Cardinal Stephen Chow, S.J.
The following article is converted from a brief 15-minute PowerPoint presentation given at the “8th Buddhist-Christian Colloquium: Buddhists and Christians Working Together for Peace through Reconciliation and Resilience.” The colloquium was held at Phnom Penh, Cambodia, from 26-30 May 2025.
Education for what?
What is education meant for? There are different reasons for governments, not-for-profit organisations, religious communities, and for-profit entities to get involved in education, such as sponsoring educational institutions. No one motive or reason can be assumed for all.
For example, some consider education an ideal vehicle for ideological formation starting from childhood. Some governments use education as a platform to form good citizens—meaning patriotic—who will also support the desired economic development of their respective local communities and nations. However, for Christian education, formation of the human person and the good of the global community should be considered essential foci.
Education is not just about teaching
Education is not only for teaching, which is narrowly understood as the transmission of knowledge and preparation for examination, i.e., grade oriented. Such a phenomenon is rather common in the Asian context, particularly in East Asia. Many students have to enroll in daily afterschool tutorial classes, test drilling sessions, and lessons for different sports and art specialties to enhance their chances of admission by elite schools and universities. Some kindergarten children actually enroll in two different schools, one in the morning and another in the afternoon to be more competitive than their peers. On the flip side, this phenomenon also bears serious ethical implications for students from low-income families and schools with limited means.
Besides intellectual formation, education must include formation of the person, which incorporates intellectual, physical, psychological, social, and spiritual domains. For example, an important objective of education is the formation of the moral person in our students. The moral person is not an outcome of intellectual formation alone. It also depends on the psychological balance, social mindedness, and spiritual consciousness of the person.
However, for Christian education, formation of the human person and the good of the global community should be considered essential foci
Yet, intellectual formation is essential for a moral person. Intellectual formation cultivates in students their capacity to understand and discern the complexity and subtlety of the differences in the related domains of morality, e.g., morality and ethics, moral development and faith development, religious belief and spiritual person.
Again, for example, morality and ethics are not identical concepts—though they are used interchangeably in some cultures and by the social media. However, morality and ethics are not identical concepts in Western philosophy. While morality is about “good and bad,” ‘right and wrong,” “should and should not,” etc., ethics asks the big Why. Why is it good or bad? Under what conditions is it right or wrong? Why should this be done and that should not be done? Putting it in a nutshell, ethics is the philosophy of morality.
Schooling for communal learning
Education through schooling, when the environmental conditions are conducive, provides the essential communal experiences for students, especially those coming from families of single child or two children. With desirable communal experiences in the school, students may grow up as agents of peace, reconciliation and resilience in their societies.
Desirable communal experiences should include the learning of respect, active listening with empathy, dialogue, and discernment or decision-making in common. Without empathy, listening risks becoming a self-referential exercise. Effective dialogue cannot take place without active and empathic listening. We can see how dialogue is used as a glorious cover-up for parallel monologues or manipulation by a dominating narrative. Constructive communal discernment or decision-making with good convergence is possible when effective dialogue can take place.
Many students have to enroll in daily afterschool tutorial classes, test drilling sessions, and lessons for different sports and art specialties to enhance their chances of admission by elite schools and universities. Some kindergarten children actually enroll in two different schools, one in the morning and another in the afternoon to be more competitive than their peers
I would like to point out that we should not use schooling to endorse a particular model of democracy or ideology. No single form of democracy or ideology that is available can sufficiently address the basic needs of human dignity, especially those of the socially marginalised and the voiceless ones, including Creation. What should be more profitable is for schools to equip their students with the capability to achieve unity in plurality, to hold tensions between ends, and to tap into the tensions for creative responses that address those interests of the common good.
Schooling for mutuality and peace-making
We can see education being used for cultivating competitiveness in our students for a seriously competitive world. Being competitive is not necessarily wrong. However, when being competitive means stepping on the so-called “losers” through destructive and unfair means or systemic exploitation, that is where the evils of competition lie. Sadly enough, this is not at all unusual in the world of education when it is becoming a competitive enterprise.
As said earlier, being competitive is not an evil in every case. Competitiveness is a constructive force if the person can use it to win over oneself while mutually helping one another to grow and develop. Since the subject and object of competition is the same person. In this case, no one will be a loser, but everyone will be a winner only in different degrees.
It is, indeed, desirable for us to learn how to become a better person in the different domains of life. Hence, if we reflect on ourselves daily and periodically, we can see where to improve and grow in our own lives and even as a community. And if we can help each other improve and grow, that is even better, and it is what schooling should be about. Society and the world will certainly be more hopeful when our future generations are equipped with this attitude of “collaborative self-competition.”
Yet, intellectual formation is essential for a moral person. Intellectual formation cultivates in students their capacity to understand and discern the complexity and subtlety of the differences in the related domains of morality, e.g., morality and ethics, moral development and faith development, religious belief and spiritual person
Besides that, the school community should also be a place for students to learn from their educators and peers how to forgive, reconcile, and make peace. There is no better place than the school for our children and young people to equip themselves with these pro-social capacities, such as through positive psychology and a growth mindset.
Positive psychology and growth mindset
In order to cultivate resilience in students, it is helpful to focus on Assets Development and Positive Psychology. Traditional schooling has excessive focused on correcting mistakes or compensating deficits, rather than developing “external and internal assets” in students. The Search Institute based in Minnesota, USA, has carried out decades of research, identifying what makes some children and adolescents more resilient than their peers in some incredibly challenging social environments. They have identified, developed, and further polished 40 developmental assets for parents, educators, and formators to consider. Having a faith community to accompany them as they grow up has been identified as an external asset.
Positive psychology and growth mindset help our students grow with positivity, hope and inner strengths, including celebrating failures. It also allows our students entertain plurality and grey areas, which means equipping them to live and thrive in a pluralistic world. A fixed mindset, on the contrary, focuses on black and white, yes and no, good and bad, outcome oriented and treats failure as a terrible shame to be avoided at all costs. It does not entertain processes and plurality for development, which are seen as ambiguous and confusing.
Education is a sacred service
Finally, education is a sacred service for the formation of humanity and human persons. We are living in a world which is hungry for unity in plurality, healing, reconciliation, and yearning for real peace, including the same for Creation. Indeed, the last thing that we need from education is the cultivation of domination, destructive competitiveness and the inability, in our students, to face failure, especially when these negative qualities are the unspoken components of a hidden curriculum.
