Continuing education and formation

            BECAUSE of the trimestral plan in our school, the graduation and the start of a new school year come close to each other in the month of June. The sharp transition of the old and the new gives me the sensation that education and formation never end. They just begin and begin, twirl and turn like a spiral.

            As I see the graduating class finish their course, I look back at the three years they spent in school and with me. I ask myself, have these guys really learned the skills imparted, and more importantly, developed the proper attitude toward life?

            It’s an intense moment of truth, fueling the need to hope and pray, and then review the record and the experiences, and to get another look at the conditions of today’s world to see if there are things to be improved, changed, deleted or introduced in the school.

            There are actually quite a lot to be done. Educating and forming students, while relying on some structure, past lessons and tradition, always involve new things and new challenges. It’s a very dynamic affair. And so, we just have to cope with them. We just have to learn to flow with the times.

            Truth is nowadays, at least for the young boys who graduate from our school, a big challenge is how to help them keep their humanity and Christianity intact, and also to help them humanize and Christianize the strong technological, not to mention, an increasingly secularized environment that they usually work in.

            It cannot be denied that they are very vulnerable to the trend of becoming automatons that undermine their being persons. Since many of them are pressured to work immediately so as to earn and help their family, they tend to disregard certain basic details that actually protect them as persons.

            Since they are young and still naïve in the ways of the world, plus a host of other factors like family problems, difficulties in one’s personal life, etc., they don’t mind dancing to the music of a technological culture that often has no human soul. In fact, this technological world offers them a Faustian bargain of some relief.

            They can easily compromise their faith, their morals and ethics, since they do not know yet how to assess the cultural and professional environment from the theological point of view. They tend to blindly follow the crowd.

            At least when they are still in school, especially when they undergo their on-the-job training (OJT), we take pains in monitoring the working conditions of the partner companies they train in, and we encourage them to talk with their respective mentors and with me regularly.

            Still, a lot more need to be done and improved. I, for one, feel that I need more time to be able to chat with the guys more often and more deeply. They have to be helped in maturing their virtues and values, and that just needs a lot of time.

            They have to learn how to pray, how to think properly, how to develop a good sense of priorities, how to grow in the virtues—all of them, from humility to order, temperance and chastity, hardwork, fortitude, etc.

            The education and formation of these boys go far beyond the textbooks and the classroom setting. A lot of personal interaction, mentoring and spiritual direction are needed. Each one has to be dealt with personally, and not generically.

            Each one has to be known as he really is, distinct and unique from the others, and therefore has to be dealt with, motivated according to how he is. We have to know each one’s potentials, and try to help him actualize those potentials. He has to be helped also in his defects and handicaps.

            Another important element to consider is the family. Many of the families of the boys are not exactly in the ideal condition. Far from it, though there are some that manage to remain simple and unaffected by the ills of today’s world.

            We should try to know the family background of each one, and by some program try to reach out to them. It’s important that close coordination be made between the school and the family, for a more wholesome and effective development of the students.

            Since many of the students come from the provinces and are simply boarding in the city, we have to know the conditions of the boarding houses, and again try to do whatever to make those temporary residences conducive also to the education and formation of the students.