Berkley Center

Background: As part of the Education and Global Social Justice Project, in summer 2013 undergraduate student Elisabeth Lembo interviewed Dr. Tomasz Homa, S.J., director of the Culture Studies Institute of the Faculty of Philosophy at the Jesuit Unviersity Ignatianum. In this interview Homa discusses Jesuit education in Poland and the university's programs and mission.

Can you tell me briefly about the history of Jesuit education in Poland?

Up through ’89, communist rules had regulated all schools, and this made everything very difficult. The motivations to limit religious education were wholly political. The idea was to limit the role of the Church in education. Due to social circumstances, it was not accepted to have philosophical and theological values associated with Catholicism incorporated in the education system. The only exemption was for one school in Lublin—this was a religious school recognized by the state. At this time, the state of Poland did not recognize any other religious private schools that existed here. If these schools did exist, their diploma wasn’t recognized. This meant that if someone graduated, his or her degree did not count for anything. This all effectively changed in ’89 when Poland had its own elections and was becoming free of communist rule. At this time, the elections were only semi-free. A certain percentage of votes needed to go to the Communist Party, while the rest were free. At this point, Jesuits and other religious orders regained freedom of education, and Ignatianum was able to reestablish itself. The Jesuits were now able to slowly return to their work in the strong Jesuit tradition of education in Poland rooted beginning 400 years ago in the sixteenth to nineteenth century. The dissolving of the Jesuit order and the Second World War were the two events that had stopped Jesuit mission of education here for parts of the country’s history.

So, in post-communist Poland there was a push in Poland to have lay people as educators?

Yes. The demand for this came in a fairly organic way. Initially, we offered programs for those clerics and seminarians that were studying theology. There were also lay people who want to study catechism, so the Ignatianum created a religious culture study, for lay people who wanted to be better educated or simply deepen their faith. When we opened the Faculty of Pedagogy and Education and after ’89, we sought to have it opened as a state-recognized institution.

Was it a difficult process to open the Faculty of Pedagogy and Education?

No. This was not very difficult. There was willingness on both sides—the state of Poland as well as the Church. What was a little difficult was for teachers to now learn how to educate not only Jesuits but also lay people. These two groups were now learning together. There were also state standards to adhere to. There were talks between the Vatican and the Polish government to create a concordant—an international law between the Vatican and specific states that allows the recognition of religious institutions. This is a private institution ruled by the Southern Jesuit Province.

Is there any collaboration between Ignatianum and the one other Jesuit university in Poland?

Correct, there is a Jesuit university in Warsaw. There had also been an attempt to open another institution with French Jesuits to focus on the hard sciences like engineering, but this initiative failed. The institution in Warsaw only focuses on humanities—theology, cultural studies, and political science. It is already affiliated with other Institutions in Warsaw, but ours is an autonomous university. However, this is not a closed conversation, and there are definitely opportunities to collaborate.

How are Jesuit values accepted among the students here?

The students may be divided into three groups, I think. There is the group for whom the Jesuit mission was a large motivation for them to come here. There is another group that came without knowing much about Jesuit philosophy and education and did not realize the school’s identity. There is a third group that came here because they did not end up getting accepted to other institutions, so they chose Ignatianum. For all students, education here is taught in the Jesuit mission.

What programs at Ignatianum encourage social justice?

We have different programs. We offer classes available for senior citizens in which any person over the age of 50 may come here to attend classes and then receive a certificate for attending classes. It’s like auditing. There are also meetings and seminars that seniors may attend. We also offer a program for children and young highschoolers to advise them on college. We would like to have more collaboration with other schools to further our Jesuit mission.

Are there any plans to expand programs here at the university?

We have very big, ambitious plans! At the moment, there are six programs offered across two faculties. The Faculty of Philosophy offers philosophy and cultural studies. The Faculty of Education offers political science, social work, and pedagogy. Over the next ten years, we’re hoping to become a full humanities university. In Poland we are technically an academy because we only offer a limited amount of subjects. In order to be considered a full university, the school must offer graduate programs in six disciplines. If we become a university, this will give us more autonomy, and we can become a full research university. Right now, we have four disciplines that can grant master’s [degrees]—philosophy, cultural studies, pedagogy, and political science. We are working on developing a master’s [degree] program in Psychology. This proposal has already been sent to the government. We are also going to start working on a school for Journalism and Communications.

What is the background of students who comes here? How is this related to social justice?

The school receives public funding because it entered into this concordat with the state, so it is treated as other public schools in Krakow. Here, studies are free for all full-time students. Roughly 70 percent of the students here are from outside of Krakow. It is very important for us to incorporate the Jesuit mission of social justice to offer open access to education to everyone regardless of religion, age, and socioeconomic status. We really try to be an institution of open access. It is important that we have a mixture of lay people and clerics in classes together. In total, there are 3,000 to 4,000 students in the entire school.

Are there any plans to extend the mission of social justice of this university to other educational institutions in Poland and across the world?

Yes. Our really big plan for Ignatianum is to improve the university as a center for knowledge and exploration of Eastern and Central Europe. This includes examining the cultural and social context and the difficulties and problems that this region has experienced. The main advantage of the work here at Ignatianum is that we are in Eastern Europe and have experienced and understand this region’s history firsthand. This is a perspective from the inside rather than the outside, such as a Western perspective of the region and history. Furthermore, we see our location to be a potential center for collaborate with other nearby countries such as the Ukraine, Romania, Slovakia, and Belarus.

Do you have any plans to collaborate with other Jesuit universities?

In the long run, yes, this is something we would really like to do here. One thing we would like to do is send Jesuits to study at other universities. There is so much potential for communication and collaboration to be had, especially with schools in the [United] States. The biggest difficulty of course is the language barrier. We understand that if we become a full research university, we cannot expect all people who come here to have a working knowledge of Polish. Our research must be published in English. In order to start to work in that direction of more education with the English language, we do offer some courses taught in English. We also hope to have more exchange programs available to students. This is an opportunity for our students to learn foreign language in a new context. In the past, there was less motivation to learn a second language. In this day and age, if we want to advance, we need to focus on more languages—primarily English. Students are now finding the advantage of learning other languages. We would like to have collaborations with schools like Georgetown.