{"id":77,"date":"2018-05-12T15:47:16","date_gmt":"2018-05-12T19:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/?p=77"},"modified":"2018-05-12T16:38:10","modified_gmt":"2018-05-12T20:38:10","slug":"educating-for-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/2018\/05\/12\/educating-for-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Educating for Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Byrnes, J. T. (2002).\u00a0John Paul II & educating for life: Moving toward a renewal of Catholic educational philosophy<\/em><\/a>. New York: P. Lang.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Most of the book is devoted to the views and work of Karol Wojtla, who served as Pope John Paul II from 1978-2005. Byrnes reviews developments in the Catholic philosophy of education since Vatican II (1962-65, beginning under Pope John XXIII and closing under Pope Paul VI) attempted to reconcile Catholic teaching with modernity. \u00a0The book gives useful background to Pope John Paul\u2019s 1990 Ex Corde<\/em> on education as well as the development of Catholic educational philosophy during a period that Brynes notes has largely been neglected.<\/p>\n

Byrnes stresses the importance of \u201cpersonalism\u201d (viewing each person as a unique physical and spiritual being, largely in response to the horrors of WWI and the \u201cdepersonalization\u201d of modernism in Catholic education) particularly as represented by Jacques Maritain.\u00a0 Maritain emphasized the role of the person in the community rather than as a selfish individual, which gave rise to a service-oriented approach to education, a commitment to individual students, and an emphasis on social justice.\u00a0 Byrnes notes that Wojtla\/Pope John Paul II embraced both personalism and Thomism in a philosophy he terms \u201cneo-Thomistic personalism (p. 19).\u00a0 So, his philosophy carried forward Vatican II in attempting to combine \u201cthe best of the old and new\u201d.\u00a0 He saw education as \u201cthe process by which a person is able to embark upon the life-long process of self-fulfillment through transcendence and integration [into the community]\u201d p. 82.<\/p>\n

Wojtla\/Pope John Paul II \u201cis trying to explain to young people that their experience or study of the world will help the on their way to finding the truth about themselves as persons and to understand this truth\u201d (p. 117).\u00a0 He understood that individual experience would influence the way in which they saw \u201cobjective truth\u201d (thus explaining differences in opinion) but held that this should not lead to empty relativism or a belief that truth was only as one saw it (p. 117).\u00a0 He did, however, hold that individual freedom was critical to this search for the truth, and that students held much of the responsibility for \u201cself-education\u201d (p. 120).\u00a0 In this sense he was a proponent of what we now call \u201cactive learning\u201d. In a quote very reminiscent of Lonergan\u2019s self-appropriation:<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the truths of humanity could be laid before young persons, but if they choose not to \u201cmake it their own\u201d there is no education\u201d (p. 121), and \u201ceducation is work and must be responded to accordingly\u201d (p. 122).<\/p>\n

Wojtla\/Pope John Paul II also emphasized that while the principle role of education is to promote \u201cself-fulfillment\u201d (as described above), it is also beneficial for society.\u00a0 Indeed, society \u201cneeds to provide education for all, not only because the dignity of the human person depends on it, but also because society\u2019s survival depends on it\u201d (p. 122). Despite his emphasis on the student \u201cbearing the burden\u201d of becoming educated, he notes the importance of parents, faculty and administrators participating in \u201cthe educational community\u201d, and that there should be \u201cevery opportunity\u201d for faculty development (p. 129).<\/p>\n

Byrnes concludes that the Pope\u2019s main contribution was bringing a clear philosophy to an education that was already happening in practice, helping it to become more \u201cperson centered by recognizing the need to be conscious of the personal experiences of each student\u201d (p.137).\u00a0 He also opens the way to dialogs about academic freedom vs. the church\u2019s \u201crevealed truths\u201d and those who embrace post-modernism.<\/p>\n

Questions<\/h4>\n
    \n
  1. How does this primarily \u201cbottom up\u201d philosophy of education fit with the changes brought about by Vatican II and the modernist and post-modernist philosophy?<\/li>\n
  2. Is there too great an assumption of students\u2019 willingness to learn and appropriate material?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Byrnes, J. T. (2002).\u00a0John Paul II & educating for life: Moving toward a renewal of Catholic educational philosophy. New York: P. Lang. Most of the book is devoted to the views and work of Karol Wojtla, who served as Pope John Paul II from 1978-2005. Byrnes reviews developments in the Catholic philosophy of education since … Continue reading “Educating for Life”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic-higher-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions\/107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}