An Eye Opener on How we Could Educate for Depth and Reconciliation

Par Modesta Mafuko
Mar 5th, 2020

What I found interesting about the Jogja Virtual Colloquium was the ability to interact with the other Jesuit Educators worldwide. The fact that we could share information and experiences made the practice worthwhile, considering that we were using different languages. Most of the comments that came up indicated that in most cases we were operating along the same mission and vision of producing a holistic individual who is able to live amicably with other people in society.

The key areas of our discussion were eye openers in terms of how we could show our students the way to God and how to accompany our students on their journey and on how to educate for Reconciliation.

The videos which I saw on “the best about Jesuit Education” denotes the universal perspective on holistic formation of our students. The responses given by the participants showed that there was a common understanding on what we need to do as Jesuit Educators. The responses supported the view given which states that,  a Jesuit school should be about “ improvement in living and learning for the greater glory of God and the common good.”

As Jesuit Educators we need to make sure that we enable our students to have faith by “making the impossible possible” this could be done through encouraging positive thinking. Citing examples of situations of where things seemed not to be going on well but in the end the good prevailed.

Questions like,« in what way can we show our students the way to God? » was thought provoking and the idea of coming up with lesson plans that facilitate the teaching of good values to me was a good idea which can be taken aboard by most of us as Educators.

The Video on how to « Cultivate Depth » also challenged me in that in most cases we hear news from different sources especially on social media. The problem is that in most cases I am inclined to be a fundamentalist, that is, I quickly take the news as right or wrong without putting much thought into it. The video made me realize that it is very vital to critically process the information before concluding, consequently there is a tendency of persecuting the innocent due to bias information. The video taught me to first analyze and then evaluate. This concept should also be taught to our learners so that they do not just make decisions based on “fake news”. Thus, it is vital as Jesuit Educators to value the idea of Educating for Depth so that our students become better citizens. This also brings about the idea of fairness in our judgement.

The video on “to educate for Reconciliation” was also good in that it made me realize how sometimes we exclude people without knowing when we create invisible walls that promote segregation. The concept of caring for our environment is key to a better society. This is a thorny issue where I come from. Our students come from poor backgrounds where throwing litter everywhere is common as a school we have tried coming up with programs that will encourage learners to care for the environment. One example is, we have introduced bins that can be used to separate litter eg green bin for organic waste blue for plastics, black for papers and so on. So far we have not reached our target but we have not lost hope. I am just thinking of introducing the idea of coming up with lesson plans to help manage waste. I hope one day we will achieve our goal. So far the litter has reduced but not to the standard we want.

In a nutshell the virtual colloquium has been quite fruitful in preparing me for the actual colloquium.