Catholic Church to re–evaluate education ministry CBCI

New Delhi – In the wake of commercialization in the field of education and the government’s seeming reluctance in disbursement of aids, the Catholic churches in India should refocus its education ministry on serving the poor, a consultation body has advised.

This recommendation came from the first of a series of consultations aimed at helping India's Catholic bishops address the issue of "Catholic Education and the Church's Concern for the Marginalized" at their next plenary assembly, scheduled for early 2006.

In that meeting, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India (CBCI) will take up the recommendations from the consultation series and use them to formulate guidelines for the education ministry of the Catholic Church.

According to the report of the first of the consultation, the Church's "educational ministry lacks clarity of vision." The three CBCI Commissions dealing with education, tribal and low–caste people, and justice and peace organized the meeting last December in New Delhi. Church officials, diocesan education directors and leaders of educational institutions participated in the meeting.



In a statement issued following the consultation, the participants noted that, in the past, education ministry has served as a source of contact and dialogue between the Church and the society and has helped the Church instill Gospel values in the people.

But now, the statement noted, education has become more commercialized and sections of the Church have begun to view it as a mere commercial activity.

According to the participants, the education ministry should "emphasize a clear option" to include the "poor, dalits, tribals, rural women, slum dwellers, child laborers and unorganized workers."

Concerned that commercialization has forced educators to allow profit motives to take priority over meeting the welfare and social needs of the hundreds of millions of illiterates in India, the participants urged that the education ministry of the Church should translate its commitment to the poor into a concrete action plan to make sound education available to them.

The participants also expressed concern over the financial problems several schools are facing of late after the government began to cut down on the education subsidies. Till now, financial grants provided by the government had helped the Christian institutions in making cheap but sound education available to the poor and the marginalized but with the government increasingly tightening its purses, the Church–run schools are being forced to raise fees, they noted.

And, if the trend continues, the participants said, sound education would soon become inaccessible to the poor.

Commercialization of education is the main problem, they noted, as education "is a good source of income” and many dioceses have fallen prey to it.

The meeting also highlighted the need of reforming the educational curriculum as it focuses on exams and marks.

Church statistics show the Church running 7,310 primary schools, 3,765 secondary schools and 175 colleges in India, mostly in rural areas. It manages hundreds of village schools not recognized by the government, as well as 1,514 technical training institutes and several engineering and medical colleges.

Although Catholics form only 1.6 per cent of the 1.2 billion people in India, the Church runs about 17,000 educational institutions in all, a network second only to the government.