By Paul Dass, S.J.
The pursuit of excellence has always found identification with the Jesuit education tradition. However, it may not be spoken of exclusively as a Jesuit claim. Anyone who is deeply invested in what they do must necessarily want to excel in it.
In the Jesuit education tradition, though, the idea of excellence is derived from two sources: one, the Spiritual Exercises, and two, the Liberal Arts Tradition. In the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius (speaking in the gender-biased idiom of his time – in its English translation, at least) describes the person who does not exert, strive or strain to go beyond himself in the service of the Eternal King as an “ignoble knight” – as one unworthy of the call of the Eternal King. In Ignatian parlance, the term “Magis” attests to the human propensity to always be more and do more and, thus, excel. In the liberal arts tradition, however, the call to excellence is rooted in the pre-Christian philosophies of the Axial Age of Classical Greek culture. Man being the measure of all things – again, in gender-biased language, at least in its English translation -– served as the universal rule by which things were measured.
Greek fascination with the “human” laid down the foundations for an education that would serve the development of the total human person; that is, cultivate in full measure their range of talents, skills, qualities and possibilities – hence, the term “liberal” arts as in the arts that liberate the human person to excel. But, in the same Axial Greek Age, the ultimate playing field in which one excelled was in the “polis” – that is, the city-state, where the full measure of the person is played out in civic life, through civic consciousness and civic participation, for the sake of the civic, or common, good. The uninvolved citizen was deemed unworthy and ignoble and, for formal transgressions of this kind, expulsion from the city-state was considered more humiliating than imprisonment. And, so – the definition of excellence, as schooled by the liberal arts tradition of the Axial Greek Age.
The Jesuits inherited this tradition through the kind of education they themselves acquired, firstly, in the person of St. Ignatius of Loyola and his first companions, at a University of Paris that was then steeped in the same liberal arts tradition/humanities that cared deeply about the development of the full human person with all its implications for the service of the common/civic good within the social polity/“polis.” Thus, in the Jesuit education tradition – powered at its root by the spiritual motive of the Spiritual Exercises – is excellence measured.
But, how to measure the same norms of excellence today in a society where the bar has been set so low – as evinced by a contemporary political discourse that has become so coarse, its language so demeaning, its accusatory tone so personalized and its civic institutions so grotesquely undermined to the detriment of the common good as evidenced in the ineffectual response to the current crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic that has already laid claim to a hundred and forty thousand lives? When the bar has been set so low, where does any conversation about excellence even start?
With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing all Jesuit institutions to creatively leverage digital technologies to pursue educational excellence for the common good, Gonzaga University created “Zags at Home,” a comprehensive engagement initiative aimed at keeping stakeholders connected and inspired. Among the many virtual opportunities included a conversation with Fr. Greg Boyle, S.J. (above), a Gonzaga graduate who founded Homeboy Industries, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world. Photo courtesy of the Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership program at Gonzaga University.
But, isn’t that the new normal anyway?
If Jesuit education is at all to have a voice within this new normal, it must begin by posing some hard questions at it. COVID-19 has already exposed much of the weakness in the system. The post-COVID era will only further exacerbate it. Will public health remain a common good? With so many jobs lost, will not the poor only get poorer? Will there emerge the political will together with the political courage to change the political discourse? If only in some morbid sense, talk about the pursuit of excellence in the Jesuit education tradition couldn’t have found, in this lost normalcy, a better place to start from.
Paul Dass, S.J., is a member of the Malaysia-Singapore Jesuit Region and was recently a visiting scholar at the School of Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University.
The featured cover photo (above) is courtesy of Gonzaga University.