The educational ideas of Pedro Arrupe, SJ: a valuable resource for all Catholic educators

Abstract

Pedro Arrupe was concerned about the growing attitude in which the vocation of humankind is understood as making oneself the centre of the universe, fearing that it has infiltrated into education and schools. Consequently, he set out to counteract this egoistic mindset by propounding an approach to education rooted in justice tempered with faith, in a bid to form fully human persons who are men and women for others. In this endeavour, Arrupe sought to realise the principles of Vatican II, which also advocated in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World the urgent need to form human persons who are both learned and benevolent. This article explores how Arrupe's educational ideas can aid in correcting education systems given to economic and industrial imperatives as a main objective and which focus on examination results at the expense of well-rounded formation of the person. In short, the goal of education is here understood as forming people who are committed to respecting and caring for one another's well-being, lives and human dignity as persons.

Keywords:

• Pedro Arrupe
• human dignity
• all-round formation
• men and women for others

Notes on contributor

Obwanda Stephen Meyo, SJ, is a student at Heythrop College, University of London, and holds an MA in Educational Leadership from the Institute of Education, University of London. Meyo worked at Loyola High School, a Jesuit School in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, as a teacher and an administrator.

Notes

1. Fr. Pedro Arrupe, SJ, was the 28th Superior General of the Society of Jesus. He came to office in 1965, shortly after Vatican II. He devoted his time to Justice, Faith and Education. See George Bishop (2007).

2. Arrupe's comprehension of ‘creative fidelity’ with reference to Vatican II is captured aptly in Vincent T. O'Keefe's observation:

‘Don Pedro worked tirelessly to carry out Vatican II's mandate for renewal and adaptation to the changed conditions of the times. Fidelity, for him, meant change. Instead of a wooden and mindless repetition of what we had always done, he promoted spiritual discernment to read the signs of the times, to find God in all things, especially in our brothers and sisters in need, and in the major events and movements of the day. That is precisely the meaning of “creative” fidelity’. (O'Keefe 1997)

3. Of the Vatican Council II documents, this article is based only on Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes.

4. For elaborate discussion on the subject of individuality and individualism with respect to learning, see Mosha (2000) and Hargreaves and Fullan (2012).

5. Gabriel Marcel, a French philosopher, literary critic, playwright and musician, was born in 1889 and died in 1973. Marcel is reputed as the first French existential philosopher and as one of the greatest Christian existential philosophers of the twentieth century. It is of note that Marcel was a convert to Catholicism and that although he is regarded as an existentialist, he was critical of the existential thinking of Jean-Paul Sartre. Marcel based his philosophical ideas on concrete, lived human experience. Besides, he was concerned about ‘abstraction’ or ‘system’, with its consequence of making modern human beings prone to dehumanise. See Pius Ojara on Marcel in Ojara and Madigan (2004).

6. Marcel understood being in three senses: a foundation; an intrinsic unconditional value; and a nexus of intersubjectivity. He held that a person's being is related to and participates in the whole of being which connects humans together. To this end, Marcel took the pain to remind us that human persons are sacred and mysteries because their being partakes of the fullness of Being – God. See Pius Ojara on Marcel in Ojara and Madigan (2004); see also Gabriel Marcel (1962, 1963).

7. It is undeniable that Jesuit education promoted competition in the past, as stipulated in the groundbreaking Jesuit pedagogical document Ratio atque Institutio Studiorum Societatis Jesu, ‘The Plan and Methodology of Jesuit Education’. It is equally notable that competition was ‘normally between groups rather than individuals – as an effective stimulus to academic growth’ (Duminuco 2000, 200). Nonetheless, I share in Arrupe's hint that group competition can easily degenerate into individual competition if it not properly understood and coordinated.

8. The Society of Jesus has endeavoured to provide opportunities for continued formation to former students of Jesuit schools, colleges and universities, mainly through alumni/alumnae associations. In fact some alumni/alumnae associations also include former staff and families of former students and they meet frequently for keynotes on current issues concerning their part of the world and the world at large. They also use their get-together to organise various humanitarian initiatives in which they are involved. Moreover, there are worldwide meetings of Jesuit alumni/alumnae such as the 10th International Congress of Jesuit Alumni of Europe held in Valencia, Spain, in 1973 where Fr. Pedro Arrupe, SJ, gave his famous address entitled ‘Men for Others’; and the Sixth Congress of the World Union of Jesuit Alumni/ae held in Kolkata, India, in 2003, where Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, SJ, gave an address entitled ‘Where the Mind is Without Fear and the Head is Held High’.