TOKYO: 31st October '04 -- At 8.30 am this Sunday morning the Rector Major addressed the 70 staff members of Salesian Polytechnic.  The entire establishment is on the move...to another district some 45 mins away by train.  This gave the lead to Fr Chávez' theme: education must face new challenges.

    'Thanks for making Don Bosco's dream and mission come true in Ikuei', he began. 'Education is difficult because it's a fast-changing world where the single constant is change.'  The RM then focused the major challenge for these educators: not an issue of schooling nor of simply building skills.  But it is an issue of the art of building up human beings.  'We need to guarantee the sharing of correct values, to communicate feelings and reach high goals of human life', he said.   

    'Currently education is also being challenged by social communication, the media that present new ways of thinking, a new mentality, new ways of acting, different values.  Nowadays so many are talking about the need for Educommunication.'

    The move from Ikuei to a new school site presents the school staff with an opportunity to move ahead and to better define the educational project in hand - 'what kind of man and woman are we going to build up for today's Japan?'  It will clearly involve parents, teachers and students too; the EPC (Educative and Pastoral Community) is a necessity.  At the same time, Fr Chávez reminded them, teachers have to be learners, since the students are teaching us their values by being an active part of this community.  This is the general trend of education worldwide.

    'But stay with the Preventive System of Don Bosco.  The PSDB is a way of relationship between teachers and students characterised by friendship.  Here is the way to open their hearts, to communicate values, to make proposals.'

    After lunch the Rector Major walked around the existing school site which is celebrating its move with the annual school festival, many bazaars and stalls to visit.  The day included Mass for youth in the Parish Church and a visit to the Caritas Sisters' General House, and finally a flight to Miyazaki and Beppu, on Kyushu, where the Salesian work began all those years ago.  More on that to come.