Abstract: The present study outlines a few contexts of non-formal education, complementary to schooling, in which the contemporary man continues the course of learning during his whole life, either it matters about his professional life, or, especially, his insofar as he wishes to know Christ and bear testimony to Him before the world. This study groups together and critically analyses the main opportunities of learning outside school, conveyed nowadays, examining the proposition in which they become established or validated by the biblical history, the liturgical experience or the church practise: the mentorship, the coaching, the training and, not in the last place, the monachism.
Cuvinte-cheie: misiunea Bisericii Ortodoxe; educație non-formală; mentorat; coaching; training;
monahism; dialogul dintre Creștinism și cultura seculară
Summary: Due to a design free from any imposed curriculum, a centralized calendar, or undesirable assessments, which are loudly often claimed to “make a difference”, discerning the advantages of a learning path in less crowded scenarios (one-on-one or small groups), many of those who wish to push beyond their limits academically, professionally, socially or spiritually opt for, experience or test, at least, one or more of these alternative types of education, which have in common relating to a person with a pedagogical role, with long-term or short-term education stakes: mentoring, coaching, continuing education (training) or even monasticism. The Romanian Orthodox Church has articulated its present teaching and traditional catechetical activity with some of these alternative learning solutions, to the extent that this approach lead to the knowledge of the Truth (1 Timothy 2, 4) and the discernment of spirits (1 John 4, 1), in any field of activity. So, through the prism of the “being guided by the Spirit of God” (Romans 8, 14) absolute criterium, regardless of the chosen educational pathway, the learner can develop successfully, based on mentoring relationships, biblically rooted and constantly updated in the spiritual and academic relationships of our Church, but also with the constant help of professional and personal training providers, credited by the Romanian Orthodox Church, in recent decades. Unlike these, coaching models proves to be an industrialized learning product of a popular culture, a culture of dependency, of mechanical relationships and functional algorithms, where the obstinacy for the relative superlative overshadows freedom as the sign and virtue of the dignified person, which is remote from the Church Tradition and from the whole Orthodox anthropology, too. Subject of a special vocation, monasticism has proved, for more than 2000 years, to be a true school of discipline, in search of spiritual perfection, nurtured by the Church of Christ.
Pr. drd. Cristian Marius Dima – Școala Doctorală „Dumitru Stăniloae”, Facultatea
de Teologie Ortodoxă „Justinian Patriarhul”, Universitatea din București; Profesor de
Limbi moderne – Seminarul Teologic Ortodox „Chesarie Episcopul” din Buzău;
e-mail: marius-cristian.dima@drd.unibuc.ro
