Day 4 | Week 2: Pope Francis on Education II

Pope Francis in his address to the Italian Union of Catholic School Teachers, Managers, Educators, and Trainers [14 March 2015] --

"School is certainly comprised of valid and qualified instruction, but also of human relations, which for us are welcoming and benevolent relations, to be offered indiscriminately to all. Indeed, the duty of a good teacher — all the more for a Christian teacher — is to love his or her more difficult, weaker, more disadvantaged students with greater intensity. 

Jesus would say, if you love only those who study, who are well educated, what merit do you have? And there are some who make us lose our patience, but we must love them even more! Any teacher can do well with such students. 

I ask you to love the “difficult” students more... those who do not want to study, those who find themselves in difficult situations, the disabled and foreigners, who today pose a great challenge for schools."

"If a professional association of Christian teachers wants to bear witness to their inspiration today, then it is called to persevere in the peripheries of schools, which cannot be abandoned to marginalization, exclusion, ignorance, crime. In a society that struggles to find points of reference, young people need a positive reference point in their school. 

The school can be this or become this only if it has teachers capable of giving meaning to school, to studies and to culture, without reducing everything to the mere transmission of technical knowledge. Instead they must aim to build an educational relationship with each student, who must feel accepted and loved for who he or she is, with all of his or her limitations and potential. 

In this direction, your task is more necessary now than ever. You must not only teach content, but the values and customs of life. There are three things that you must pass on. A computer can teach content, but to understand how to love, to understand values and customs which create harmony in society, it takes a good teacher."

"I encourage you to renew your passion for humanity — you cannot teach without passion! — in the process of formation, and to be witnesses of life and hope. Never, never close a door, open all of them wide, in order for the students to have hope."