Archbishop Romero on Education

J.M.J.


ARCHBISHOP ROMERO ON EDUCATION


In general, education in our Latin American countries is directed toward the desire to have more, whereas today’s youth demand rather

to be more, to realize themselves through service and love.

Let us not develop an education that creates in the mind of the student a hope of becoming rich and having the power to dominate. That does not correspond to the times in which we live. Let us form in the heart of the child and the young person the lofty ideal of loving, of preparing oneself to serve and to give oneself to others. Anything else would be education for selfishness, and we want to escape the selfishness that is precisely the cause of the great malaise of our societies.

The Church must propose an education that makes people agents of their own development, protagonists of history, not a passive, compliant mass, but human beings able to display their intelligence, their creativity, their desire for the common service of the nation. Education must recognize that the development of the individual and of peoples is the “advancement of each and all from less-human to more-human conditions.” (Pope Paul VI, The Development of Peoples, n. 20)


-- Archbishop Oscar Romero

January 22, 1978

Thanks Brother John Samaha for sharing.