In 2025, the Santa Magdalena de Canossa Institute in Los Hornos marks a singular milestone: three quarters of a century in the company of children and young people as they grow. It is more than a date in a calendar; it is a living chronicle of commitment, hope and community, written day after day both inside and beyond the classroom walls.
Step across the threshold and you sense it at once. It isn’t only the chalk in the air or the laughter rising from the playground. It is the pulse of a place that feels like home, where education still carries the grace notes of care, effort and attentive listening.
Founded in 1957 by the Canossian Sisters, the school has grown with the city. What began with a small group of Sisters and families who trusted in the transformative power of learning is now a trusted landmark for hundreds of pupils across three stages — Early Years, Primary and Secondary — where children are taught not merely to know, but to be.
Educating the mind — and, above all, the heart
The Canossian approach is different. It is integral, formative and preventative: a way of teaching that refuses to separate knowledge from life. Children learn to read, write and reckon, and at the same time to cherish health, solidarity, care for the natural world and a life of the spirit. Classrooms become spaces where science is studied alongside empathy, where intelligence is cultivated together with kindness.
At Secondary level, the Institute offers an innovative Baccalaureate in Natural Sciences, alert to the demands of a changing world. Yet formation reaches well beyond the academic. Adolescents are accompanied along a path that weaves together study, affectivity and interior search. There are retreats, service projects, volunteering and small-group encounters that teach young people to live with meaning, responsibility and freedom.
“Here,” a teacher confides, “our pupils learn to look at the world with open eyes, to ask the right questions, and to seek the common good. The school is a forge of humanity.”
A community that grows together
The Institute’s quiet strength lies in its educational community: Sisters, teachers and families walking in step. Staff meet regularly for formation, sharing ideas and practice. Parents are genuinely involved. Pupils test themselves in community projects that educate for peace, citizenship and practical solidarity. This is not a school that preaches; it is a school that lives what it teaches. And for that reason, even those who would not call themselves believers recognise something true here — something deeply human.
A mission that speaks to the world
Los Hornos is no outlier. The Institute belongs to a network present in more than thirty countries, where the Canossian Sisters pursue the same mission: to help form women and men who are free, thoughtful and compassionate. From the heart of Argentina, their work converses with culture, science, the arts and the life of the spirit.
As Saint Magdalena observed, “It is the formation of the heart that determines the quality of life.”
An anniversary that looks forward
Seventy-five years on, the message could scarcely be more timely. In an age that so often rewards speed and competition, the Magdalena de Canossa Institute continues to choose patience, attentiveness and care — simple values, and quietly revolutionary.
“Education is the sowing of the future,” they like to say here. And in every child, in every young person, that seed is being carefully tended.
