Winning the biggest race

H. G. Wells, the English author of The War of the Worlds, once wrote that human history “becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”

In today’s unsettled times it appears that catastrophe is winning.

Despite literacy rates increasing, the world seems less civil, less tolerant and less well-ordered. Those three characteristics all are products of good education. Education, and the human qualities it allows us to develop, is our best defence against catastrophes.

That’s worth thinking about as millions of children return to schools where they will receive classroom teaching in mathematics, reading and writing, science and other traditional subjects. If they are lucky, they might get some lessons on how to become better human beings.

It’s that last sentence that has me wondering whether our education systems need a rebalancing in terms of what and how they teach. Are they teaching too much of the stuff that helps us to acquire high-paying, high-influence work, and not enough about how to be thoughtful, caring, ethical individuals?

Certainly there is ample evidence that our society needs a heavy dose of education on how to behave.

Bullying, for instance, has become a major issue in our schools. On our streets and highways, road rage is costing us much in money, injuries and deaths. On social media and other Internet sites we see people who toss aside thoughtfulness and tolerance the moment their fingers touch a keyboard.

In politics we see purposeful dialogue abandoned in favour of boisterous intolerance, totally lacking civility. Many politicians forget, or simply ignore, the fact that there is a critical link between civility and ethics.

Respect for others is a cornerstone of ethics, which teaches us to treat people with empathy and not simply for our own personal advantage.

Our school systems should put more emphasis on, and more resources into, teaching character building. They could take a page – in fact a few pages – from what I consider to be the very best of educations; the Jesuit school system.

Yes, Jesuit education is faith based, part of the Roman Catholic Church which has its own problems. But look beyond the religious connection to see how the Jesuit system teaches the best of human values. It is a system that promotes intellectual competence, a commitment to justice and openness to growth.

It aims to train leaders in fields ranging from politics, to entertainment and sports. Anyone who looks up a list of Jesuit alumni might be surprised to see the number of names in leadership positions.

Not all Jesuit educated persons follow the lessons of commitment to justice and ethical values. A recent example is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who argued last week that jobs are more important than ethics.

That basically was his response to the Ethics Commissioner’s report that he violated the Conflict of Interest Act when he tried to have then-justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould let Quebec-based engineering firm SNC-Lavalin off the hook on criminal charges.

It is not that the prime minister did not know that what he was doing was ethically wrong. His early education was at College Jean-de-Brebeuf, the Jesuit school also attended by his father Pierre, Canada’s 15^th prime minister.

However, that’s a discussion for another time, in another place and by other people. The point here is that the Jesuit education system, as well as some others, offers  examples of what is needed in our public school systems.

Our public schools need more emphasis on teaching students how to take responsibility for themselves, as well as how to advocate intelligently for themselves and their beliefs and principles. They need to teach students the need to gather and analyse facts before making judgments.

Many potential catastrophes exist in our world. Wars, climate change, mass migrations of people, drug epidemics, gun violence are just a few that threaten our existence. However, all potential catastrophic problems can be solved, or at least alleviated.

The keys to our continued existence are better educated populations, which can be built by making education our most important priority.

Ours has become a world of thoughtless social media, too much junk TV and ‘populist’ leaders who talk and think like gangsters.

We can do better with better education, and win the race against catastrophe.

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Pope Francis and Canadian History

   The recent election of the new Pope got me pondering Canadian history and the lack of attention it receives in our education systems. How does anyone get to that bizarre connection?

   Pope Francis is a Jesuit priest, the first from the Society of Jesus to reach that exalted position. The Jesuits helped shape the early development of North America, Canada and the northern U.S. in particular. They came to Christianize the Indians soon after Canada was discovered.

   Jesuits are not ordinary parish priests. They are highly-educated, famous for their education methods and travel a higher intellectual road than most of us.

   The most important thing the Jesuits did for Canada was to leave written observations of the New World and its people. The Jesuits in New France sent written annual reports to their superiors in Paris. The reports were called Relation de ce qui s’est passé en la Nouvelle France and were mainly narratives describing in detail the country, its people and how it was developing.

   The Jesuit Relations are a rich source of information on events that shaped Canada into the nation we know today. Anyone spending time reading the Relations will gain a better understanding of what Canada is and why it developed so differently from the United States. The Relations should be part of the curricula of every Canadian education system.

   American historical writer-editor Reuben Gold Thwaites compiled the Relations into 73 volumes early in the 1900s. These English translations can be found at http://puffin.creighton.edu/jesuit/relations/. Also, Canadian scholar Allan Greer has compiled a small selection of the Jesuit Relations that gives readers a peek into this vast storeroom of Canadian history. It is titled The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North America (Bedford/St. Martin’s 2000).

   Canadians generally are not very knowledgeable about their country’s history and often know more U.S. history than their own. And, that’s a shame considering the vast history resources available to us. 

The Lily of the Mohawks

So, the silliness has begun over the impending canonization of Kateri Tekakwitha as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. The Toronto Star stirred the pot in January with a story about the ‘damned Yankees’ trying to steal away a Canadian saint.

Kateri Tekakwitha

Tekakwitha was a Mohawk child who was four in 1660 when her mother, father and brother died in a smallpox outbreak that ravaged Iroquois settlements in what is now upstate New York. She also had smallpox but survived with severe facial scarring and partial blindness. She was taken in by relatives and later began to develop devotion to Christianity brought by Jesuit missionaries.

Many of the Iroquois tribes did not like the Jesuits or the new religion. Priests were killed, and people who followed their religion were marginalized and mocked.

Kateri was among some Mohawks who moved with Jesuits to a Christian settlement now called Kahnawake on Montreal’s south shore. She became known there for her piety, acts of penance and care of the sick. She died at only 24 and those at her bedside said that as she passed away, the smallpox scars on her face disappeared and she became beautiful to look at.

The Catholic Church has been investigating miracles associated with her for well over 100 years. In 1943, the Vatican declared her a possibility for sainthood and beatified her in 1980. In October, she will officially become the church’s first native North American saint.

The fuss over whether Kateri was American or Canadian has been going on for decades. It will intensify now with her elevation to sainthood. It’s totally ridiculous. She is neither an American, nor a Canadian saint. She is a saint of the Mohawks, who were a distinct nation long before the Europeans arrived, and still consider themselves a nation despite all the attempts to assimilate them.

Kateri Tekakwitha is an interesting story, whether you believe in saints and miracles or not. More on Tekakwitha and the Mohawks will be found in Smoke Signals: The Native Takeback of North America’s Tobacco Industry, my latest book that will be published this fall by Dundurn Press.