I read about the criticism a minister levelled at the Dominican friar who proposed the official teaching of the Catholic Church, the magisterium. Others, unlike the friar, but like Pope Francis, are putting the emphasis elsewhere.

I tend to disagree with the minister that education alone will liberate the person and tend to agree with the friar that restraint and self-control are also needed in a good measure. Also, education (in this case sex education) does not mean only the transmitting of fully correct information but also of values. And that parents should be the primary sex educators.

Every information we transmit is value laden. Let us transmit the values we think make us  fully human.

So we should practise restraint and self-control and make it one of the foundations of our educational system. We should help the child and the teenager to acquire self-control and channel energies to growth and fruitful ways.

I think a multifaceted approach helps a good environment and exemplary models, the following of rules, discipline and order, which is also loving and has a human face, etc.

Some schools seemed to have abdicated this role. They are afraid to confront certain parents and students who disrupt the learning and teaching environment of the school.

Dun Ġorġ (I prefer to address him in the way people knew Saint Ġorġ Preca) had a system of education in which rules were followed by adolescents and teenagers to help in character building.