Recently, in an Alumni gathering, an alumnus said, “Father, you Jesuits should stop being Principals and Headmasters. We want you to guide us spiritually. You are all priests, so we think you are best qualified for that. Today’s student community needs this kind of accompaniment. Honestly, you should consider entrusting the college administration to some professors or lay people who are competent and specially trained for the job.” Do you agree with him? You will. Even if you do not, I think it would be of great help if we could at least discuss it. If we desire really to envision a future for our educational institutions in today’s competitive world, we ought to respond to this. This will help us see into the future with certain prescience.

Incidentally, the meeting of Principals and Headmasters of Jesuit schools of the South Zone last April in Bengaluru addressed this theme elaborately. During the three-day seminar, organised by JEA, the participants realised the importance of Jesuits’ animating role in schools and why Jesuits should gradually move away from administration. This calls, they concluded, for a disruptive leadership. What follows in this article is just an extension of some of the ideas explored during that meeting.

The core idea is this: handing over the administrative roles and positions to a group of competent lay people who share our vision and follow our policies, we must take up the role of animating teachers, parents, and students. As administrators, a huge energy and time is spent on daily administrative chores and ceremonial routines, which is not necessary and not what we are primarily called to do. And today’s context requires a different approach to the way we run our educational institutions. Only the animating role helps us recover the age-old Jesuit brand identity that would make us tall in the field of education. This requires a fundamental rethink of the ways we run schools and colleges and a relook at the assumptions around our leadership in them. That rethink must be formed on the idea of Ignatian spirituality – the foundation of all Jesuit apostolic endeavours – that views men and women as created in love and created to reflect the wisdom and goodness of God. This is the perspective that governs intellectual leadership of Jesuits for which animation serves better than administration.

Why do we need a change in our approach? Firstly, we are not really trained for the jobs we do. Secondly, our core competence lies in animation more than administration and the whole idea of animation has been the foundational spirit that guides the Society.

Firstly, we have reached a stage in history where we must be humble enough to accept that we are no longer competent for the job or we are not as competent as other laypersons, who are really trained for such jobs. As you can see many private players today have outsmarted us in the area of education. Sadly, what we continue to do is that simply because he is a Jesuit we make him the Principal of a college, or the Headmaster of a school. Competence is hardly given any consideration. We don’t realise that the training we have aims only at making us competent religious and it does not at all address competence building required for administrative positions. This results in leaving us incompetent to lead public institutions. Yet we go on doing what is not proper.

In the real world, the situation is different. There competence is the minimum requirement for employment, and you have to either perform or perish. The people who lead organisations are asked to remain competitive and relevant for optimal growth, in the belief that only a competent leader inspires, supports the talent, and motivates others to perform, keeping in mind the values for which the institution is chiefly founded.

Secondly, our core competence lies, not in administration, but in animation. When our superiors assign us to the jobs in the educational institutions what we are really missioned to do is animation in the Ignatian tradition and in the Jesuit character. In his address to the administrators of Jesuit universities in North America in October 2013, Former Superior General Fr. Adolfo Nicholas said, “Leadership at a Jesuit institution is about evangelization – for Jesuit institutions exist only because of the particular, scripturally based faith perspective that led to their establishment.” The spirit of animation comes from St Ignatius of Loyola himself. You know this. He experienced God not as distant and removed, but as a teacher personally involved in his life.

Early Jesuit educators imbibed this as the core of their mission in schools and developed a reverent familiarity with their students. The Jesuits educated them on an individual basis, according to the particular needs and gifts of each student. They spent their time and energy mostly on cura personalis or “care of the person”; caring for the whole person means knowing the student beyond what a curriculum demands. In other words, they make efforts to strive to know students personally, their socio-economic backgrounds and life-histories, their strengths and limitations, their struggles and hopes. The main aim of Jesuits was to seek to build personal, trusting relationships with students so that they would feel free to ask questions, take intellectual risks, make mistakes and learn from them. Animation for them aimed at affirming the Christian understanding of the human person as a creature of God whose ultimate destiny is beyond the human.

As Fr Lisbert D’Souza says in his article, titled ‘Whither Jesuit leadership’, Jesuit leadership, “hinges on a deep spirituality, the spirituality of discernment: listening, being led by the Spirit, and the inner freedom that such discernment demands. Jesuit leadership has less to do with planning and acting than with seeking, finding and doing God’s will.” This is the core competence of Jesuits. Any mission by Jesuits must spring from this competence. Not that Jesuits are totally incompetent for administration, but they are mainly trained for animation and not administration.

The animating role of a Jesuit in the school allows freedom from administrative chores to focus on mentoring the students in the learning process and guiding the teachers in their teaching and formation of students. More time is available for counselling the parents and teachers, and concentrate on formation of the marginalised students and the slow learners who need additional attention and care. An animating Jesuit inspires confidence and wins affection. This is the Ignatian leadership in schools and colleges we need today.

To carry out the administration, we can always hire an expert. But we cannot hire a person to animate the students and teachers. Even if you hire one, his service will always be a ‘paid service’. That will not be a service coming from within, as a vocation or a call of God. By vocation and training, I believe, a Jesuit is an animator, not an administrator. It is almost an instinct we develop as Jesuits. And this is our original charisma as well. And for the laity, it does not matter how best we are competent as administrators as much as how good we are as animators.

Animators become a powerful influence in our schools and colleges. The moral authority and stature of the animator commands respect and attracts followers, leading to a substantive change in the behaviour of the entire organisation. That animating power indeed purifies constantly the intentions of everyone working with Jesuits. It guides them better in the values and attitudes of Jesuit tradition. The Jesuits, thus, become an embedded spiritual influence and help form a unique campus culture on the campuses. The unintended take away or by-product of this is that the power/caste politics and careerism we indulge in at present will disappear.

Therefore, we need to disrupt the ways we run our schools and colleges. This disruption is good and needed, because it leads to growth. The unprecedented growth we see in the society at large is in fact born out of disruptive thinking assisted by innovative technology. For decades in companies, leaders provided a steady hand on the tiller and guided teams to consistent and predictable growth and profit. That was the formula of organisational success. Not anymore. There is now a pressure to innovate and shake up the established foundations. If organisations are not shaken from slumber within, they will surely become obsolete. The impetus to think disruptively has made many companies outperform and the lack of the impetus has led to disappearance of so many companies; some 40% of Fortune 500 companies in 2000 no longer existed by 2010.

In my opinion, St Ignatius of Loyola was a disruptive leader. His disruptive thinking formed the foundation for Jesuit education ministry. As is known, the original orientation of the first Jesuits was to be men on the move, missionaries, not to get stuck in establishments and institutions. We see it in Formula of the Institute clearly. Although Ignatius never originally intended to open schools, he soon realised how the youth could be empowered by a kind of education rooted both in gospel values and the humanistic revival of the Renaissance. John O’Malley writes in The First Jesuits, interpreting the aim of ‘helping the souls’ as education of the youth in letters and in matters of the spirit, St Ignatius saw education ministry as a key to the progress of the Society. And he had the ability to convince others to follow this disruption.

St Ignatius saw, as O’Malley observes, that “change is more consistent with one’s scope than staying the course. It consists as well in the courage and self-possession required to make the actual decision to change and convince others of the validity and viability of the new direction.” The same spirit must work in a different way with the main apostolic focus on the animating role because the time in which we live is different, where giving up administration for our mission in animation is wise and proper to our vocation. St Francis Xavier, starting St Paul’s College in Goa in 1542, told St Ignatius of Loyola that he was ‘enthusiastic’ about the effect of the education by the college. Before his death in 1556, St Ignatius personally approved the foundation of 40 schools.

Campus ministry in our institutions is the best tool for this animation. It can play a key role in animating the entire campus. This fosters lives of faith and justice among students, teachers and staff. We can, by animation, invite our students and teachers to recognise God as the centre of all activities on the campus. It supports our students in their growth as individuals while being deeply conscious of the social problems. By forming clubs and groups for personal growth, animating of liturgies and retreats, handling religion and foundation courses, we can provide our students, teachers and staff with better service than what we can and do really by being Principals and Headmasters. In my experience, I have seen the campus ministry making the entire campus alive and vibrant. It is a movement pole that orients and reorients, constantly corrects and guides the rigid institutional nature of schools and colleges. If things are done properly, the campus ministry gives visibility to the Jesuit identity of our colleges and schools.

In the context of anti-minority policies of the BJP government, it becomes all the more important to make animation as our main priority in the campuses. No other better way of countering the saffronisation of the nation than animating students and teachers on the divisive and communal politics. Discernment, collaboration, and networking that the GC 36 talks about can be realised really well through animation. By saying this, I do not advocate that Jesuits should not be Principals and Headmasters. All that I am saying is that a Jesuit Principal must give priority to his animating role and leave administrative roles to lay people.

Not only the Principal, but also every Jesuit in schools and colleges should bear the burden of this responsibility, as Polanco wrote in August in 1560 to the whole Society – “portar parte del peso delle schuole”. And we must convince and persuade one another to embrace this change. In my opinion, taking up the animating role will be our strategic hedge against the eventual downslide in the quality of education we provide, and this could be a powerful way by which we could outperform the private players in the field of education. In fact, it will help us reinvent our apostolic religiosity.