Education for Choosing Life: Proposals for Difficult Times
Times of crisis reveal what we are made of, urgently rousing the voices that restore meaning to uncertain wandering. So begins the foreword of this book, providing the framework in which these messages to teachers were given by Pope Francis while he was cardinal archbishop of Buenos Aires. Although these messages were originally given to educators in Argentina, in a certain time and place, with particular social, political, and economic problems in view, they have universal appeal. The challenge to form the whole person, which involves more than providing a child with the ability to calculate, is relevant to teachers everywhere, regardless of their particular circumstances. The cardinal began these reflections with the assertion that teaching is an act of hope, which requires a vision of what it means to be human, the belief that this vision can be realized to some degree even in a fallen world, and the creativity to find ways to achieve it. Obstacles to human development must not disc