Externado San José

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Externado San Jose's Shield

Externado San José is a parochial school run by the Society of Jesus in San Salvador, El Salvador.

[edit] Brief history

A recognized Catholic and private institution of basic and secondary education run by the Jesuits. It was founded in 1921 and operated as a school for boys until the 1970s, when it also started admitting girls. It is considered one of the best basic education institutions in El Salvador and its students have gotten the highest scores in the Learning and Academic Aptitude Test (PAES for its initials in Spanish) since the test's first application in 1997.

Externado San José was considered for many years a school for the elites of El Salvador. However, after the Second Vatican Council and the Episcopal Conference of Medellin in the 1960's, the Jesuits and staff administrating the school turned their attention to the country's poor. Therefore they started a system of differenciated quotas, where the students' families were allowed to pay tuitions that corresponded to their level of income. This gradually brought down the school's reputation as an elitist institution. At the same time, the Christian Formation courses started including hints of Liberation Theology and the idea that the school should form men and women devoted to serving their society, something that implied transforming the deep social differences in El Salvador. Because of this, many high class families withdrew their children from the school.

Externado San José still operates with this system of differenciated quotas and it is open for students from the both sexes. Many of the graduates of this school have become prominent Salvadorans, for example: ex-president Armando Calderón Sol, the internationally acclaimed poet Roque Dalton and the politician Salvador Samayoa.