Berkley Center

Background: As part of the Education and Social Justice Project, in July 2014 undergraduate student Gianna Maita interviewed Father Julio César Sosa González. In this interview, he discusses las prácticas, as well as student attitudes towards engaging with the community outside of Central American University (Universidad Centroamericana, UCA). He also speaks about the impact of the Jesuit mission in his teaching and the responsibilities of the university to criticize society and form students with a sense of justice.

Can you discuss las prácticas (a form of service-learning for Philosophy students)?

In the [Philosophy] major, there are six months of [student]-teaching, so there are courses where I support the students as they prepare to teach philosophy. They sometimes have didactical questions, about how to teach philosophy; but there are also questions about background information about the work they will do, and about learning to reflect on their service. When they go to teach a class, another professor accompanies them. The students go on Monday mornings. On Tuesdays, they meet to reflect about their teaching practice on two levels: content (what they taught) and on a personal level (what contributed to their personal formation). I truly appreciate that they go to these prácticas. I value the prácticas for two reasons…the first is on the professional level. Philosophy is very difficult to teach; so the students must put great effort into teaching to these youth, because they are 15- and 16-year-old teens. [They must learn] how to teach abstract theories and how to do so in a way that the teens enjoy. The biggest benefit is that, at the professional level, the students work on an endeavor of pedagogy and of synthesis. But the second is that it is formational for our students of the UCA.

…I believe that our social service and our university want to help the students affect their society in an intelligent way. But society or the community also affects our students. I am very happy that they accepted it. [Because the program began in January 2013.]

…The prácticas that we have here are [only] for a few hours. I don’t think that this is sufficient…It is important that they have this experience. [It] is more artificial, but it is what we have. It is as if we say, “We are going to do exchanges”; you cannot do that for a few hours. You need immersion in the context. But the prácticas are what we have. I mentioned that particular case to you [of a student who dedicated a year in service to teach students at a Fe y Alegría school in the Estelí, a rural mountain community] because there is a concept of background and an individual relation to society. Because [the UCA students] are young people that have grown up in a society that is more worried about oneself, [the prácticas] help them open horizons. And this is basically our concept of social service.

You mentioned that you have taught here for seven years. How has student involvement changed in those last seven years?

A social university is an effort, and social service is part of that. The philosophy major has always had it. But in general our students are not very involved in the organized sense—maybe individually in their neighborhoods, yes. But here, for example, with an association of students or a major, sometimes we have to push them more to go serve the community. I have also seen it at other universities: it is a generation that has grown up a little bit more comfortable. They don’t come from “the community,” only a few do. Here there are 9,000 students, and the ones who do social service [on their own] are very few. That is why the university saw a necessity to create the service-learning program to facilitate social service. So, to respond to your question, yes, in general there is not involvement in society, but the reason I have found for this is because they are generations that have grown up more comfortable and are a little bit distanced.

At Georgetown, I have noticed that the Jesuit mission is very present in our classes, especially in philosophy and theology. As a professor at the UCA, what impact has the Jesuit mission had in your philosophy classes?

Well, I am Jesuit, so I try to orient the class and the syllabus…[so that] academia is a way to serve others. Your studies are not finished unless they are a way of serving others, especially the most poor. So the readings that I choose for "Social Philosophy," for example, the dynamic that makes the class participate to share their political opinion, the methodology in class of respecting the opinions of others—all of this is very marked by what we consider to be the mission of the Society [of Jesus], which is to serve others, especially the most poor. In general, I do not know if all the academics believe in that here at the UCA. Yes, I see that in the last few years there has been an effort to better understand what the mission of the Jesuits is.

But sometimes I look at [both] academics and administration, because for me these two things go together with administration. In what are we investing the money of the administration? Does it only invest in buildings? Does it invest in research? What kind of research? ... The academics and the administration want to know more; sometimes I believe that we only remain in the discourse. Such as, how do we best say what the mission is? But in practice we are not all convinced. And this is very difficult because they are here for their jobs, but they are not all of the conviction that this Jesuit university has a clear mission in the nation.

Can you discuss the ability of the university to criticize the state?

This university receives money, so we can’t criticize the state or the government. Neither do students—or few students. You know that there are Sandinistas here? I am not Sandinista, but I won’t support other parties either, because the other parties are not interested in the people. It is as if the only party interested in the people here seems to be the Sandinistas, and that isn’t true. It is the discourse, but they have their interests. But I don’t support the other parties because they are worse… If I say this in class, it could cause me problems, and the same goes for my students. For example, the mission of the university respects societal criticism, but that isn’t possible because there are positions. Here it is Sandinista, it is militant. Here they militate the people… We can’t talk about these things.

…This Saturday I have a class about Animal Farm by George Orwell, and we are starting to analyze it. And there things come out because they begin to compare what the allegory says in Orwell’s book to the situation of the country.

You spoke about the university’s responsibility to criticize. What role does criticism play in the social responsibility of the university?

I imagine that you have heard of el seis por ciento [the six percent, a controversial budget allocation that sends six percent of the national budget to universities]. Various universities receive six percent of the national budget. We receive a part, so we effectively receive this from society’s state, and our social responsibility, in my opinion, is to return this to society. But the revolution is different, because it is academic: help the people, the students develop well. In our case, as Jesuits, we consider our mission to be very connected to social justice…social responsibility, for us, is the ultimate instance of justice as returning well-developed students with a sense of justice [to society].

…Yes, I think we try to educate the best [social] architect, but with a sensibility. It is an ideal—for me it is the relationship between the social responsibility of the university and the sense of the mission of the Society [of Jesus] to understand social justice. I truly believe that you cannot educate social activists if they are not well-developed professionals with a sense of justice. I do not know if we are achieving this. I ask myself if we achieve this.