The Risk of Education - Chapter I

Guissani writes that the young need to be immersed in a unified view of the world which he calls "tradition".  Without such a unified vision the young person will be "disconnected and worn down".  A neutral education leads to either "fanaticism, bigotry against a certain position, or an 'anything goes' indifference".  The single criterion, or tradition,  turns out to help even those who ultimately reject it because only when questioning from total security and from comparison with heartfelt truth will any conversion to another view happen.  A skeptic can't approach a problem in the same way as the person with such a unified vision.  The skeptic simply says "whatever" and remains indifferent to reality.

Real authority comes from a person who embodies the tradition or hypothesis of reality.  (This is a real challenge to parents and teachers.)

True conviction in the student arises from stimulating the adolescent to personally commit to verify the tradition (hypothesis) in his own life.  Without this personal verification true learning has not taken place.  This risk of personal verification of the tradition is the source of the adolescent coming to his age of true freedom.  Hence the "risk" of education.

The Risk of Education - Preliminary Comments

Giussani begins his work by describing the situation in Italy in the late 1950s; schools had catechism classes, tradition was generally kept alive in the family, and there was still a fair attendance at Sunday Mass.  Yet, he says there was no motivation for belief, faith was irrelevant to social behavior, there was a general skepticism that prevailed.  He then points out a few things that will be developed later in the book to help answer this disconnect; the need for risk or verification, the common path of the student and educator before the mystery of God, and the human's double structure of person and community.

Giussani's advice for the teacher and formula for everlasting youth: have "a life that as time goes by maintains its youthful attitude, remains open to learning, is filled with wonder and is moved by things."

The Risk of Education - Intro

When I last read The Risk of Education I thought it was an important, though little know work on Christian education worth carefully considering.  Now that I have had experience teaching high school at a Christian classical school and now that my own children are growing older (ages 4-10), I thought I would blog through each chapter of the book over the coming weeks.

Here is a bio of the author: Luigi Giussani