La distanza tra l’apprendere e il servire

Abstract

The article presents the reasons that led the LUMSA university of Rome to establish the School of Higher Formation “Educating to Encounter and Solidarity”. On the one hand, the positive experience of Service Learning, which began with a small group of students a few years ago and now much more widespread; on the other hand, the attention to the requests of the Congregation for Catholic Education, which has a very close relationship with the University, since its origins.

The Service Learning is a pedagogical approach that combines theory and practice, study and put to the test of what has been learned in real contexts, as a possible response to problems in the community. It is neither voluntary nor apprenticeship training.

With volunteering, it shares the values of generosity and service; with apprenticeship, it has in common the real context in which skills are developed.

The pedagogy of the Service Learning is widespread in Latin America and North America, but today is experiencing a vast worldwide expansion. For Catholic universities it represent a model of particular interest because it offers to students (and to the entire academic community) the opportunity to give coherence to the inspiration ideal, through a living witness of generosity and solidarity. This is especially important today, in a cultural context in which seems to prevail only the logic of profit at all costs and the individual affirmation. The same Catholic universities are not immune from the risk of proposing themselves especially in terms of competition and to feel gratified by the positions of prestige in the international ranking, neglecting the underlying reasons for their presence and confining the original inspiration in the field of irrelevance.

The School of Higher Formation “Educating to Encounter and Solidarity” wants to engage in research and training, both academic and school, trying to encourage the reduction of the distance between values proclaimed and practiced values, between theoretical research and real life, between learning and solidarity.