|
The Sacred Ecumenical Council has considered with care how extremely
important education is in the life of man and how its influence ever
grows in the social progress of this age.[1]
Indeed, the circumstances of our time have made it easier and at once
more urgent to educate young people and, what is more, to continue the
education of adults. Men are more aware of their own dignity and
position; more and more they want to take an active part in social and
especially in economic and political life.[2] Enjoying more
leisure, as they sometimes do, men find that the remarkable
development of technology and scientific investigation and the new means
of communication offer them an opportunity of attaining more easily
their cultural and spiritual inheritance and of fulfilling one another
in the closer ties between groups and even between peoples.
Consequently, attempts are being made everywhere to promote more
education. The rights of men to an education, particularly the
primary rights of children and parents, are being proclaimed and
recognized in public documents.[3] As the number of pupils rapidly
increases, schools are multiplied and expanded far and wide and other
educational institutions are established. New experiments are
conducted in methods of education and teaching. Mighty attempts are
being made to obtain education for all, even though vast numbers of
children and young people are still deprived of even rudimentary
training and so many others lack a suitable education in which truth and
love are developed together.
To fulfill the mandate she has received from her divine founder of
proclaiming the mystery of salvation to all men and of restoring all
things in Christ, Holy Mother the Church must be concerned with the
whole of man's life, even the secular part of it insofar as it has a
bearing on his heavenly calling.[4] Therefore she has a role in the
progress and development of education. Hence this sacred synod
declares certain fundamental principles of Christian education
especially in schools. These principles will have to be developed at
greater length by a special post-conciliar commission and applied by
episcopal conferences to varying local situations.
|
|