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Christian Service at St. John's JesuitStudent Advocacy as Christian Service
As important as it is to serve, to meet the immediate needs of people, it is of equal importance to assist our students in the process of social advocacy. Fr. Duminuco calls us to look "beyond the ordinary oppor-tunities of daily life," and to look toward speaking out for people who can't speak for themselves. In that light, the St. John's Jesuit Christian Ser-vice department assists SJJ students in the process of the notion of systemic change-writing letters to Congressional representatives, attending protests as informed participants, providing awareness of social justice issues. The aim of the Christian Service department is to raise, in students, awareness and sensitivity to the plight of others. Our desire is to develop students who are committed to doing justice in all aspects of their lives. The annual Awareness Week serves that need. Christian Service Core Team members select a topic on which the school focuses for a week. Activities and guest speakers are scheduled to explore all sides of an issue, and students decide for themselves if injustice is present. Past topics have included sweatshop labor, hunger, and the School of the Americas. Other areas that have been given a focus include AIDS awareness, Oxfam America, which promotes self-help development programs related to hunger, and issues addressed by Amnesty International. Government funding of The School of the Americas (SOA) is an issue that has been particularly embraced by the students of SJJ. For the past three years, our students have been involved in a letter writing campaign. They have also attended the annual protest held outside the school's walls, and have heard speakers at SJJ from advocacy groups protesting the school and from an administrator from The School of the Americas itself. Students have the opportunity to make choices based on a comprehensive look at the evidence involved. The Christian Service department advocates a holistic presentation of the issues, as is the case with SOA. Sweatshop labor was evaluated similarly. Students were given the opportunity to listen to a speaker who advocated the rights of workers in sweatshop conditions. They also heard a New York entrepreneur who was in charge of factories in New York City and Mexico, and two representatives from The Gap, Inc., came to SJJ from San Francisco to talk with students. "Thus education in Jesuit schools seeks to transform how youth
look at themselves and other human beings, at social systems and societal
structures, at the global community of humankind and the whole of natural
creation. If truly successful, Jesuit education results ultimately in
a radical transformation not only of the way in which people habitually
think and act, but of the very way in which they live in the world,
men and women of competence, conscience and compassion, seeking the
greater good in terms of what can be done out of a faith commitment
with justice to enhance the quality of peoples' lives, particularly
among God's poor, oppressed and neglected." At St. John's Jesuit High School, the Christian Service
Department attempts to develop Men for Others. Meeting the needs of
people by serving them directly is essential. But developing an inner
sensitivity and awareness of social justice issues that students can
serve indirectly-through letter writing campaigns, passive and active
protests, and awareness weeks-is critical to the education of the Man
for Others. We develop awareness and sensitivity not for the sake of
awareness and sensitivity; rather the intent is, as Fr. Duminuco eloquently
suggests above, to transform "not only…the way in which people
habitually think and act, but of the very way in which they live in
the world." |
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