What are schools for?

Fr. Leo Pabayo .

“ASK and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

“For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

“Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asks for a loaf of bread, or a snake when he asks for a fish?

“If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him.

“Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets.”

The Gospel passage I just quoted is somehow related to what we do in school as students and teachers, as well as members of the staff doing other works in the school.

We are in education, and education is, in a sense, about asking questions and finding the answers to these questions.

A person, be she or he is a child or a young woman or man, goes to school because he or she has questions in her or his mind that he or she has wants answers to. Asking questions is how learning and studying begins.

Whether it is in the physical sciences or the social sciences, technology or the arts, or our personal, psychological or spiritual life and whatever level we are in the school, be it in the grade school, high school, college, etc…, we go to school because we have questions in our mind that we want to find answers to.  The answers to the questions we are asking are just waiting out there to be known or discovered by us.

We seek answers to our questions for various reasons. The most basic reason is that we are hungry for knowledge and understanding. We get some satisfaction and joy for our discoveries of truths that we have been seeking to know. That is what all studies have always been about.

Whatever it is that we are studying, our studies have always been about knowing the truths about the world and about our lives as persons.

However, that is only one reason why we search for answers in whatever field of knowledge or study we are engaged in. The more important reason is that we want answers to questions that will have implications in our personal life. We hope that they will make our life better, in all aspects — physical, social, spiritual, etc..

That is our hope. However, with all the advances in knowledge that man has attained we are not sure if these have really made our lives better. For sometimes these advances in knowledge only derail us from knowing what is really true and good and beautiful in life, namely, love of God and neighbor. Many of the things that we have learned in the past had led to wars and all kinds of evils that came with them. That is true even today. In spite of the studies that are going on, we are not sure about what will really make life better for us.