International Education Commission, Working Paper: Selected texts

Convergences
The Option for the Poor
Institutions
Methodology:Aspects Which Concern Us

Convergences

As all the provinces of the Society have given expression to the fruits of their participation in our reflective process, several things have become very clear.

First,
throughout the whole Society there is a renewed and profound conviction that at the heart of our vocation is a call to be educator. At first sight this does not seem so remarkable. Yet it is given the intensity of diverse commitments, tensions and conflicts surrounding this issue for us over the last twenty years. Perhaps the only certainty during this period of time is that the topic of education has most often brought, at international and local levels as well, more feeling than clarity.

Second,
there is a strong sense that what should characterize our apostolic service must ever bear the particular marks of faith, love, compassion and relationship, of special qualities that we bring as women.

Third,
while we have probably always recognized that the centrality of contemplation in our lives is directly linked with our capacity to see the face of God in human experience, and to respond wholeheartedly in faith, the last two decades have opened our eyes a bit more to the painful realities of our world and thus to the deeper meaning of our vocation and its more radical demands on our lives.

Fourth,
there is, across the Society, a real movement towards living in smaller communities, located ever more frequently in neighborhoods among the poor, or lower income, or working class people. The experience of living more closely to people and working more directly with them on what affects their lives, their hopes, their struggles, often sharing with them the wounds of social systems in their lives, has changed both the concept and the priorities of education for RSCJ there.

Fifth,
there are signs in many provinces of a more open, yet more disciplined sense of what it means for us to be educators today. Insistent efforts of discernment have led to a stronger educative approach to a wider spectrum of ministries, something quite different from either the narrow focus on schools or the mindless inclusion of all works under the undifferentiated umbrella of education.

Sixth,
the reports from many places reflect a new phenomenon for us as a Society which appears to signal a trend: a new consciousness and relationship with indigenous peoples - aboriginals, tribals, Andean Indians, previously "hidden populations" in many countries and cultures. In every instance we find ourselves confronted by the impoverishment and limitations of our culture-bound ways of both conceiving and "doing" education.

The Option for the Poor

Nothing perhaps has posed a greater challenge to the Society's understanding and practice of education than "the option for the poor" formulated in 1970. It was not an accident of history, this option, nor a passing trend. It was linked inevitably to the Church's new self-understanding expressed in Vatican II; with the revolution in global consciousness brought about by new technologies; with the convergence of social and political liberation movements around the world.

For us, RSCJ, it grew out of an effort to be faithful to the Gospel in a very different world from that which we had known even a few years earlier.

The world of the poor is complex. It does not have a single face, nor does it speak with one voice. Many provinces speak of this complexity, describing what the experience has meant to them. The reports make clear that there is no way that the subject will not be raised if we speak of our educational mission.

Who are the poor as we know them?

They are the economically poor, the casualities of industrial development in rich countries as well as poor.

They are those who have never had the opportunity to receive even a basic education or to acquire the skills that would lift them above subsistence level work.

They are the "underclass" which threatens to become a permanent reality in big cities.

They are those who have been impoverished by acts of patent injustice such as the stripping of their lands.

They are the internal migrants of our countries and our continents, searching endlessly for work.

They are immigrants and refugees, many without legal documents, the majority of them unwelcome and desperate strangers in every part of the world.

They are the marginal or marginalized of all our countries. Often these are the oldest inhabitants, the indigenous peoples, forgotten, or remembered only to be exploited. Or they are other groups who have come to feel excluded from the mainstream: the elderly , the handicapped and the retarded.

They are children, in increasing and alarming numbers: not only the children of developing countries, but those who are falling into poverty in rich countries as well.

They are the growing numbers of aliented youth, some of them citizens of the richest countries of the world, who are reaching adulthood with the prospect of endless unemployment before them.

Finally, they are women, world-wide, awakening to their special status, their historical oppression, their poverty as a group, as well as their possibilities as bearers of life and peace.

Most provinces are far better able today than ten years ago to answer the question, "Who are the poor here?". We understand better the nature of poverty in each place, and its linkages across political and geographical boundaries. In places where we are truly among them, the poor themselves help us answer other questions, for example:

"Why does poverty exist?"
"What should we do?"
"What can we do, together?"

New understandings, weighed and illumined in faith, shape a new vision of educational service. It is clearly not a matter of adapting the education of earlier times to a new clientele. We must rather seek out a philosphy of education, pedagogies, methodologies, that in their totality will constitute for us a "theology of education" . . .

• rooted in the Gospel,
• based on the conviction that the poor can and must be
  the agents of their own transformation.

Institutions

Educational institutions have always held an important place in the history of the Society. Today, we have a renewed sense of their potential to promote and reinforce certain values, to be instruments by which persons are either helped to become all that they can be, or blocked and malformed from their earliest years. Thus if the Society's mission continues to be lived out through institutions, it is not because we remain in them for historical reasons, but because we have a new appreciation of their potential to participate in the radical reshaping of society. It is precisely this appreciation which holds the challenge for us today.

Today, RSCJ in great numbers carry out their apostolic activity, either alone or in groups, in institutions of various kinds: schools, universities, parishes, hospitals, etc . . We know that institutions are basic to society's functioning, but we are more alert to their dangers as well. Institutions permit the systematic pursuit of definite goals. And that is no small thing. But they are also always in danger of sclerosis, tempted to give more importance to the structures than to goals. It is important that we seek the model which is best adapted to the time and the actual situation, to the persons who are engaged in the work, and to achieving established goals.

The institutions we hope for today are made up of bonds of relationships between groups of various kinds which have a common value system and policies whcih allow the promotion of these values. Such institutions interact with the world at large, and are able to be called into question, from within or without, in view of changes in the reality which they are to serve. Members are expected to take real responsibility, and to be creative.

The diversity of our institutions today
It is clear today that for all RSCJ our service in the Church is a service of education. One way to carry out this service is in an institution for the formation of youth through teaching (pre-school, school age, or university students). This service of education in institutions includes instruction, but emphasizes the formation of the whole person, formation for social and collective life, accompaniment of the faith, with a definite goal: education for justice in faith.

Today we have varied apostolic commitments within institutions which themselves differ from one another:

• according to the age of the young with whom we work,
• according to the type of instruction given,
• according to the composition of the student body: girls' schools or co-educational, working class or more 'elitist'.

There are other aspects of diversity. For example, today relatively few Sacred Heart schools are totally private; almost everywhere "our" schools are part of a state or Church system that insures partial or total financing, as well as imposing varying degrees of control as to programs, choice of teachers and students, etc. The same variety exists in higher education where we may be in administration, teaching, pastoral ministry, counseling, etc.

We also wish:

• to stress collaboration within a country or continent, between Congregations of religious working in schools or colleges. (One province notes in its report that, if the truth is told, Catholic schools of their big cities do not even know of each other's existence, much less collaborate or pursue common goals);
• to stress international collaboration, seeking to find ways of working together, along with dedicated lay people, to respond to pressing calls in matters of education, coming from different countries. Real dialogue between countries or continents with different cultures also answers a hope;
• that educators in traditional schools and educators in popular education might begin to work more closely together and to collaborate in sharing their problems and their achievements. The mutual enrichment can be very great.

Several provinces underline the importance of work in universities and institutions for the training of professors, in chaplaincies for students, etc . . . , for it is at this age that young people make important choices for their careers, or for their lives.

Our participation, at different levels, in educational institutions, reflects our desire to help the young, wherever we can, to move from a merely personal stance to a will to work in solidarity for greater justice.

Methodology: Aspects Which Concern Us

We feel ourselves educators with a strong call to collaborate in the transformation of the unjust reality in which we are living, with many others, and making our own specific contribution. The challenge is: How are we to do this?

We need to ask ourselves:

• how far have we understood that our methods can produce a result that is the exact opposite of what we wish for?
• have we dedicated our resources, time, and energy to developing methods which promote greater knowledge, or to seeking educational alternatives which will transform values, relationships, and structures at every level?
• have we searched out the values, relationships, and structures which need to be transformed, or are we simply consolidating and reproducing the status quo?
• are we striving for a personalized formation without a social dimension, or are we promoting educative processes which have an impact on our surroundings?
• are we developing organizational capacities and solidarity?
• have we chosen as a priority to nurture and to create conditions for participation, formation of leaders and multipliers?
• can we, by ourselves, in the midst of such a complex world direct, coordinate, and evaluate the educative process that we are carrying out; or do we need expert help?
• are we devoting our time and effort to developing an intellectual discipline which supports and furthers our search for the new answers that we seek and to which we feel called?
• are we easily satisfied with what we are doing, or are we concerned to go deeper into things?

Strategic Planning

We feel ourselves called to collaborate in something that is difficult and complex: a deep change in values, relationships, and structures. These are lengthy processes. We need to move forward by steps, that is, see clearly what we have accomplished and move ahead from that point. This demands that we become skilled in planning; we cannot improvise when we are responsible for the future. The needs that challenge us are many and weighty. Frequently, in schools, in pastoral work, in other apostolates, we feel ourselves over-extended. We do not have enough time, we want to accomplish many things, and we lapse into activism, or are scattered in our efforts. Little by little, this wears us out and sometimes we end up frustrated. We work very generously, but we do not always bring about growth.

Throughout these years, we have found that strategic planning allows us to develop a formative methodology. It means evaluating simultaneously, with the persons who participate in the process (students, teachers, parents, coordinators and pastoral workers, members of groups and organizations, etc) the future that we want to build and the way of achieving it. We are talking then about a common process in which we educate one another in the effort to set goals, plan action, design criteria and experience the values that we are developing. Often groups such as ours do planning of all kinds within a given framework without ever questioning the framework itself. This point is central to all that we are suggesting here about the need for a formative methodology which embodies our most basic commitments.

Communication

Communication is another critical part of an educative process. A constant flow of information allows us to explain the steps that are being taken, to share reflections, learning experiences, and discoveries; at the same time it permits all those concerned to be involved actively and to be enriched by the result.

As we become more creative, we achieve this constant exchange of communication which is essential for participation, consciousness-raising, and communal creation. There are many ways of communicating, depending on specific situations, needs, and possibilities, on settings and cultures. For example: through newspapers, murals, video, theatre, radio, pamphlets, exhibits, music . . .

Communication is also a means of solidarity with all those who are searching. To share what we have learned is one way of promoting new processes and responses, of strengthening or questioning others.

Whether we work in teaching, health care, promotion of women, community organizing, or any other kind of education, a thoughtfully developed and practiced methodology will change our values, attitudes, choices, and priorities; at the same time it will push us to be creative. To the extent that we succeed in developing such a methodology, we will arrive at something deeply human, a capacity to risk and to learn together, and to discover where death is hidden and life is beginning to spring up.