Renewing the Catholic School Experiment

Dr Timothy O'Malley has a fantastic piece on the horror of allowing a Catholic school to be just another school.

His conclusion is especially strong:

In the end, we are right to wonder about how we can integrate the next generation of residents of the United States into our Catholic schools. It is a shame that so many of these schools are experiencing the kind of financial precarity that may result in their closure. Perhaps, the problem though is not a marketing strategy nor better communication. Instead, it is our philosophy of Catholic education. We have created schools oriented toward excellence in socially reproducing a certain elite culture that is insufficient. Our poor schools often do not have access to these students, and thus are doing the best they can with little funding. However, this gives us a chance to re-imagine the nature of Catholic education at these schools, to re-think what we are doing when we welcome a child or young adult into these schools.

The task of re-imagining the nature of Catholic education will not just be the result of academics sitting in their ivory tower, articulating abstract principles that schools can adopt. It will involve a dialogue but one grounded in a Catholic understanding of existence, enshrined in the disciplines of philosophy and theology.

There is much work to do in this regard. Composing manifesto after manifesto like this one about Catholic education is not enough. The renewal of Catholic education, its future, will be found in experiments carried out in Catholic schools throughout the United States. The time has come for this experimentation, rather than simply perpetuating the status quo. This is what comes next.

In crass marketing terms, what is the value-add of a Catholic school?

If a student can get an excellent education for free at a local public school or charter school or a secular private school - why invest and sacrifice for a Catholic education?

It is because - as a Catholic institution - that we should be oriented not only to form workers and citizens, but workers for the Kingdom of God and citizens of the Body of Christ.

Catholic schools were formed and created because our public school system was set up to strip the Catholic faith from immigrants, establish a defacto state religion, and inculcate religious and secular values opposed to our traditions and beliefs. In this era of declining belief and the declining importance of belief - the value add might be different?

But is it?

Are not our new immigrant populations arriving as Catholics and losing their faith? Are not our public schools creating a set of liberalist policies opposed to Catholic teaching and beliefs?

If the circumstances aren't all that different from a time when Protestants burned Catholic schools and convents if less visibly and horrifically agnostic - then the question becomes - how have our schools changed?

Would our average Catholic school celebrate an alum becoming a parish priest or local mayor more? Would alumni in seminary or a convent be honored as much as those in Harvard or Yale? Have we become technocratic systems which produce another generation of middle class worker bees?

What does that say about our schools?

You can't make a cake without breaking a few eggs.