The Risk of Education

Rating:
Summary: taking the risk
Review: Fr. Giussani makes four central claims. First, he proposes that education must be oriented toward what he describes as an experience with total reality in which Christ can come to be seen as fulfilling what it is for us to be authentically human.

Second, Giussani posits a respect for tradition as a necessary precondition for the possibility of education, since it is only from within the concrete specificity of a person's location in a family, culture, and society that one can face the question of reality and engage it in a truly critical way. Thus, rootedness in a living tradition can serve as a way of encountering the past and as a guard against unbridled innovation or skepticism.

Third, he suggests that the Christian community must play an important and intentional role in education by providing an ecclesial environment in which Christ is made known in our relationships and actions.

Finally, Fr. Giussani sees the teacher as embodying the experience of reality in a particular way, with a coherence that carries with it a certain kind of authority, though not one that is perceived as external or imposed. The expression tradition in the lived faith and experiences of a teacher, embedded within a larger community of faith, thereby functions to justify a certain ideal of what it means to be human in the image of Christ.

I would hope that books like Fr. Giussani's would contribute to a discussion of these topics in educational circles-particularly Catholic and more broadly Christian ones-in a way that would actually come to transform our educational practice. The Risk of Education constitutes a challenging and important part an any such discussion.

Rating:
Summary: An engineering professor
Review: I just finished to read this book about a week ago. My personal impression about it is that this book is really well written in terms of content and thoughts. I am not a native English speaker, so I do not know whether the translation is really well done. I have been impressed by the rationality of the author and the way he seized the issues concerning the education of young people (and not only young...) That was something. I did not expect it to be that way, even because the book has been written by a catholic priest. The text claims to be for everybody: religious and non-religious persons. If you got used to "books for dummies" then you should read this. It uses the opposite approach: it never says how to do something. One bad thing: the quality of the book you'll receive! Got rid of one star for this reason. But the book is worth the amount of money you spend.

Rating:
Summary: college professor in New York
Review: The fundamental idea of education that Luigi Giussani is depicting in his book is the biggest help I have ever had in my teaching. Following what Luigi Giussani says about education is what throws me into the rhythms of the real and leads me toward my union with the ultimate aspect of things and their true, definitive meaning.

Rating:
Summary: The never ending journey
Review: There is somethig extremely striking and challenging in Giussani's work: a method implies a truth. Education is a method, not a set of rules, it's a dynamic that encompasses you as a human being in front of the whole world.
Education is a relationship, not a one-way act.
This can sound acceptable. But when it come to affirming a "truth" things get tough.
I don't think anybody has ever read anything like this on such a topic. There's so much talking about education. This is not talking, this is a unique reflection upon experience, real life.
You should read it, take it seriously, challenge it, discuss it.
Don't ignore it.

Rating:
Summary: An engineering professor
Review: This is wonderful book; wonderful because it examines from every angle an easily forgotten truth: We educate the whole person, whether our intent is to stuff their brains with dead facts or not. The student learns not only facts, but the meaning and the proper response to those facts. He may learn these things from his family, his peers, his culture, or his teachers. Consequently, the best teacher teaches not just the facts, but the value of those facts and what those facts mean to the student. The most powerful lesson is that taught by the life of the teacher. How does this apply to an engineering educator, at a secular university, where even a mention of God is taboo, and makes everyone in the room uncomfortable? I don't know the answer, but I know that the answer is important to my students, and will be found outside the classroom.