Last January 2024, at the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Jesuit School, St. Stanislas College in Delft, the Netherlands, the Dutch edition of Learning by Refraction was launched, and each of their teachers was presented a copy of the book. St. Stanislaas is actually not one school, but a conglomerate of six private Jesuit secondary schools located in Delft, Pijnacker, and Rijswijk.
During the event, the Director of the Platform for Ignatian Spirituality, Glen ter Veer, presented a copy of the book to Jan Andries the director of the St. Stanislass, in the presence of the regional superior, Marc Desmet SJ and the Ignatian coordinators.
Four months later, on May 31, the school leaders of St. Stanislaas gathered for their annual Spiritual Day. Organized by Limarley Kingsale, the Education Delegate of the Netherlands, this year’s Spiritual Day focused on the Learning by Refraction approach to Ignatian Spirituality.
Fr. Johnny Go SJ, one of the authors of the book, was the featured presenter. During his presentation, he offered the school leaders an overview of this practical approach to Ignatian Pedagogy.
Even prior to this day, however, the school leaders had already begun to sink their teeth into Learning by Refraction; in fact, they had the opportunity to share their learnings with one another during the Spiritual Day. But it was also an opportunity for them to appreciate even more the value of Ignatian pedagogy—not only in terms of strengthening the Jesuit brand of their schools, but also in terms of helping them address the new questions in education that they were wrestling with as educators.
Together they discussed the challenges that they faced as a result of social media and Generative AI. Fr. Johnny proposed that Ignatian Pedagogy, understood and practiced correctly, could actually be a valuable help. The Learning by Refraction approach, in particular, offers Ignatian educators a toolbox that allows them to address these challenges in concrete ways especially in shifting our focus on the process of learning from the customary prioritization of the products of learning, by encouraging teachers to pay attention to designing the learning process rather than by simply teaching content.
The Spiritual Day with St. Stanislaas’ school leaders was the last of Fr. Go’s IPP roadshow in Europe this year. The day before, he also met with the faculty of one of the St. Stanislaas schools
