A Holistic Values Education Emotionality, Rationality and Meaning

1. A Holistic Values EducationEmotionality, Rationality and Meaning Prof. Roger Burggraeve Faculty of Theology K.U.Leuven Roger.Burggraeve@theo.kuleuven.ac.be EFTRE European Conference Järvenpää 2004

2. Introduction: Lines of approach • Reflection on the relation between education and values, as basis for religious education  • A three-dimensional holistic education based on emotionality, rationality and meaning   • Illustrations from the world of 15-18 years old young people (Western-Europe, Belgium)   • Attentive to emotionality also in the other dimensions of rationality and meaning EFTRE European Conference Järvenpää 2004

3. I.Emotionality and reassuring Participation • Emotional embedment creates the necessary environment for education • Values education doesn’t start cognitively, but by creating a ‘milieu’ of conviviality • Emotional communion as intrinsic and expressive value • A ‘covenantal’ and not a ‘contractual’ community EFTRE European Conference Järvenpää 2004

4. I.Emotionality and reassuring Participation 2. A ‘good enough mother’ • Risk of emotionally reductive fusion, with loss of autonomy • Not a ‘perfect loving mother’ but only a ‘good enough mother’ (Winnicott) • ‘Go out’ as symbol for the conquest of emotional independency EFTRE European Conference Järvenpää 2004

5. II. Rationality and Ethical Wisdom 1.Reasonableness creates space for communicative moral education • Emotionality needs a supplement of reasoning and discourse • A ‘reasonable enough father’ • Confrontation with the ‘law of reality’, which leads to practical wisdom EFTRE European Conference Järvenpää 2004

6. II. Rationality and Ethical Wisdom 2. The other as eminent ‘law of reality’ (Levinas) • Responsibility in the first person and the moral emotions of solicitude, anxiety, self-love   • The epiphany of the irreducible other   • Heteronomous affection by the vulnerable face of the other and the temptation to kill   • Ethical emotionality as bodily sensitivity: being ‘touched’ presupposes ‘touchability’ EFTRE European Conference Järvenpää 2004

7. II. Rationality and Ethical Wisdom 3. The paradoxical meaning of prohibitions • Our immediate, endless desire rejects negative behavioural rules and limitations • Traditional ethical wisdom expressed in prohibitions (Ten Commandments) • Positive moral emotions and attitudinal norms as reverse side of prohibitions • Prohibitions create space for creative freedom, aesthetics and participative communities EFTRE European Conference Järvenpää 2004

8. III. Meaning Giving Integration and Religion 1. No holistic education without a perspective of meaning • A holistic values education deals with a dimension of heteronomous, integrative meaning   • Our approach is anchored in the Christian tradition: “religion from within” (Ricoeur) • An associating and emotionally involved, sensitive God EFTRE European Conference Järvenpää 2004

9. III. Meaning Giving Integration and Religion 2. Trans-ethical meaning and religious education • Religion is more than ethics: “God’s (transnormative) ethics is our grace” • Preceding divine love: transcendence as transdescendence (cf. intergenerational love) • The future of divine, fulfilling and restoring love: transascendence (mercy as ‘ruchama’) • Participation through (old and new) symbolic and ritual forms, expressions and actions EFTRE European Conference Järvenpää 2004

10. Questions for the discussion groups Ad I • How does one create a milieu of reassuring participation and conviviality, as the necessary ‘potential space’ for education in general and for religious education in particular? • What are the chances, risks and challenges of this emotional context surrounding (religious) education? EFTRE European Conference Järvenpää 2004

11. Questions for the discussion groups Ad II 3. In what sense is it necessary to confront pupils with the ‘law of reality’ through ‘rules’, or more specifically through ‘prohibitions’, as expression of practical ethical wisdom? 4. How can this confrontation create the necessary environment for a realistic moral education, as an integral part of religious education? 5. Do you agree that moral prohibitions create space for a dynamic, expressive and tasteful freedom? 6. What are the emotional chances, risks and challenges of this kind of moral education, based on ‘reasonableness’? EFTRE European Conference Järvenpää 2004

12. Questions for the discussion groups Ad III 7. In what sense does a holistic education have to create an adequate context for the dimension of ‘meaning’? 8. What do you understand by ‘meaning’ and where lie the differences, tensions and connections between a purely secular and a religious meaning? 9. What are the emotional chances and challenges of an education, giving place to meaning in general, and tot religious (Christian) meaning in particular? EFTRE European Conference Järvenpää 2004

13. A Holistic Values EducationEmotionality, Rationality and Meaning , THANKS Roger.Burggraeve@theo.kuleuven.ac.be www.theo.kuleuven.ac.be EFTRE European Conference Järvenpää 2004