Introduction: While I don’t want to unduly belabor the point on education, I felt that this response to the debate written by my husband to a group of our close friends was worth re-printing and sharing here on the blog. I also want to offer this article as a complement to the Mister’s words. I also want to comment that my husband uses stronger, more forceful language in this post than I would probably use myself on the blog, but please understand it was written for good friends who take us with large grains of salt and love. ~~ Suzanne
When determining how and where our children should receive their education, it is critical to understand the purpose of education for Catholics. The traditional Catholic understanding of education – from the time of the Early Church — has remained consistent.
Education serves three primary roles:
1) To impart knowledge and teach problem-solving and analytical skills;
2) To build character and a moral foundation;
3) To transmit Catholic culture.
The Church used to be vocally opposed to having Catholics study at public schools. (Ed. Note: It was actually once forbidden under penalty of mortal sin by the Code of Canon Law to send one’s children to public schools without a special dispensation. While it is no longer forbidden outright by the Church, it is a historical point of fact which should taken into consideration.) It wasn’t that the leaders of the Church were just being old fogies, or Hatfield and McCoys with the local Protestants. It was because they knew that no matter how much purpose #1 might be fulfilled through public education, #2 was questionable, and #3 impossible for a non-Catholic, secular school. And so, the parochial school system was built in America.
In popular culture, educational ideas have changed hugely in the last 150 years. Dewey utilitarians and a host of other professional educators began to emphasize these two main purposes for education:
1) Vocational over liberal education;
2) And, the utility of universal public schooling for the purpose of fashioning a common American cultural identity.
The first of these was entirely antithetical to a Catholic understanding of education, and of the human person. The Church, correctly adopting the beliefs of antiquity, held that education was more than technical skill – it necessarily transformed the person, his sense of humanity, his worldview, his moral and ethical system, and his character.
The second of these ideas sounds good, but is ultimately harmful to Catholics. Catholics in America have evolved from having a Catholic identity (usually held by first-generation immigrants from Catholic countries), then a Catholic-American identity, and then finally an American identity for people who happen to be Catholic. While we may hold an American identity as Catholics, our religious identity cannot come second and should never be subservient.
So, Catholic schools flourished — until they didn’t. The Church was shaken mid-century, and didn’t begin to recovery for a generation. While all the reasons for preferring Catholic education increased and grew even more compelling, Catholic education weakened and dissipated. It is a vestige now, a shadow, an empty vessel. The parochial school is in most cases distinguishable from the public schools only by the thinness of the administrative offices (a necessity with scarce funds).
But what about the three purposes of education?
A “good public school” may be the best in the world at fulfilling purpose #1. Probably not, but let’s just say it is. The thing is – a public school can never help its pupils build character and moral foundation. Once upon a time, public schools could have a generic Christian ethos and a Catholic could get by. No more. Religion and morality are a dead issue in public schools, driven out completely. Completely. The only virtue held in common in them is Tolerance (for wickedness). Public schools are now required by law and practice to be aggressively secular in nature.
Furthermore, they cannot pass on our Catholic culture. They immerse a young person, in fact, in a culture that is fundamentally at odds with ours. Not only is the Church, it’s beliefs, customs, history, practice, and teaching completely absent from the public schools – they are often dismissed as antiquated, quaint, and outdated — or worse. The best public schools can only offer the culture of lukewarm, secular, liberal American consumer culture.
So there is this common objection: “I’ll teach those things at home! After school I’ll teach them about the Church, right and wrong, and they’ll learn their prayers and saints.”
When? The school has the kids from 8-4 or longer. Parents usually come in third as an authority figure. Number one is the school, number two is the school friends. And, parents are not left with the time or opportunity with their children during the week to make up for the total immersion learning and formation received at school.
The reality is that for a Catholic it is impossible to separate the three roles of teaching. You can’t learn literature, history, geography, science, language, economics, civics — none of these classes –without encountering questions of morality, questions of emphasis, questions of the role of the Church in the world, and our place in it as Christians. You cannot make up for the damage done by denuded education with an attempt at revision in the evenings and on Sunday.
The children of Catholics who go to public school often end up this way: They have almost no Catholic culture. What they do have will be strongly mixed with undesirable public school culture and thought. If they try to adopt strong Catholic sensibilities later in life, they’ll have to painfully lose the public school culture. Their will have their faith and morals and their belief system shaped, or at least strongly influenced, by secular liberalism, and not by our Faith. Thinking Catholic parents can win this fight against the schools is a whole lot to expect.
A Catholic cannot say our recourse to public schools is a good option – it is not a true option. And, private (Catholic) schools that can truly fill the role are very uncommon. It’s sad and shocking that we’ve reached this point. But it does us no good to pretend it isn’t true. Catholic families need a strong and determined authentic education movement to spring up among them with the purpose of providing alternatives to homeschooling.
From Pius XI’s letter “On the Christian Education of Youth“:
It is therefore as important to make no mistake in education, as it is to make no mistake in the pursuit of the last end, with which the whole work of education is intimately and necessarily connected. In fact, since education consists essentially in preparing man for what he must be and for what he must do here below, in order to attain the sublime end for which he was created, it is clear that there can be no true education which is not wholly directed to man’s last end, and that in the present order of Providence, since God has revealed Himself to us in the Person of His Only Begotten Son, who alone is “the way, the truth and the life,” there can be no ideally perfect education which is not Christian education. ~ Paragraph 7
For the mere fact that a school gives some religious instruction (often extremely stinted), does not bring it into accord with the rights of the Church and of the Christian family, or make it a fit place for Catholic students. To be this, it is necessary that all the teaching and the whole organization of the school, and its teachers, syllabus and text-books in every branch, be regulated by the Christian spirit, under the direction and maternal supervision of the Church; so that Religion may be in very truth the foundation and crown of the youth’s entire training; and this in every grade of school, not only the elementary, but the intermediate and the higher institutions of learning as well.
To use the words of Leo XIII:
It is necessary not only that religious instruction be given to the young at certain fixed times, but also that every other subject taught, be permeated with Christian piety. If this is wanting, if this sacred atmosphere does not pervade and warm the hearts of masters and scholars alike, little good can be expected from any kind of learning, and considerable harm will often be the consequence. ~ Paragraph 80