Reconsidering the Church Education Curricula
I remember that at the beginning of the first year of my ordination as a bishop for education (for religious institutes and church education), I secluded myself for a week in the Bayad area of Beni Suef, most probably in January 1963, and prepared a curriculum for the elementary stage of church education, which later became known as the Diocese Curriculum.
I also invited all the Sunday School servants in Cairo and those responsible for the curricula in their churches. I presented the curriculum to them, and we discussed and studied it together, and it was established as a fixed curriculum.
Later, a curriculum was prepared for the preparatory stage and another for the secondary stage, and perhaps they were taken from Sunday Schools in Giza. The curricula multiplied in the dioceses and in the churches.
Decades passed, and the standards for judging levels of intellect and understanding changed, especially in the era of modern technology.
Children became able to play on computers and obtain extensive information from the Internet, and their perception became completely different from before. The standards of the age stages that we used to study decades ago also changed!!
The old curricula became unsuitable for the students’ minds and their interactions, and they could be described as Out of date, meaning that, unfortunately, they are no longer suitable for the age.
Added to this is what appeared of Biblical Criticism, which emerged in the West and reached us. With the emergence of heresies such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh-day Adventists, which first began in America and then spread, other heresies that also appeared in our countries were added to them, and some of them made their way into educational settings.
Then it was also necessary to pay attention to teaching our children in the diaspora, where there is a great deal of new thought and intellectual deviation, even in universities and schools, and where there is “freedom” of thought, often without restraint..!
Do you suppose that, with all of this, we can offer them the curricula that began in Egypt more than forty years ago?!
And if we do so, would those curricula suit them?!
And would they suit the intellectual, mental, and social level as well?! No, without a doubt.
Hence came the thought of developing the church education curricula, whether in Egypt or in the diaspora, while unifying the curricula here and there.
I remember that I spoke about this subject at the Fathers’ Seminar of the priests of America last August, which was attended by 174 priest-fathers and 12 bishop-fathers. Before us was a curriculum prepared by His Grace Anba Youssef, Bishop of the Southern United States, and a curriculum prepared by Reverend Father Rouis Awad in Toronto. The matter was settled by forming a committee, which I myself would chair, including some of the bishop-fathers and priests concerned, to study the matter together.
God willing, I will invite the fathers interested in church education curricula to a meeting to discuss this subject, in preparation for an expanded meeting in the middle of next November, God willing.
The required development does not prevent the existence of fundamentals in the curriculum, especially regarding doctrine, and some points in the history of the Church, the lives of the saints, and similar principal information.
We also await the senior servants to send us their information.
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