Ioan-Aurel Pop: The school completely separated from the Church lacks its original landmark
The president of the Romanian Academy, the historian Ioan-Aurel Pop, was on Monday the guest of Cătălin Vasile, the producer of the show “Realitatea la zi/Daily reality” of the online television Prodocens Media. The theme of the show was “Education yesterday and today - traditions and perspectives.”
The academician pleaded for the combination in public schools of the acquisition of knowledge with the formation of attitudes and values. And in the formation of the latter the family and the Church have a crucial role.
Family education
“In Romania, the family was usually made up of parents, but also grandparents. The parents taught the children practical aspects, and the grandparents taught them the spiritual part. Many times the children learned the love of the Church and of God through their grandparents,” said the historian, adding that he learned to pray from his grandparents.
“Grandparents knew how to tell us what perpetual values are. Why we must have courage and dignity throughout life, but also humility. There is very little talk today about humility.”
“The distinction between good and evil is very important to be learned in the family,” said Ioan-Aurel Pop. “For me, the first school is the family. God has left the world in this form, in which the small or extended family is the first school that children see, understand. And through childhood games, education is provided.”
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Teachers also strengthen virtues
“School normalizes things”, says the academician, that is, it adds rigor and specialization, but the consolidation of virtues in students must also continue. “The job of a teacher is one of the most delicate in this world”, because his mission is “to transmit values and virtues.”
“Any teacher who correctly fulfills his mission as a teacher, whether he teaches sports or mathematics, does education. And education means transmitting these values.”
The historian listed some such attitudes and values: “The desire to do good and to distinguish good from evil. The idea of solidarity between people. We have become more accustomed lately to the struggle between people, to exacerbated criticism. Or, teachers transmit this sense of balance, and the moral values that parents and grandparents initially planted must be continued through school.”
The church, a moral school
The moral-attitudinal component of education was best transmitted by the Church. “In Christianity, the virtues have been transmitted for 2000 years through the Church. But they must also be transmitted through the school”. The reason: “Virtues and values are essential to what I call the hope in souls.”
“The universal handicap is that, since the Great French Revolution, secularization has tried to completely or almost completely separate the school from the Church,” the academician said, although, he says, “if we look at the past, there is no school without a Church.”
“The Christian faith has been a beacon for humanity for the last two millennia. And we have no reason to believe that society could have developed at today's level without the existence of this family education that was continued by the school. The school completely separated from the Church lacks its landmark,” he said.
Because “religion is a discipline that teaches you first and foremost the moral values of society,” the President of the Academy believes that it must remain in the common core (of the disciplines taught in the school).
For a “more humane” school
The historian also pleaded for the maintenance of other disciplines, considered less important: “Why can Music, Drawing, or Dramaturgy be put aside due to overload? When you do these things with pleasure, you don't feel overwhelmed. And the pleasure comes from the dedication.”
Like History or Geography, these subjects maintain a more human school: “The human school is done, as I said, through Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, but it is also done through Geography and History, because you acquire the sense of time by learning history… And geography gives a sense of space.”
“If we reduce the importance of these disciplines, we gradually, instead of becoming full people, adapted to life, form some mechanisms. And the philosophers told us that a people without education is very easy to manipulate,” mentioned Ioan-Aurel Pop.
Some simple solutions to improve children's education: parents to spend more time with their children, and teachers to be more valued in society, as they once were. Another change of attitude would target children: “If we manage to inoculate in the souls of young people the cult of work and the idea that without school we cannot succeed in life, then nothing is lost.”
And, last but not least, the academician added, “let us not be afraid to know our specificity and identity. In order for me to understand humanity, I think I must first understand the group from which I formed and love it. And, loving this homeland and this people, I will surely be able to pour my love on all the other peoples and on the whole humanity,” he concluded.
Prodocens Media is a platform for communicating Christian values in the online environment founded by Cătălin Vasile in 2014. This week, the show “Realitatea la zi/Daily reality”, broadcast daily live on Facebook, from 8:00 pm (Bucharest time) had only topics in the field education.
Acad. Ioan-Aurel Pop, author of numerous books, is a doctor in history and professor of Transylvanian History and Medieval History of Romania at the Faculty of History and Philosophy of Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca. In 2018, he was elected President of the Romanian Academy.
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[Photo credit: Metropolia of Cluj, Maramureș and Sălaj (archive image) / Text credit: Basilica.ro / Published by Ștefana Totorcea / 8.27.2020]
