and fatalism that the selfishness of the strong, the conformism of the weak and the ideology of the utopians would convince us is the only way forward.”
The poverty and confusion wrought by the pandemic have created a situation that requires a radical decision and opens a path for “a global pact on education for and with future generations,” the pope said.
“The ability to create harmony: that is what is needed today,” he stressed.
The pope highlighted seven concrete commitments needed to defend the rights of future generations to education, including: rejecting a throwaway culture, listening to the voices of young people, encouraging the participation of girls and young women in education, elevating the role of the family, accepting of the marginalised and promoting an integral ecology and care for the environment.
“The goal of this educational investment, grounded in a network of humane and open relationships, is to ensure that everyone has access to a quality education consonant with the dignity of the human person and our common vocation to fraternity,” Pope Francis said.
“It is time to look to the future with courage and hope,” he said. “May we be sustained by the conviction that education bears within itself a seed of hope: the hope of peace and justice; the hope of beauty and goodness; the hope of social harmony,” he said.
