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Appendix - 1
Ecumenical Student Ministry in the Asia Pacific Region – Its
Challenges and Mission
Ms. Sharon Rose Joy Ruiz-Duremdes
To reflect on the situation of the
University students is to make a pronouncement on the educational system of
most universities. I was taught by SCM'ers and the militant student
activists that the academe is but a reflection of the socio-economic and
political terrain of the larger society. In most semi-feudal and
semi-colonial countries like the
My reflection today contains two major sections:
First-My Lamentations About the academe. Second-Some Notes on Churches and
SCM partnership Towards an ecumenical Student Ministry.
Progressive teachers and students in the
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education is no longer a right. It has become a privilege and only
the privileged are able to be educated. Sure, there are scholarships but
these are available only through hard-nosed competition. With the
privatization of State Universities, a college degree is almost beyond the
reach of ordinary students. Statistics has it that, in the
The colonial aspect of education shows up not only in
the content of education but in its export-oriented perspective. Most of
my former students are at a drilling site in
In a country where 75% of the population live below
the poverty line, what can we expect of the youth of the land?
I lament the fact that education in most schools is
repressive. I am aware of some schools in my country where even the
Student Christian Movement is not recognized by the administration as a
legitimate student organization. Moreover, I see repressive education
reflected in which
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departments have the largest enrollments. These are departments
whose courses are technical, exact, and neutral. Learners are not
encouraged to take courses that make them think, analyze, critique and
reconstruct. In a subtle way, students are forced to gloss over the truth
- to the way things are and to hold in abeyance, nay, stifle the urge to
unearth uncomfortable and painful truths. Has it ever occurred to you
that the learners' natural inclination to inquire and to seek is actually
repressed by education? Has it ever occurred to you that learners' natural
disposition for creating and seeing things afresh is, actually, obliterated by
education? I fear that this pattern will raise generations of, what I
call, "bonsai intellectuals" who are not analytical. Unable to
critique situations, they will, no doubt, allow the ruling class to ride
roughshod over them.
I am deeply concerned that the educational system in
most universities is domesticating. Where do many graduates end up?
Aren't they turned into no more than domestic helpers in places where the work
environment is no different from a household? Take a look at the situation of
domestic helpers: (1) the master assumes that he knows everything and the
helper knows nothing; (2) the master talks and the helper listens meekly; (3)
the master disciplines and the helper is disciplined; (4) the master chooses
and enforces his choice and the helper complies obediently and passively; (5)
the master chooses the activity and routine for the helper and the helper is
expected to adapt to it. That finds easy translation in the
schools. The classroom teachers' task, as defined by the educational
system, is to "fill" the students with a perception of reality that
has become motionless, static, lifeless and petrified. A reality that is
disconnected from that which has engendered the learners and given them
significance.
I am disturbed that the university setting creates an
unreal world for the students. The classroom projects a seemingly
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artificial environment that eventually alienates the learners from their
class origins and themselves. For the professors, the
"publish-or-perish" policy impels them to grind out just any kind of
reading material. Never mind if it does not make sense to people at the
base. The more esoteric, the better. Research is a matter of physical
survival instead of an aid for social reversal. For the students, the
university resurrects the law of the jungle: survival of the fittest. The
push to be competitive strengthens the "crab mentality" which gives
license to people to excel at the expense of others. In most cases, the
academic community institutionalizes rugged individualism at the expense of
community and solidarity.
Globalization does not make matters any easier for
University students. It is true that information technology opens more
opportunities for faster communication and wider access to new knowledge.
The world is flashed right on one's computer screen. But has the
University helped its students acquire handles to sift through the maze of
information, considering that selective attention needs to be guided by some
modicum of appropriateness?
There is some unity that the effect of globalization
on people is one of indifference and fundamentalism. There is a tendency
to be inward-looking and simplistically literal, to emphasize personal or
individual salvation and to reduce faith to almost a personality cult. In
a situation of complexities and uncertainty, people are wont to turn to a
faith-perspective that calms and soothes and provides black and white answers.
This kind of perspective only compounds the unthinking culture of the
University. Moreover, globalization highlights capitalism's "get
rich quick" philosophy which is undergirded by the prosperity
gospel. In a condition of poverty and deprivation, the promise of appliances,
opportunities to climb the social ladder, wealth are most attractive.
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What I have said thus far smacks of one who has
nothing but a repugnance for the academic community. Maybe I do detest
the University. I had to un-learn all I had accumulated from school when
I moved out into the real world. Facetiously, the only blessing I
received from the University was my husband. On second thought, this
bleak negative view of the University is its saving grace. It creates favorable
conditions for transformation. To the extent that students are frustrated
over the way things are, to that same extent will they search for
alternatives. And I believe this is one of the reasons for our being at
this Consultation. The restlessness that our students and teachers feel
about the academic community pushes them into organized actions that will
embody that which they believe is the solution.
B.
Churches and SCM: Partners Toward An Ecumenical Student Ministry
From that subjective assessment of the academic
community, I turn my gaze to partnership in the ecumenical student
ministry. I refuse to name alternative ways. I am most uncomfortable
with mandates. Allow me to merely pose initial thoughts which I hope will
be given some thought at this Consultation.
1. If the academic milieu is as I described earlier,
we would need a dismantling-supplanting ministry. It would be a ministry
that consistently poses a critique of the educational system: content and
process. As it opposes the repressive, elitist, commercialized, colonial,
domesticating aspects of education, so must it lift up the liberating and
liberative dimension of the system, if any, vigorously pushing for its
perpetuation. Most churches and Councils of Churches specialize in
Ecumenical Education and Nurture. These have, through the years,
articulated a philosophy of ecumenical learning and contextual
theologizing. University students who are active church members may very
well be the channels through which this philosophy of education is
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made to permeate the schools. This, then, makes
the students "prophets in residence".
2. It is significant, for me, that we are
underscoring the fact that our student ministry is ECUMENICAL. I wish to
suggest that ecumenism is, in the first instance, about relationships.
The whole inhabited earth is always seen as an arena of relationships-a venue
of community. Ecumenical student ministry, therefore, should be a cradle
for nurturing relationships. In an impersonal, alienating University in a
dog-eats-dog setting, if the churches and SCMs are unable to provide this
community, we have lost our purpose for being. Furthermore, ecumenism is
a praxis of solidarity with those who are suffering at the margins. In
our countries, the youth suffer at the margins. The praxis of solidarity
propels us to immerse ourselves in the lives of those whom we are in solidarity
with-accompanying them on the road toward a more meaningful existence.
And who could very well accompany the University students but students
themselves? On many campuses, student ministry is FOR
students. Churches deploy their professional youth workers or
"full timers" to do student ministry. This has worked in some settings
but it still is an intervention of some sort. I would like to see active
church youth who are themselves students and SCM'ers who are themselves
students walking alongside their peers, struggling WITH them and pursuing their
common vision. It is so much easier for a student to enter another
student's life. To this end, I see the churches and SCM providing youth
and students with tools for organizing their fellow youth.
3. An ecumenical ministry is, for me, an integral
part of the struggle for the liberation of the oppressed. To be
involved in this ministry is to give meaning to the struggle for humanization,
the overcoming of alienation, the affirmation of women and men as
persons-values that seem lacking in a University setting. This ministry
is to assure the fearful and
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subdued (in our context, the University students) that they no longer
need to extend trembling hands in an act of solicitous mendicancy and
subservience. It is to encourage all striving that these hands be
extended less and less in supplication so that more and more they become hands
which work and working, transform the world (Paolo Freire).
4. On a more practical note, the ecumenical character
of student ministry must avoid pitting the more fundamentalist Christian
student groups (IVCF, Campus Crusade for Christ, etc.) against the more
progressive ones like the SCM. Says a report of the National Consultation
on Campus Ministry in the
5. Ecumenical student ministry should not concern
itself with student affairs alone. The academic community also includes
the teaching staff. It might be well for the churches to encourage their
church members who work in the academic community (professors especially) to
organize themselves or join nationalist teachers' organizations to the end that
they, too, may work for reforms within the University and be partners of the
students. In the Philippines,
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ecumenical student groups and SCM find allies in the Association of
Concerned Teachers (ACT) and the Confederation of Teachers for National
Democracy (CONTEND).
I am a product of the elitist, commercialized, and
colonial educational system: 16 years in the