1. The Educational Pact and the PEOPLE
a) Anthropological Pact : Integral development of the human person
Human life is based on three closely linked relationships: with God, with others, with the earth. The earth has been given to man, not to possess it, but to take care of it. The relationship with others is broken when man forgets to be a brother or cultivates a despotic anthropocentrism, which subjects every relationship to his own interest.
b) Intergenerational pact
When the logic of exploitation dominates, the throw-away culture is disseminated. The elderly, children, young people, women are discarded. Education recomposes harmony between generations, because we need memory and the elders guard it; and we need hope, and children and young people make it come into our lives.
c) Formative pact. Fullness and synergy between educational fields (formal, informal and non-formal education)
Education is the most powerful instrument of transformation and improvement but it is also fractured. The alliance between school, family, social institutions and the State is in crisis. Educating is everyone's job. The alliance can be rebuilt. Today, because the instrumental reason has supplanted the sapiential reason, the younger generations suffer from lack of meaning. Educate is a pact of love.
2. The educational pact and the VALUES
a) Ethical pact. Economy, ethics, technology, knowledge
There are natural and technical resources in the world that would allow all people to have what they need to live with dignity. The reality is very diverse, because of the predominance of a “technocratic” paradigm that puts scientific and technological knowledge at the exclusive service of money production, parasitic revenue and exploitation.
Knowledge is a global common good, and every human being has the right to knowledge, because where ignorance spreads, deprivation and injustice grow. Knowledge is also a responsibility, because it must be placed at the service of the protection of the environment, of the construction of peace, of peaceful coexistence, of human promotion.
b) Intercultural pact
Regardless of the causes that generate it, the constant flow of people creates a more plural, multicultural society. People and institutions are required to engage in itineraries of confrontation and dialogue, with a loyal and innovative fidelity that knows how to find the diverse identities that represent the various “souls” of multicultural society. The one we call the "other" is our neighbor. The challenge is to transform the closure into openness, distrust into a trust that will lead to an encounter in reciprocal enrichment.
c) Interfaith pact
In the epochal change that humanity is going through religions have a great task to do. The indifference to the religious phenomenon, the affirmation of a materialist conception of life, hide the positive values that religions carry and prevent us from understanding how much women and men of our time can help to look up, inclined to the earth, and open to the dimension of the transcendent, rediscovering one's own interiority and spirituality.
3. The educational pact and ACTIONS
a) Environmental pact. Humanity and environment (integral ecology)
A pacification is necessary between the demands of human development and those of the environment, recovering the various levels of ecological balance: interior (peace with oneself); natural (respect for all living beings); social (solidarity with all human persons); spiritual (openness to God). In this balance lies the "ecological citizenship."
b) Social pact
The lack of roots, of economic resources, the isolation in which many people live represent forms of poverty that can degenerate into ghettos and cause violence. It is important that society work together in the political, educational and religious field to create better human relationships, overcoming the various forms of marginalization.
c) Scientific pact. Recomposition of knowledge (Humanistic knowledge, scientific and technical knowledge, religious knowledge)
It is necessary to reconstruct a pact that harmoniously unites the "mind", that is, scientific research, with the "hand", which is represented by the technical and technological knowledge, and with the "heart", that is, the humanistic knowledge, but also with that non-formal knowledge that comes from the cultural heritage of the people. Scientific knowledge must "think" what the hand of technique does, and all this must be enlightened by the heart, that is, by art, poetry, spirituality, love.