Presidential Address:

Introduction:

The Jesuit Madurai Province has just celebrated her 50 years of golden service for the people of South India. Today we are happy to recall that 25 years out those 50 years have been spent in experimenting with consolidating in and making impact through academic autonomy in our campuses of higher education to impart a value education to all our students. As a Jesuit I am very proud that all the five colleges of the Jesuits in Tamilnadu are adorned with the status of five stars for academic greatness. I am delighted as all of our four Jesuit colleges of arts and sciences in Tamilnadu are autonomous colleges. This has been a great privilege to serve the people of Tamilnadu, nay the world! It has been as well a constant search for relevance and meaning in education aimed at the holistic formation of our students.

Spirit of Jesuit Education:

Ignatius of Loyola and his first companions had initially no intention of establishing colleges or universities when they founded the Society of Jesus in 1540. They saw themselves as itinerant preachers, lecturers on religious subjects especially to the uneducated youth, and helpers of the poor and the sick. However, they were all Masters of the University of Paris which led them to found as well as to accept the care of schools when unexpectedly an opportunity was offered or need arose. In time this became their characteristic work because they saw here an opportunity to form the mind and soul of an individual for his own benefit and the benefits of his fellow human beings. As you know, Jesuits, down the corridor of time, are known for their pioneering spirit. Their hall-mark is magis (that is, pursuance after excellence in whatever done). For them education is not a mere profession but it is a sacred vocation. It is not a business but a mission – a mission for the good of the entire society, especially for the economically poor, socially marginalized and broken. For them education is a means for upholding and safeguarding human equality and dignity.

Follow the Leader:

Our Founder, St Ignatius of Loyola, was the first one to found a school in Rome and announce it: Education gratis, (that is, education for free). Yes, a window of educational opportunity was opened to the poor and the under privileged by our Founder himself. Through education he empowered them to seek greater and better things for themselves and their fellow human beings. This tradition of using education to empower ordinary people has been carried out by the Jesuits all through the century. For example, in the 16th century at the time when colonization was at its zenith in South America, people were justifying that the slaves in the plantation were not fully human, and hence they could be treated as sub-human beings. It was the Jesuits who opposed this view and they, in return, founded the Jesuit Republics (historically known as the Jesuit Reductions) where total democracy was practiced – The employees owned the plantation, and everything was decided by consensus or by a democratic process. The same pioneering spirit and working for the welfare of all human kind though education are effective even today by the Jesuits. We teach the values of human equality and dignity in our schools and colleges day-in and day-out. Today we also believe that education should facilitate social and religious harmony in India.

Paradigm Shift in Education:

Today, through integrated pedagogical paradigm (popularly known as IPP) which is the philosophical framework of the Jesuit education, we are able to keep up to the demands of the day. The system is this:

Context ® experience ® reflection ® action ® evaluation ® experience…®

In a given context of time and need, based on our previous experience and constructive reflection, we evolve an effective plan of action. Through periodic evaluation and after subsequent enrichment of our experience we proceed further with reflection followed by an enriched plan of action. This is a constant and cyclic process in our endeavour for excellence in education.

The Vision of Jesuit Education– Education is Formation:

The aim of our education is not imparting information – virtual universities and Internets do that. For that matter, anybody can impart information. What we need to impart is Value Education. What is Value Education? It is a formation, holistic as well as integrated formation, of our students. We call it ‘cura personalis’ – ‘care of the person’. It recognizes the full individually, including the intellectual, aesthetic, moral, spiritual, physical and social aspects of a person (Bannan Center for Jesuit Education). The students so formed would become the men and women for others and with others. They become the cause of social transformation. In a nutshell our students, so formed or transformed, would become the epicentre of social transformation. They will be men and women who care about others as much as they care about themselves.

New Elements to Formation – Emotional Maturity:

So far our educational system has been solely or mostly concentrating on intellectual formation, but today we need to add another important aspect to our formation, namely, the need to teach emotional maturity. Today’s youth are confused – Whom do they go to consult on further studies or choosing a profession? They often go to their classmates or the neighbours. Once they make a decision does anybody question them if it is the right decision? Not many. Even the parents, due to the mini-size of the family, are afraid of challenging or confronting their children. Thus, there is a lot with regard to unaddressed emotional issues which, if not addressed, would affect the effectiveness of their education. Emotional maturity is needed to know one’s worth in the society and to grow in self-esteem. But that is not all. One has to live in a society. We are living in a society where each one wants or demands his/her space – whether it is physical or emotional. Hence, to live in harmony in the society one should be aware of his principles of life – to respect the dignity and equality of others. We call this today spiritual maturity.  This is not religiosity or rituals but a system of values that teaches how to respect and tolerate others as they are. And it is also the driving force to live in social and religious harmony.

This is the path of evolution in education: from intelligent maturity to emotional maturity to spiritual maturity. This is the path that our higher education has treaded upon.

 

Review of Autonomy – Achievements:

Today we are gathered here to look back and count the blessings through our achievements:

 

  1. We strengthened the semester system with continuous internal assessments. Assignments, mini-projects, viva etc are now a part of continuous internal assessment.
  2. We added other elements in our otherwise strictly bookish and monotonous curriculum, such as the extension programme. In this programme, the students spend a stipulated number of hours interacting often with the people in the vicinity of the educational institutions. They get exposed to the hard reality of their neighbours’ living conditions. This experience frequently moves them to provide needed services for them. In other words, we have trained them to become leaders of service.
  3. We have given them opportunity to learn from other faculty. For example, the arts students are given opportunity to take courses in science and vice versa. Thus, we are able to quench the thirst of students for knowledge through inter-disciplinary and extra departmental courses.
  4. We provide Foundation Courses. Since our education is for life, through foundation courses, we teach our students how they could be catalysts of social as well as religious harmony. We teach them how to respect others socially and religiously. In other words we teach them to become prophets to lead the people out of the narrow mindedness of communalism and religious fundamentalism.
  5. We promote broad-minded inter-disciplinary approach to Research which is people-oriented.
  6. To meet the needs of our time we have restructured our curriculum to help our students not only to grow intellectually but also to acquire skills that are relevant for their chosen path. Thus, our students are able to leave our educational institutions anytime with the following scheme (as also suggested by Dr Arun S Nigavekar, the UGC Chairman, at the valedictory function of Workshop on Autonomous colleges organized by the Tamilnadu Council for Higher Education in July 2002):
  7. In the first year one gets certificate in the respective subject.
  8. In the second year he/she acquires a diploma.
  9. In the third year under-graduate degree is awarded.
  10. In the fourth year one gets post-graduate diploma.
  11. And in the fifth year he/she is given a post graduate degree.

 

Above all, our students leave our institutions not merely with a certificate of academic achievements but also as men and women of great values such as honesty, integrity, character, competence, tolerance, and service mindedness to make their lives and those of  their less fortunate neighbours better.

Future Direction:

Looking ahead is very essential for any mission to be effective. Our mission to excellence in education is becoming more and more challenging. Today more than unemployment, unemployability is a more serious and urgent challenge that we face in our country. What have we done to solve that problem in our curriculum? Are we still providing yesterday’s solution for today’s problems? What about the inertia of our educational system as a whole? – Still we set only 35% as the passing minimum in the subjects. Are we inadvertently teaching that one needs to learn only 35% of life’s values to be successful in life? Institutions of higher learning should challenge this and replace it with a more demanding passing requirements (at least in the PG courses).

What’s next?:

As one observes the trend in the country, one realizes that in the future education may not be free in our country, or at least in our state. Then, what becomes of our academic autonomy? There are a few answers to this question:

  1. The autonomous colleges could think of becoming Deemed Universities.
  2. Some of our colleges could become centres of excellence.
  3. The colleges could work on networking with other colleges and universities, if possible even with industries.

Job-security, especially the pension benefits of our faculty and staff, need to be considered in case an autonomous college becomes Deemed University. But at the same time there are possibilities for part-time jobs, industrial collaborations, and classical courses could even be converted into skill-oriented or job-oriented courses etc. Even if Deemed University is a remote dream the second possibility, namely, autonomous colleges becoming centres of excellence, is possible. One hears of the possibility in the near future that some autonomous colleges will be degree-offering colleges. In the process of creating centres of excellence we could work on collaborative teaching and research with other universities abroad or with industries within our country. Loyola Institute of Frontier Energy at Loyola, popularly known as LIFE, has an invitation to sign the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) from a couple of universities in the USA for collaboration. One of the proposals is that we could run courses on environment, but the degree would be conferred by the universities in the United States. When education becomes self-financing such networking would prove efficacious for our students.

Jesuit Vision:

Jesuits worldwide have taken a stand to empower the poor and the marginalized in  society. At the same time Jesuit educators are committed to excellence in education. Thus, today’s challenge for us is to strike a delicate balance between the quality of education and the empowerment of the poor, especially of the Dalits in Tamilnadu. It is a worthy struggle. As the cost of education is rising, due to self-financing courses, we try to keep to the ideal, through creating, strengthening and enhancing the corpus fund for scholarships to help out competent but needy students. We need to do this since we are convinced that our educational institutions are for the betterment and uplift of the poor in the society.

To summarize, Jesuit education relies on a spirit of cooperation, friendship and community among teaching staff, administrators, Jesuit Community, governing and managerial bodies, parents, students, alumni/ae and benefactors. Jesuit education pursues excellence in its work of formation and education. It prepares students for active participation in the local communities for the service of others. Jesuit education reviews itself and adapts means and methods to more effectively achieve its purposes. In short, Jesuit education seeks to take care of the ‘whole person’ for his/her own good and that of his/her neighbours (Characteristics of Jesuit education).

Conclusion:

Finally, let me close with the following food for thought. The ambient milieu for effective teaching is a relationship with the students. As Dr Patrick Manu says:

“If there is any profession, which is to maintain good relationship, it is the teaching profession. The truth of this matter is that our customers (who are parents) have entrusted into our care human commodities, which we have to nurture. To do this, we must maintain a good rapport with those who have entrusted to our care their precious commodities. Hence cordial relationship should be established with parents and also with students. Professionally, a teacher should establish a very good rapport with all and sundry.

Teacher should excel as professionals. They should also consider teaching a noble profession which has its own ethics and respect. After all the greatest names in history were written because of the efforts made by committed and selfless teachers” (New Frontiers in Education, Vol. Xxxii (1) 2002, p.26).

As we are gathered here, let us make it clear to ourselves our Vision of education, and how we as teachers, possessing the necessary skill and will, achieve it in reality. Learning from our experience, let us plan for an optimistic future. Wish you all the best for the seminar.

Francis P. Xavier, SJ

St Mary’s, Dindigul

(1555310103)

Presidential address: 25 Years of Autonomy, Loyola College, Chennai