Studies, Life and the Path to Human and Christian Maturity

“We live in a globalized world were almost all the aspects of our life are characterised by permanent change” – this sentence is being repeated again and again, we all seem to be aware of it. But are we, young people, students, prepared to face the challenges that reality brings? Do the universities, which partly are the “engine” of the change, or the educational system in general, give possibilities to fully develop one’s personality and potentials, as well as understanding of the processes going on around us and our role within them?

The 26th article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says:

“Education should be directed to the full development of human personality and to the strengthening of respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms. It should promote understanding, tolerance and friendships among nations, racial and religious groups”.

Consequently, four pillars in education are considered to be crucial:
• learning to know,
• learning to do,
• learning to be and
• learning to live together.

This means that education should enable us to learn throughout life, give skills and competences to deal with everyday life, help to develop the individual personality, talents and potentials and, what is more, it should prepare people to live together with others. However, traditional education, which still dominates in many educational centres, is, to a large extent, based on the accumulation of knowledge and the development of the intellectual capacities mainly based on memorising information. There is little room left for creativity and critical analysis. Students are prepared, first of all, to be very productive and specialised in a narrow area of knowledge, as to work effectively on the global market.

Moreover, many students tend to be passive and do not want to take any responsibilities for what is going on around them. Students’ short-term commitment, fear of confronting the reality, constant search for identity, sometimes accompanied by fear of differences - these are some of the current tendencies that old inflexible structures are hardly able to deal with or even to notice them.

In this context the importance of integral education increases. Integral education defined as a development of integral consciousness; of the whole person and of all the people. There are
different kinds of consciousness, social consciousness, global consciousness, historical consciousness, evolutionary, ecological consciousness, consciousness of others as persons, creativity consciousness, consciousness of our inner-selves, and finally God consciousness, which is a spiritual or religious consciousness that will arise out of the other forms of consciousness. Only through developing the awareness in all these fields, one can speak about building up a person in all his/her dimensions.

Bearing in mind that such a broad approach is not provided by traditional educational system, new needs and challenges arise for the students’ milieu. New tasks have to be set out and actions have to be undertaken by students’ movements as well as the Church in order to help young people to define their role in the society and the world. This process can be realised through integral education, reinforced by non-formal education, which is complementary to the formal one. Providing space for participation at all levels of the social life, promoting peace, justice, empowerment of the poor can bring about meaningful changes leading to the improvement of the society. But in order to achieve that there is a need to deepen the understanding of problems emerging both on local and global levels, especially when it comes to issues connected with culture or religion. Realising one’s responsibility for him/herself and the Others and taking action for the change of the reality is an important step towards human and Christian maturity.


Julia Stysiak (Poland)
IMCS Forum 2004