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The Joanna de Ângelis Spiritist School is located in Vila Santa Amélia, within the municipality of Japeri, in the lowlands of the Rio de Janeiro State, an area called Baixada Fluminense. We are a regular school with kindergarten, primary and secondary school. In the year 1999, 93 of our students were girls and 83, boys, aged from 5 to 16. Students have professional initiation classes, besides regular ones. Students are also taught how to live in accordance to Spiritism viewing their physical, mental and material development.
Our school is a part time boarding one. Students arrive at 8 a. m. and leave at 4:30 p.m. They have three meals at school: a snack in the morning, lunch at noon and a soup or a "mingáu" * before they leave.
* name given to a wheat or manioc pap
What Is Taught At The Joanna De Ângelis Spiritist School
Terezinha Oliveira, our founder and President, talks about the educational and social welfare work of the Institution:
- It establishes the
priority of education over instruction, of spiritual over intellectual development,
of spiritual over scientific education. That gives and idea about how the
construction of knowledge is being carried out. Everything is done with much
love and respect. |
| - Yes, all special topics proposed by the "LDB" (Principles and Directives Educational Law) are offered by our school since its foundation, once what we aim is education as a whole. We have meetings every month. |
- (laugh) Yes. Example
is a must. We want our students to watch us acting the way we teach them to.
I use to say that teachers are teaching, for good or bad, all the time. In
that way the school helps not only the students, but also the teaching body. |
| - No. In the beginning we had 325 children studying in two periods. The decision to adopt the part time boarding option was taken when we concluded that those children did not have what to do when not at school, since their parents arrived home back from work only in the evening. In 1983 we decided to take greater care of a smaller number of children, giving them traditional education in the morning and special activities in the afternoon, so that they would be better prepared to live in our society. |
- Special activities
are organized according to the knowledge and skill of the professionals that
offer to help us. Presently we are offering vocational classes on typewriting,
sewing, crochet work, hairdressing, hand craftsmanship, refrigeration and
information technology. |
| - The Family-School Project offers courses, lectures and meetings on the most various themes. Spontaneousness comes as a consequence. Mothers are responsible today for the kitchen and for fatigue duties. This way they also manage to stay close to their children and see how they are being educated. |
| - Education would not be complete without the moral teachings contained in the Gospel. Childhood is the proper time for our re-education. Those moral teachings, under the light of the Spiritist Doctrine, allow children to know themselves as they are, encouraging them to change their values, habits and manners while they are young. We really want them to become honest men, helping to create a better world. |
| - Yes.
Education of the Spirit, which consists of: a) Active Religious Education;
b) Active Spiritual Education; c) Active Moral Education; d) Active Education
of the Feelings. (active = by means of activities) |
| - There are many possible ways. I believe that, after knowing the school and the activities carried out here with so much love, people will realize the best way to help us without our having to tell them. |
- Our biggest expense
is feeding the children. Then comes the payment of teachers and employees.
Publishing the Institution's bank account might be the best idea so that people
could send us the money to support our biggest costs. Yet, what we most need
are human resources and anyone can help someone or some social welfare work
that way, according to his or her expertise. The special courses, for
example, need people who have any kind of practical expertise and who might
offer to teach that expertise to the students. The person's age does not
matter, as far as the transmission of knowledge is carried out in an educational
way so that it comes out useful to the children. What I want to say is that
it is not hard to find a way to help. All one needs is the will to do it. |
The Social Welfare Charitable Work
According to the resources available, the community may receive clothes, medicine and/or food.
Nevertheless the greatest
contribution the School gives to the community is educational. In an interview
to the bulletin SEI - Spiritist Information Service, published in its 1635
edition on 07/31/1999, Terezinha resumed the work done:
| - Cultural and educational events take place. We had meetings that gathered 400 to 500 people. We invites spiritist lecturers, besides physicians, psychologists and pedagogues. We have already held four of those meetings in order to elucidate the community, which completely lacks culture and instruction. We can notice an 80% improvement after those meetings. Many young men went to the Navy, after successfully seating for examinations. Others became car mechanics, drivers or found jobs in the commerce. Our projects have always in view helping the families as a whole, children and parents.. |
In recognition for the
Institution's social welfare work in benefit of Santa Amélia's community,
the Town Chamber of Japeri honored Terezinha with the title "Citizen of
Japeri" in a ceremony which took place in July 1999.
The address is the same as that of the Institution's headquarters, that is:
Rua Dona Aisa, 232 a 235,
Vila Santa Amélia, Zip Code 26380-320, Japeri, RJ.
Our phone number is: +
55 21 2664.6823.
You may come and visit us by car, bus or train:
By Car: At km 190 of Via Dutra (the motorway from Rio de Janeiro to São Paulo), you must turn right and keep straight up to the Queimados railway station. You must then cross the railway and take the way to Santa Amélia.
By Bus: At Américo
Fontenele Bus Station (which is placed just behind the Central do Brasil
Railway Station, in Rio de Janeiro) you must take the bus to Queimados. You
get down from the bus when you arrive at Queimados and take the bus to Santa
Amélia at the second bus stop down the street in front of the Railway
Station.
By Train: At Central do Brasil Railway Station, in Rio de Janeiro, you must take the train to Japeri and get down at the Queimados station. Then you must take the bus to Santa Amélia at the second bus stop down the street in front of the Railway Station.
If it is not possible for you to come here physically, do not forget that, at night, while you are asleep, your out of the body spirit will be able to pay us a visit, flying ....
as free as a bird. After all, wherever a charitable work takes place in the material dimension, at least another one, certainly much larger, takes place in the spiritual ones.
Divaldo Pereira Franco Talks About The School
While he was at Terezópolis * where he had gone to make a lecture on May 12, 1989, Divaldo was interviewed by journalist André Trigueiro of the Globo TV Network. At that time he answered to the following questions with respect to the work carried out in Queimados **:
* a medium size resort town on the mountains chain north of Rio de Janeiro city.
** although Santa Amélia now belongs to the Japeri Municipality, it is closer to the center of that of Queimados. That is the reason for people saying "the work in Queimados" rather than "the work in Japeri". Besides that, neither Queimados nor Japeri were municipalities at the time of the interview, both belonging then to the much larger municipality of Nova Iguaçu.
| - It is a human promotion work, viewing the building of a just society, of a truly happier humanity. When we instruct man, we prepare him to live, when we educate him, we give him life, when we evangelize him, we save him. The Joanna de Ângelis Spiritist Institution in Queimados carries the divine stamp for promoting people, showing them safe ways to go, by means of a moral transformation process under the light of the Gospel, as restored by the Spiritist message. |
| - Physical space is always of secondary importance. The space of lives is the essential. Jesus elected a manger for cradle and the cross for death bed and yet His life embraced the whole cosmos. The work of love assumes gigantic proportions since it succeeds in transforming people. The history of the nations is marked by magnificent monuments that have been defeated by time. I also remember the great works of architecture, of engineering and of human art which time goes on consuming. Nevertheless the sermon of the mount, which has been sung at nature's altar, up on the mountain that overlooks the Chinnereth, will remain indelible as humanity's sublime statute. That way, the work that is being carried out in Santa Amélia by Terezinha Oliveira and her friends will occupy the one-dimensional space of the lives, making them enlarge their horizons of love in behalf of a happy world. |
| - Seeding the night of troubles with stars. The alphabet is like life's sparkling stars; the Gospel is like the luminescent stars of eternity. Einstein once said: "Science without religion is cripple; religion without science is blind". Bringing together knowledge and faith is spiritist doctrine's greatest goal. Evangelize in order to dignify, dignify in order to make healthy men, happy people. |
| - Every medicine must be close to the illness, the priest of cure close to the sufferer. It should be exactly there, where the needs are much bigger. When those hearts have been summoned to the human dignification work in Queimados, the spiritual mentors under the leadership of Joanna de Ângelis had in mind placing a light of hope in the large night that had spread over the disillusioned hearts. |
| - Like that of a valueless instrument. The work would be done anyway. If the message had not come by our means it would have come by any others. When Allan Kardec asked his mentors: "And if I fail ?", they answered: "Another one will replace you." God's resolutions can depend on men. We are instruments of life. If any worthiness should ever crown my existence, it would be the privilege of having been chosen, despite my lack of merit, to be the "telephone" the good spirits used in order to summon the workers. |
| - "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another", said Jesus. Those that persevere to the end, they will reach glory. To love and to persist, specially when the others desert, never giving value to evil and keeping always with the good. |
