¿A NEW AGE FOR JESUIT SCHOOLS.

(Text and photo by Maria Di Paola Blum)

The Company of Jesus, a prestigious Catholic religious order renown for the education it has been providing in 70 countries around the World, for over four centuries, officially decided to give laymen in Mexico the opportunity of collaborating with them in the education of children and youth from kindergarten to high school. For this purpose the Jesuits have established the Network of Schools Associated with the System of Jesuit Schools. On Friday February 8, at the Jesuit Headquarters in Mexico City, the following schools became officially members of this network: Colegio Patria Tercer Milenio from Mexico City, Instituto Terranova from Ajijic, Jalisco, and San Francisco Javier School from San Luis Potosí, SLP. In the near future two senior high schools sponsored by the Jesuit collage from Puebla, one in that city and another one in Tlaxcala will join together with the ULP High School in Acapulco. With this event, the Jesuit educational tradition projects itself bringing an increasing number of students the opportunity to have access to the legacy of Ignatius of Loyola.

The physiognomy of the institutions associated with the System of Jesuit Schools is very similar to Jesuit schools themselves, while maintaining their autonomy and the characteristic traits of each institution according to their location and to the characteristics of the population to which they belong. In order to be accepted to the System of Jesuit Schools, the institutions which are interested assume the educational principles and the orientations of the Company of Jesus; their teaching and administrative staff must have had an experience of the ignatian spirituality and must establish a permanent training program in ignatian pedagogy for their staff.

The actuality and validity in our present day World of the ignatian pedagogy is made manifest in the commitment of the members of the educational community to prepare themselves to the top of their potentialities: to develop their talents and aptitudes, and to nurture a sincere concern for others: a social commitment destined to give our society a new and more humane face in the sphere of justice, of equality of opportunities, of respect and of solidarity. The academic and human excellence to which Jesuit schools aspire is a trait that confirms the hope of achieving a more fair and better World in which man and the different groups of our society will be characterized and appreciated by the values of being and not by the values of having.

When Fr. David Fernández Dávalos, Assistant of Education of the Mexican Province of the Company of Jesus, invited the persons representing the newly incorporated institutions to the Net of Schools associated with the System of Jesuit Schools to take over the baton directly from the Jesuits, he pointed out to them the privilege and also the responsibility they were undertaking in a World so much in need of fundamental adjustments in the social, political and economic fields.

The three schools which belong since last Friday to the new age in the Jesuit tradition accepted this invitation with enthusiasm and committed themselves, through their Directors and their promoters to follow faithfully the directives of St. Ignatious of Loyola in the task of education with the challenges we face in our present day world.

The simple but significant act of signing the agreements concluded with a Eucharistic Celebration presided by Fr. David Fernández, S.J. and Fr.José Amado Fernández, S.J.

Instituto Terranova is at the moment the only bilingual school in the Jesuit System of Schools and is presently on its second year of activities. It is already known for its involvement in social and ecological activities in our community here at the Lake Chapla Riviera, and for the high standards in education it offers. It is located in Río Lerma 19 in Rancho del Oro, Ajijic, Jalisco.