Past Issues

As the debate about the environment continues, Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’ demonstrated how the catholic perspective can transcend the dialectic between an anthropocentric technocracy and a biocentric environmentalism: laying out an “integral ecology” that respects both the solidarity and the difference between the human being and the rest of the cosmos. Man is at once a part of nature and its steward, and natural ecology and “human ecology” therefore stand or fall together.

We do not wish to hyperventilate about technology. But neither do we wish to succumb to it uncritically as though it were simply inevitable—and surely this is the greater temptation. There are important questions which cannot simply be dismissed with that universal conversation stopper: “Luddite!” Therefore, just as we ask about our food: “is this good for me?”, or about cars: “is driving this good for the environment?”, so too we ask about our electronic educational devices: “Are these good for our children—or for us—in the pursuit of education?"

"The fragmentation of education into disciplines teaches us that the world is made of bits we can use and consume as we choose. This fragmentation is a denial of ultimate meaning.” These prophetic words from our founding editor, Stratford Caldecott, give us the link between education and the issue of sexuality. If education is about exploring the fullness of our humanity, then human sexuality lies at the heart of education.

Against the backdrop of an educational culture resembling “one wild divorce court,” Chesterton’s exhortation to return to “the whole truth of a thing” sums up the cluster of concerns in this issue on schooling: unity with history, unity with the truth of the world, and unity with God.

A child has to be “brought up,” and “led out” into the world. But what does this mean against the dominant backdrop of calling into question the essential features of childhood? What exactly is the child’s relation to the world, and how exactly is that relation mediated by the “first educators” of the child, his or her parents? The answer to these questions will determine what we intend when we educate and what it is we are aiming at in bringing a child to adulthood.