Masters of the Next Generation

In view of the introduction of Civic Education, the School Pastoral Ministry of the Jesuit Education Foundation (JEF) proposes to our schools of all levels a training course for the teaching of Religion in an interdisciplinary way and in a global citizenship perspective.

It is the result of two years of work by a team of teachers from the JEF schools with Giuliana Martirani, who is the author of numerous books on the Christian perspective, geography of solidarity and peace, nonviolence and conflict transformation, interculturalism, environmental policy, justice, peace and the safeguarding of creation, as well as an heir to Don Milani’s Collective Writing method, passed on to her by her collaborator Adele Corradi.

The result of this work is the drafting of a series of textbooks for the teaching of religion that are:

• Strongly interdisciplinary, particularly bearing in mind the ‘Guidelines for the teaching of civic education’ (LGIEC).
• Originally Ignatian, with a horizon that contains the whole Ignatian didactic-pedagogical tradition from the “Ratio Studiorum” to “A Living Tradition” (ICAJE 2020).
• Deeply rooted in the Magisterium of Pope Francis, particularly in the exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium” and in the encyclicals “Laudato Sì” and “Fratelli tutti”,
• Pedagogically open to global citizenship and action-oriented.

These texts can be adopted as soon as possible as a reference corpus for the teaching of religion in JEF schools and will offer contents, methodologies and ways of teaching civic education/global citizenship adapted to the Ignatian charism of our schools. They will also contain numerous sources and materials (including worksheets and nonviolent trainings) for the preparation of pastoral education (retreats, affinity and sharing groups, etc.).

The work carried out so far will be shared and completed with the contribution of all those interested in a three-day meeting to be held at the end of August at the ‘Fraterna Domus’ house in Sacrofano, in Sabina, a few kilometres from the centre of Rome.

The seminar is entitled “Masters of the Next Generation”. All together with Educational Passion since its clear objective is generative education.

It will take place from the afternoon of 29 August to the morning of 1 September 2022. It will be a non-conventional conference which will involve us, who with our never extinguished passion for education and as teachers of life as well as professors of subjects, endeavour to generate a good “Next Generation” of Compassionate, Conscious, Committed and Competent young people.

The Coordinating Team: Fr. Eraldo Cacchione SJ, Professor Giuliana Martirani, Sister Rita Ndoci SJBP, Professor Antonello Famà, Professor Edoardo Prandi, Fr Alessandro Viano SJ.