Vision for Education – Education for Peace and Nation Building
Impelled by the Love of Christ, SCN educators form God centered persons of character, compassion and competency, who will contribute to build a just and harmonious society and thus become agents of transformation.
The paradigm shift expected of the SCN educators and their teaching and non-teaching staff, students and their parents is to become agents of transformation; to move away from selfish intellectual giants to sensitive human beings who can reach out, bring peace, touch and heal the broken world.
Forty-four SCN educators and 13 Novices gathered at Mokama for the education ministry meeting from December 29-31. The theme was — ‘Education for Peace and Nation Building’.
Basanti Lakra, SCN, Patna Provincial, spoke on the role of educators as evangelizers to become ‘Good News’, to be deeply committed, to be creative in teaching, collaborative and net working in ministry.
Through PowerPoint presentations, videos, songs, dialogue, personal reflections, buzz sessions and small group sharing Sister Marianne Puthoor, Province Education Coordinator, helped the participants to have clear, broad and deep understanding of education, peace, and nation building.
The Resource Team, SCNs Mary Grace Xalxo, Maxima Bara, and Rashmi Toppo gave inputs on the prevailing concerns of our society: injustice, corruption, poverty, illiteracy, atrocities against women, violence; levels of peace and how to help the staff and students to achieve it; democracy; fundamental duties and rights enshrined in the Indian Constitution; declaration of Vatican II on Christian education; goal and mission of our education according to Education Policy 2007; the stark educational scenario in our country including the dropouts and the depleting the resources of the earth, harmful effects of pollution and human greed.
After each presentation, the participants reflected, discussed and shared the role of education to bring about transformation of peace and brother/sisterhood in the unjust, corrupt and violent society and to care for and preserve mother earth and environment for our future generations.
The participants wrote the SCN Vision for education. In the ten small groups, the participants came up with concise, concrete suggestions based on SMART Theory to be implement the vision in our educational institutions in the year 2013.
Written by: Marianne Puthoor, SCN
Tags: justice, Nation building, Nazareth, peace, SCN, Sisters of Charity
