Common good: the social and educational challenge of our time

Abstract

In a world like ours and at a time like this, globalization, democracy, freedom, justice and peace should be considered as universal values to be spread and shared with all citizens as common values which bind us together and develop universal citizenship. The common good expresses a value system that refers to a humanizing globalization. It expresses the relationship between man and the world, justice and solidarity, the rights and duties, sharing and participation, as well as freedom and democracy in a pedagogical perspective of “lifelong education” and “long wide learning”. The centrality of man has to be rediscovered and sought out not only for the common good and commons (which are the values that lead to the right to knowledge and the right to life), but for a related and participatory democracy. Thus, the centrality is not “nominal” but “real” and involves “venerating” and “invoking” man from conception until death including his irreducible uniqueness and diversity, his personal dignity, the unitary structure of his body and soul, his relations with others (considered as a “social animal”), and finally, his transcendent ethical and religious character. The common good is a system of values that must be actualized, achieved, promoted and lived together, as citizens, as men, as people and inserted in a “network” generation without space-time constraints and accessible to wider social far away relationships. A sort of distance to be made closer and imminent to the last generation; a global network which develops from the goodness of the individual leading to the wholesomeness of the community. A social and educational challenge of our time.