Ms Catherine Dean, a lecturer in the Institute of Humanities, Education and Development Studies (IHEDS) gave a paper at a workshop held at Kenyatta University titled 'Passing on the Common Human Tradition'. The paper was based on Don Giussani's book 'The Risk of Education'. "The paper explains why and how Ethics is taught at SU," Ms Dean says.

In his book, Don Giussani is concerned with the challenge and risk of educating adolescents in today's world. Teenagers are at a stage where defiance and conformity without conviction (peer pressure) is combined with the fact that they are also becoming more aware of themselves as persons and the meaning of reality that surrounds them.

The paper looks at the role of tradition in education. Loyalty to tradition is important in education because it offers a sense of security and tradition to the student. Tradition in this context is defined as the whole structure of values and meanings into which a child is born.

Giussani argues it is through this tradition that we can reach reality.

And this tradition is the backbone of any responsible education. It is the foundation of that feeling of dependency without which reality is deformed, distorted by presumption, altered by fantasy, or emptied by illusion.

Ms Dean argues that in order to provide true education there is need to feed the mind with the meaning of reality and at the same time propose a way of life that respects that meaning through a clear value system.

"To achieve this, it is fundamental to offer students some units in philosophy while at the same time inviting them to adapt their personal conduct to a value system that reflects the truth about the human being and his destiny," Ms Dean opines.

She enumerated the philosophy courses taught to undergraduate students at SU and the feedback the students have given. An insightful point from the students was: do not try to change our lives but make us realize why it is important to change ourselves.