The Risk of Education: Discovering Our Ultimate Destiny [Paperback]

Luigi Giussani (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2001

This is an English translation of an Italian work first published in 1995. Based in Milan, Italy, Giussani heads the Communion and Liberation movement and is a council for the Congregation for the Clergy and the Pontifical Council for the Laity. He discusses education in terms of fundamental truths, in particular, the element of faith. It presents the argument that without the fundamental factors of tradition, the young person is merely a fragile leaf separated from its branch.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: The Crossroad Publishing Company (August 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0824518993
• ISBN-13: 978-0824518998
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #620,206 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars taking the risk, September 16, 2004

By 

Stephen J. Garver (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Risk of Education: Discovering Our Ultimate Destiny (Paperback)

Fr. Giussani makes four central claims. First, he proposes that education must be oriented toward what he describes as an experience with total reality in which Christ can come to be seen as fulfilling what it is for us to be authentically human.

Second, Giussani posits a respect for tradition as a necessary precondition for the possibility of education, since it is only from within the concrete specificity of a person's location in a family, culture, and society that one can face the question of reality and engage it in a truly critical way. Thus, rootedness in a living tradition can serve as a way of encountering the past and as a guard against unbridled innovation or skepticism.

Third, he suggests that the Christian community must play an important and intentional role in education by providing an ecclesial environment in which Christ is made known in our relationships and actions.

Finally, Fr. Giussani sees the teacher as embodying the experience of reality in a particular way, with a coherence that carries with it a certain kind of authority, though not one that is perceived as external or imposed. The expression tradition in the lived faith and experiences of a teacher, embedded within a larger community of faith, thereby functions to justify a certain ideal of what it means to be human in the image of Christ.

I would hope that books like Fr. Giussani's would contribute to a discussion of these topics in educational circles-particularly Catholic and more broadly Christian ones-in a way that would actually come to transform our educational practice. The Risk of Education constitutes a challenging and important part an any such discussion.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An engineering professor, September 16, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Risk of Education: Discovering Our Ultimate Destiny (Paperback)

This is wonderful book; wonderful because it examines from every angle an easily forgotten truth: We educate the whole person, whether our intent is to stuff their brains with dead facts or not. The student learns not only facts, but the meaning and the proper response to those facts. He may learn these things from his family, his peers, his culture, or his teachers. Consequently, the best teacher teaches not just the facts, but the value of those facts and what those facts mean to the student. The most powerful lesson is that taught by the life of the teacher. How does this apply to an engineering educator, at a secular university, where even a mention of God is taboo, and makes everyone in the room uncomfortable? I don't know the answer, but I know that the answer is important to my students, and will be found outside the classroom.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The never ending journey, September 6, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Risk of Education: Discovering Our Ultimate Destiny (Paperback)

There is somethig extremely striking and challenging in Giussani's work: a method implies a truth. Education is a method, not a set of rules, it's a dynamic that encompasses you as a human being in front of the whole world.
Education is a relationship, not a one-way act.
This can sound acceptable. But when it come to affirming a "truth" things get tough.
I don't think anybody has ever read anything like this on such a topic. There's so much talking about education. This is not talking, this is a unique reflection upon experience, real life.
You should read it, take it seriously, challenge it, discuss it.
Don't ignore it.