Add love, care, respect to curriculum

“Teachers need to teach the old-time values of love, care, and respect.

The world needs to be anchored in the love of God, more today than it has ever needed in the last 2,000 years of its history.”

So said Archbishop Charles Jason Gordon as he celebrated Holy Mass during the 71st Annual Convention of the Catholic Teachers’ Association (CTA).

The event was held on Friday, June 16 at the St Benedict’s RC Church in La Romaine, under the theme: Mary, Patroness of all Families. The Lord has done great things for me and Holy is His Name (Lk 1:49).

Archbishop Gordon noted that there are many challenges facing teachers today, especially at a time when “our world is in crisis”.

He said things are changing in such a way that teachers are now totally unprepared.

While we live in a world with advanced technology, Archbishop Gordon stressed that this generation is not better, and they are not worse, “they are just different”.

“Every time there is a major shift in technology, there is a major shift in human consciousness,” he said. Soon, he noted, we will have to contend with another shift, with the emergence of all things AI (Artificial Intelligence).

He said: “This is a quantum leap in human consciousness that is so terrifying that the people who are the deepest proponents of AI are saying that world governments need to set up legislations now, because if you don’t legislate now, the genie will get outside of the bottle.”

Archbishop Gordon told the teachers that very soon, they will have to deal with the very concerning question, “How do we know what is a woman and how do we know what is a man?”

“I know for a fact that there are children here in our primary schools, who are already saying they are binary and want to be referred to by pronouns and that whatever gender they were born as, no one can make them be that anymore.”

The Archbishop asked the teachers in attendance to raise their hands if they were already facing this issue and a few hands did indeed go up.

He said, “In the first 500 years of the Church, the question was, ‘Who is Jesus Christ?’ and then after in the next thousand years, the question was, ‘What is the church?’. Now the question is, ‘What it means to be a human being’.”

“We were created for love. We were created to love and to be loved, and our deepest identity is in our relationship with a God who loves us with an overwhelming and uncontrollable love that we cannot begin to understand or contain.”

Archbishop Gordon said: “We need to add that to the curriculum right now – love, humanity, respect for others, making sacrifices, recognising other people who are different and treating them with great respect.”

Prior to the Archbishop’s message, CTA President Nigel Gopie also acknowledged that Catholic educators face tremendous challenges in and out of the classroom, as well as in their personal lives.

He said: “As individuals of faith, you will see your vocation as a teacher flowing from the faith you possess.”

He issued a plea to the teachers in attendance, “As we lead our students through the pastures of this secular world, let us do as Mary did. Despite her fears, uncertainties and questions, Mary decided to trust God’s divine plan for her life.

“Our desire for you is that each teacher immerses themselves in renewal of our faith and the joy of fellowship.”

—Klysha Best

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay