The Hopeful Vision of Jesuit Education

What is it that Jesuit educators want for their students? Imagining an outcome for students has been one of the defining characteristics of Jesuit education throughout its winding history. Schools articulate a clear vision of their hopes for their students and invite the students to make that vision their own. Early Jesuit education shared the values of Renaissance humanist education: in both of these movements, the purpose of education was to form a certain sort of person. Schools in the humanist tradition sought primarily to form good citizens who would contribute to civic life. In the same vein, Jesuit schools hoped to form not just good citizens but holy people, people who would recognize and respond to God’s grace.

This hope for holiness has continued as Jesuit education has evolved, as it has accommodated shifting educational systems and as it has encountered new societal pressures on its curricula and its students. The mission, as it always has, finds new expression in changing contexts. This responsiveness to context extends to the vision of the student: there is no cookie-cutter expectation. Rather, educators hope that students will respond to life in a certain way. Schools focus less on what they will be than on how they will be.

Jesuit secondary schools in the United States have adopted the Profile of a Graduate at Graduation, developed in 1980 and revised in 2010 by the Jesuit Secondary Education Association (now the Jesuit Schools Network). This document articulates a vision of Jesuit high school graduates: they will be Open to Growth, Intellectually Competent, Religious, Loving, and Committed to Doing Justice. It recognizes the dynamic nature of development by beginning many descriptors with is beginning to, is learning to, is becoming, etc. It expresses the hope that this development will continue beyond the limited years of secondary education. Referring to these categories, the preface to the 1980 document states “we chose those qualities that seem most desirable not only for this threshold period, but those which seem most desirable for adult life. These five general categories sum up the many aspects or areas of life most in accord with a full adult living of the Christ[ian] life.”^[1]

The Profile of a Graduate at Graduation was developed in the years following Pedro Arrupe’s landmark speech to a group of Jesuit alumni in Valencia, in which he announced that “Today our prime educational objective must be to form men-and-women-for-others; men and women who will live not for themselves but for God and his Christ—for the God-human who lived and died for all the world; men and women who cannot even conceive of love of God which does not include love for the least of their neighbors; men and women completely convinced that love of God which does not issue in justice for others is a farce.”^[2] Though his initial remarks mentioned only men, Arrupe soon amended his sentiment to include women, and the phrase Men and Women for Others entered the Jesuit lexicon. Some schools now encourage students to be “Men and Women for and with Others” as way to encourage mutuality and avoid paternalism.

For Arrupe, Jesus Christ was the paradigmatic person-for-others. A life lived for others is a life lived in imitation of Christ and is a way of expressing the love of God. The task of the Jesuit school, then, is to form people who live as Jesus Christ did, not in dress, diet, or language but in manner. These people will resist the temptation of self-centeredness, will not cheapen themselves by being less than they are, and will develop habits of goodness that become like second nature. They will live as Jesus did by loving as Jesus did: in word and in deed, without reservations.

This way of being is lived in each person’s particular context. It looks different for each person and is ongoing. Arrupe connects this open-ended vision with the Spiritual Exercises, which he describes as “a method that does not limit us to any particular option, but spreads out before us the whole range of practicable options in any given situation; opens up for us a sweeping vision embracing many possibilities, to the end that God himself, in all his tremendous originality, may trace out our path for us.”^[3]

So how do schools encourage students to share this aspiration, to see themselves as the people the schools hope they will be? First, schools need to be bold in articulating their vision, no matter how unfamiliar, uncool or far-fetched this vision may seem. Naming great expectations, with the promise of helping students be open to the grace needed to achieve them, shows that educators believe in their students. If this vision differs from the one offered to them in other parts of local culture, schools need to be even more energetic in promoting what their hopes are for their students.

One can see, respect and love students as they are while also holding a vision of them in their maturity. Teachers rightly seek to “meet students where they are,” but allowing them to stay where they are is antithetical to the educator’s mission. To return to the example of the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius intended that they would form people who would “desire and choose only that which is more conducive to the end for which we are created [to praise, reverence and serve God our Lord, and by means of doing this to save their souls].”^[4] It’s a lofty goal, but its very loftiness shows what humans are capable of with God’s grace. And of course, Ignatius’s program to lead people toward this way of being is based on his experiences in Manresa, where “God treated him . . . just as a schoolmaster treats a child whom he is teaching.”^[5]

Second, schools give students time and guidance to refine their personal vision of what their future might look like as a man or woman for others. This includes opportunities for respectful encounters with the other in whatever form that might take, as well as time to build habits of discernment. Students are guided to look back at their experiences for signs of God’s presence and to engage the imagination in looking ahead to how they will be in the future.

This interplay of Experience-Reflection-Action is at the heart of the approach promoted in Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach, which named that dynamic the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm. This paradigm was designed to reflect the movement of the Exercises: “A fundamental dynamic of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius is the continual call to reflect upon the entirety of one’s experience in prayer in order to discern where the Spirit of God is leading.”^[6] When students are led in practicing discernment through reflection, they develop the skills to respond to the circumstances of their lives.

Third, students’ imaginations can be even further engaged by being exposed to models of being men and women for others. These models may appear in the curriculum as historical or literary figures. Living models, such as local guests, alumni, parents, faculty and staff, demonstrate the many ways to discern God’s will and the joy that comes from living for others. The sad truth is that students encounter plenty of models of self-centeredness. If educators want students to aspire to something different, they need to offer exemplars.

Even within the controlled environment of a full, secluded retreat of Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius used models to form the retreatant. The Exercises introduce descriptions of people who are responding to God’s call unreservedly, such as in the Meditation on the Call of the King, where he describes “those who desire to show greater devotion and to distinguish themselves in total service to their eternal King and universal Lord.”^[7] He describes these exemplars’ inner states and outward actions, filling the retreatant’s imagination with visions of holiness, just as schools can do for their students.

In the Ignatian tradition, this holiness, which wants nothing but God’s will, is described as “indifference.” Indifference frees people to imitate Christ and to make the love of God and of others a priority in their lives. Arrupe saw indifference as a key to Jesuit education, since “not being tied down to anything except God’s will . . . gives to the Society and to the men and women it has been privileged to educate what we call their multifaceted potential, their readiness for anything, any service that may be demanded of them by the signs of the times.”^[8]

So, what is it that Jesuit educators want for their students? Since the earliest days of Jesuit schools, they have wanted students to be a certain kind of person: magnanimous, spiritually free, motivated by love, oriented toward service, responsive to the call of God and of others. At its best, Jesuit education demonstrates that vision in a way that draws students to share it, as they see a future that is not a particular outcome or destination, but a pathway on which one moves through the life of holiness that God has in store for them.

Notes:

^[1]          Jesuit Secondary Education Association, “The Profile of a Jesuit High School Graduate at Graduation” (JSEA, 1981).

^[2]          Pedro Arrupe and Kevin F. Burke, “Men and Women for Others,” in Pedro Arrupe: Essential Writings, Modern Spiritual Masters Series (Orbis Books, 2004), 173.

^[3]          Arrupe and Burke, 174.

^[4]          Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius: A Translation and Commentary, ed. George E. Ganss (Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1992), §23.

^[5]          Ignatius of Loyola and Luís Gonçalves da Câmara, A Pilgrim’s Testament: The Memoirs of St. Ignatius of Loyola, ed. Barton T. Geger, S.J., trans. Parmananda R. Divarkar, S.J., revised edition (Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2020), §27.

^[6]          International Commission on the Apostolate of Jesuit Education, “Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach” (ICAJE, 1993), §25.

^[7]          Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises, §97. See also the Meditation on the Two Standards (§137–48), the Three Classes of Persons (§149–57), and the Three Ways of Being Humble (§165–68).

^[8]          Arrupe and Burke, “Men and Women for Others,” 174.

Arrupe, Pedro, S.J., and Kevin F. Burke, S.J. “Men and Women for Others.” In Pedro Arrupe: Essential Writings, Modern Spiritual Masters Series. Orbis Books, 2004.

Jesuit Secondary Education Association. “The Profile of a Jesuit High School Graduate at Graduation.” Jesuit Secondary Education Association, 1981.

Ignatius of Loyola. The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius: A Translation and Commentary. Edited by George E. Ganss, S.J. Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1992.

Ignatius of Loyola, and Luís Gonçalves da Câmara. A Pilgrim’s Testament: The Memoirs of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Edited by Barton T. Geger, S.J. Translated by Parmananda R. Divarkar, S.J. Revised edition. Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2020.

International Commission on the Apostolate of Jesuit Education. “Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach.” International Commission on the Apostolate of Jesuit Education, 1993.

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