The Society of Jesus and the school in its modern meaning were born in the same historical period: in the years, that is, in which the Church and the nascent nation-states began to think about an instrument of formation and human and social promotion. And it is precisely the Jesuits who are among the first to take up this challenge.

In their commitment to education, from the earliest years, the Jesuit fathers did not turn only to the few wealthy families, already natural recipients of the educational proposals of that historical period, but tried to open to all: the teaching is free and schools are founded by benefactors who provide support and access to anyone who wants to participate in their educational proposal.

On the educational front, initially recover the teaching experiences of some great humanists, felt in line with their spirituality of promotion of the person in its entirety, and then gradually enriching them with their own experiences read in the light of the Spiritual Exercises of the Founder of the Society of Jesus, S. Ignatius of Loyola.

Some fifty years after the foundation of the first college in Messina, they elaborated the Ratio Studiorum: a true manual on a worldwide scale (the first in modern history) for teachers and managers, whose original intuitions are still extraordinarily up-to-date today.

The Ratio Studiorum – born from an intense exchange of international experiences put together by a central commission at the Roman College – responds to the need to elaborate the order of studies of all the schools of the Society. Its pages on the organization and method of study (objectives and class programs, didactics, exercises, criteria for examinations and promotions) constitute the first development of Ignatian pedagogy, a method that has its strengths in the personal relationship between educator and student, in promoting cooperative and non-competitive learning, in fostering active and not merely notional study, in the integral formation of the person by harmoniously involving intelligence, will, affectivity, memory and sensitivity. Pope Francis effectively summarized this “integral pedagogy”, which involves and forms an individual in his fullness, using the slogan “hands to feel, head to think and heart to love”.

“Educators,” as Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, then General of the Society of Jesus, said in 2007, “must know that the example of their personal lives has a greater influence on the formation of students than their words do. They must love these students, know them personally – the ‘Cura personalis,’ in fact – and live a respectful familiarity with them.”

The model of the Ratio Studiorum undergoes more than one revision with the passage of time, also because the school model itself changes over the centuries. Of course, fidelity to the Ignatian mandate to pursue the full growth of the person remains, together with the search for the intellectual development of each student, so that he or she reaches the full measure of the talents received from God, but the transformations of society impose a new reflection, which the Colleges make under the impetus of Father Arrupe and the Second Vatican Council, producing two important documents: “The Characteristics of the Educational Activity of the Society of Jesus” and “Ignatian Pedagogy. Introduction to Practice” (known as the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm).

Near the end of the last century, the Ignatian colleges of Italy and Albania  elaborate a common document: is entitled “Our way forward” (as the historical expression used by the first companions of S. Ignatius, to describe their charism) and aims to “make more explicit the transversal interest of the educational commitment that is located at the point of interweaving between faith, culture and justice, enlightened by the constant reference to the Exercises and thinking of the young people we want to serve”.

In recent years, the educational tradition of the Society of Jesus has received notable impulses for reflection, new energy and reinterpretation, thanks also to international openness, to the intensification of collaboration and exchange among Jesuit schools throughout the world, with the support of technology that has made connections easier.

The World Congresses (Colloquium) (JESEDU) of Rio (2017) and that Virtual-Global (2021) have been important moments of exchange and comparison between the figures involved in the direction and management of the global educational institutions of the Society of Jesus. The Colloquium Jesedu in Rio produced a statement of intent with a series of actions and priorities to guide the action of Jesuit schools in these years.

An important document entitled “A living tradition in the 21st Century” was published in 2019 to integrate and update the main documents of the Society of Jesus, relaunching the educational challenge in the contemporary world, defining a clear “Ignatian identity” for schools and to respond adequately to the acceleration of change we experience in contemporary global society.

The journey that began five centuries ago, therefore, never stops. And it is the strength of our being together: each school or educational institution of other kinds belonging to our Foundation, in fact, naturally maintains its own specific identity, but the common thread is for all Ignatianism: we believe that the teaching of