Pope Francis received the participants in the first International Tennis and Padel Congress at the Vatican, where he proposed a piece of advice so that coaches can be good teachers: find a balance between risk and prudence.
In his speech on 6 May, Saturday, addressed to the young people and educators present in the Paul VI Hall of the Vatican, the Holy Father stressed the importance of carrying out in sport ” a correct dynamic of attack and defense “.
The Pontiff transferred this idea to daily life and encouraged teachers to “link well risk and prudence.” He also assured that “there are qualities for attack and qualities for defense and both must be exercised.”
“A teacher who concentrates all his teaching on the attack, or conversely, on defense, leaves his student ‘uncovered’ in the other aspect. It is interesting to develop this comparison and find the similarities with the education of the personality, ”explained the Holy Father.
As Pope Francis indicated, a good educator is one who knows how to “dose risk and prudence well” and added that “risk must always be proportionate and accompanied.”
“The child must feel free and at the same time not abandoned. Parents or educators who, to protect the child, make him avoid all the unforeseen, or solve all his problems, do not make him grow. This is not prudence, it is a mixture of fear of reality and possessive selfishness towards the child, ”the Pope pointed out.
” Prudence in education is essential to properly evaluate situations, in relation to the potential of the boy and the girl,” he stressed.
Pope Francis insisted that the educator “must train in resistance, in not giving up, in trying to respond to those blows that seem invincible and that, instead, with promptness and agility, can be recovered so that the other player remains baffled because he did not expect it”.
He then encouraged the players to keep in mind that the sports they practice are a game and stated that “competitiveness is good if it doesn’t take away this playful dimension”.
“If, on the contrary, the dynamics of competition prevail, it unleashes various forms of selfishness that end up spoiling the sport, so that it is no longer educational, but quite the opposite,” warned Pope Francis.