Opinion ¢ Soundings Dr Roland Chia is Chew Hock Hin Professor of Christian Doctrine at Trinity Theological College and Theological and Research Advisor at the Ethos Institute for Public Christianity (http://ethosinstitute.sg).
Educating
the next generation “Soundings” is a series of essays that, like the waves of a sonogram, explore issues in society, culture and the church in light of the Gospel and Christian understanding.
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According to Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris in December 1948, education is a basic and inalienable human right.
[C]hildren and young people must be helped … [to] acquire a mature sense of responsibility in striving endlessly to form their own lives properly and in pursuing freedom as they surmount the vicissitudes of life with courage and constancy.
And yet, 80 years on, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) revealed in its 2018 report that about 258 million children and youth are out of school and only 99 countries guarantee at least 12 years of free education. 3 Surely more must be done to address this.
One way in which this can be done is through a robust public education, whose positive role in society is largely undisputed.
The Church has always understood the importance of public education. Even a quick and cursory glance at the history of public education in Singapore would show the
ne of the most important duties that the present generation must discharge for the sake of the next is to enable them to contribute positively to society. In a papal document on Christian Education promulgated in 1965, Pope Paul VI puts it this way:
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