I would love to go back to the time when Catholics were expected to memorize things, you know, like the Ten Commandments, the Seven Deadly Sins, and the Beatitudes. Heck, even memorizing answers to the Baltimore Catechism would be great. As C.S. Lewis once observed somewhere (yes, I am too lazy to look it up), that before you can be creative with the rules you must know the rules. You have to have a foundation of basic stuff before you move onto the more difficult, creative, and dare I say, exciting, material. I memorized all the books of the (Protestant) Bible in second grade, and I still know the books in order because of that exercise (I also got a free Bible with my name on it out of it…slam dunk!).
As a teacher, I am expected to help students explore the deeper realities of theology, and that is, of course, a good thing. However, when a good chunk of my students can’t even tell me very basic things like the four gospels or the seven sacraments, it can be very frustrating. My classrooms are so mixed in terms of religious commitment that I have to be very creative to make sure everybody understands what he or or she needs to understand. I can think of a variety of reasons for this disparity, including the fact that many of my students are not Catholic, but part of it is that over the years memorization has been discouraged (”memorization is too rigid” “memorization stifles creativity,” and so forth). Yet, I am finding that when a decent chunk of the class can’t even begin to engage deeper realities because they don’t even know the basics, it truly creates a frustrating experience for both teacher and student.
So what am I going to do? Next year, I think I am going to ask every grade to create a running list of “terms every Catholic should know” and then have them memorize the meanings. They will then review and be quizzed over this list weekly, for every year I have them. Yeah, by the time you are a senior they may not be able to get the Beatitudes out of their head, but hey, that’s a good thing right? The new students to the school who have no background will learn a lot about basic Catholicism, and the others will be perpetually reviewing the basics of Catholicism. Covering 10-15 terms a week should be doable. I already have over 200 terms ready. This will overlap with a lot of what we are learning, but a lot of the curriculum assumes the basic stuff was memorized/learned before they got to me.
Awhile back Jonathan posted about President Obama’s children, Malia and Sasha, going to the exclusive Sidwell Friends school, despite Obama’s supposedly staunch support for public education, and lack of support for vouchers. Now there is a bill before Congress that would effectively kill the voucher program, sending kids like Sarah and James Parker, who also attend Sidwell, back to the D.C. public schools. I think in a gesture of solidarity, all the supporters of this bill, and Obama himself if he signs it, should send their kids to the D.C. public schools as well. What an opportunity to show just how much Obama and the Democrats support public education! After all, D.C. spends some of the most money per pupil on education, therefore they must offer the best education possible, right?
This double standard is largely unchallenged by either the teachers’ unions or the press corps. For the teachers’ unions, it’s a fairly cold-blooded calculation. They’re willing to look the other way at lawmakers who chose private or parochial schools for their own kids — so long as these lawmakers vote in ways that keep the union grip on the public schools intact and an escape hatch like vouchers bolted.
As for the press, complaints tend to be limited to the odd column or editorial. That’s one reason it was so startling back in 2000 when Time magazine’s Tamala Edwards, during a live televised debate at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, asked Al Gore about the propriety of sending his own son to private school while opposing any effort to extend the same choice to African-Americans without his financial wherewithal. As CNN’s Jeff Greenfield would note later in the same debate, Mr. Gore “bristled” when Ms. Edward’s put the question to him.
Virginia Walden-Ford, executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice, wouldn’t mind making a few more politicians bristle. “I’d like to see a reporter stand up at one of those nationally televised press conferences and ask President Obama what he thinks about what his own party is doing to keep two innocent kids from attending the same school where he sends his?”
Now, let me be clear. I don’t necessarily have a problem with public education, nor am I completely enamored with vouchers. I recognize that many public schools are doing a great job, and I also know that when you get government money involved in private education, bad things can happen. Additionally, as a private school teacher myself, I know that taking a kid from a troubled home and a public education background and placing her in a private school isn’t a solution to all of her problems. Also, obviously if everybody went to private school, we would have the same problems with private schools as we have with public schools, although I suspect that if we saw more community-oriented private schools spring up, with less bureaucracy, etc, we may see more effective education because the principle of subsidiarity would be being applied. My real problem is with political hypocrisy. Politicians are willing to sell out their constituencies to uphold a principle that they themselves don’t even practice in their own lives. This is the same old politics as usual, from people who told us it would be different. From the article:
As for Sidwell, the school has welcomed the Opportunity Scholarship program. Though headmaster Bruce Stewart declines to get into either politics or the Obamas, he says that a program that gives parents more educational options for their children is not only good for their kids, it’s good for the community. Plainly he’s not doing it for the money: Even the full D.C. voucher covers only a small fraction of Sidwell’s actual costs.
All of which leaves the First Parent with a decision to make: Will he stand up for those like his own children’s schoolmates — or stand in front of the Sidwell door with Mr. Durbin? It’s hard to imagine white congressional Democrats going up against him if he called them out on an issue where they have put him in this embarrassing position. This, after all, is a man who has written of the “anger” he felt as a community organizer, when his attempts to improve things for Chicago school kids ran up against an “uncomfortable fact.”
“The biggest source of resistance [to reform],” he said, “was rarely talked about . . . namely, the uncomfortable fact that every one of our churches was filled with teachers, principals, and district superintendents. Few of these educators sent their own children to public schools; they knew too much for that. But they would defend the status quo with the same skill and vigor as their white counterparts of two decades before.”
Let’s just say that Sarah and James Parker — and thousands just like them — could use some of that same Obama anger right about now.
I am thinking of developing a presentation that incorporates the “best practices” of successful Catholic schools, in order to help schools in our diocese move forward in areas of enrollment, Catholicity, etc. I am particularly interested in Catholic schools in semi-rural areas, because I have pretty much lived my entire life in these areas, and really hate to see these areas losing Catholic schools.
Does anybody know of any resources or research that details why some schools are thriving and others are not? I am open to suggestions and speculation as well. I have a lot of my own ideas, but I would like to come up with some solid evidence of what is working. If you know of anything helpful, please let me know.
On a related note, I will be attending the National Speakers Association, Ohio seminar on Sunday March 8, in Columbus. If anybody reading this is going to be there, look me up! A big thanks to Father Joshua Wagner for setting this up!
Today, the Church honors St. Katharine Drexel (1858-1955).
Here’s a summary of the things God Almighty did –and is still doing– through our sister, Katharine Drexel:
Saint Katharine Drexel, Religious (Feast Day-March 3) Born in 1858, into a prominent Philadelphia family, Katharine became imbued with love for God and neighbor. She took an avid interest in the material and spiritual well-being of black and native Americans. She began by donating money but soon concluded that more was needed – the lacking ingredient was people. Katharine founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People, whose members would work for the betterment of those they were called to serve. From the age of 33 until her death in 1955, she dedicated her life and a fortune of 20 million dollars to this work. In 1894, Mother Drexel took part in opening the first mission school for Indians, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Other schools quickly followed – for Native Americans west of the Mississippi River, and for the blacks in the southern part of the United States. In 1915 she also founded Xavier University in New Orleans. At her death there were more than 500 Sisters teaching in 63 schools throughout the country. Katharine was beatified by Pope John Paul II on November 20, 1988.
For my Topics in the Philosophy of Religion (Philosophy 441) class, we have to write an informal, one page, reaction paper for each of the reading assignments. This week’s reaction paper is written in response to Leo Tolstoy’s What is Religion and of What Does Its Essence Consist?
I wish I could have said more things about Tolstoy’s version of “Christianity”, but I am limited to a one page paper.
For my Topics in the Philosophy of Religion (Philosophy 441) class, we have to write an informal, one page, reaction paper for each of the reading assignments. I would like to share it with you.
For my Topics in the Philosophy of Religion (Philosophy 441) class, we have to write an informal, one page, reaction paper for each of the reading assignments.
Here is my first reaction paper for you to read and critique!
I support higher education, but after seeing a lot of college graduates working at Starbucks, I can’t help but wonder if a lot of money spent on generally unprofitable degrees wouldn’t be better spent on something else. For example, getting a degree in business, with a minor in photography seems more marketable and realistic to me than going into debt $140,000 for a photography degree (see the article). I used to laugh at my job prospects as a Psychology major, or as a Master of Theological Studies graduate, but the truth is, when my student loans came due as I was working as a substitute teacher, I quit laughing. The two years of frustration I spent getting my Master’s degree were simply not worth the debt. Had I done it over again, I would have gone to a Catholic grad school in Ohio, saving some money and heartache. I also would have minored in something that could get me a job virtually anywhere. Something needs fixed in higher education, and I don’t know if I think the educrats are the ones to make the fix.
Natalie Hickey left her small hometown in Ohio six years ago and aimed her beat-up Dodge Intrepid for the West Coast. Four years later, she realized a long-held dream and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in photography from Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara.
She also picked up $140,000 in student debt, some of it at interest rates as high as 18%. Her monthly payments are roughly $1,700, more than her rent and car payment combined.
“I don’t have all this debt because I was buying stuff,” said Hickey, who now lives in Texas. “I was just trying to pay tuition, living on ramen noodles and doing everything as cheaply as I could.”
Hickey got caught in an increasingly common trap in the nation’s $85-billion student loan market. She borrowed heavily, presuming that all her debt was part of the federal student loan program.
But most of the money she borrowed was actually in private loans, the fastest-growing segment of the student loan market. Private loans have no relation to the federal loan program, with one exception: In many cases, they are offered by the same for-profit companies that provide federally funded student loans.
As a result, some students who think they are getting a federal loan find out later that they hold a private loan. The difference can be costly.
There was a time when you didn’t need a study commissioned to figure this one out, but since the sexual and moral revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, things like this are necessary. The paper (.pdf), which explains the benefits of intact and religious families, is well worth a read. Below is an excerpt from the paper that summarizes its findings (emphases mine):
New analyses of data from a large-scale federal survey of child health and development show that children and adolescents are less likely to exhibit problems in school or at home if they live with both their biological parents and attend religious services regularly. For example, young people not living with both parents and not attending services regularly are five times more likely to have repeated a grade in school than those living with both parents and attending religious services weekly or monthly. Thirty-four percent of the former group had repeated a grade, compared with six percent of the latter. And 53 percent of the former group – versus 21 percent of the latter – had their parents contacted by the school because of conduct or achievement problems the youth was having at school. These differences hold up after controlling for family income and poverty, low parent education levels, and race and ethnicity.
An intact two-parent family and regular church attendance are each associated with fewer problem behaviors, more positive social development, and fewer parental concerns about the child’s learning and achievement. Taken together, the two home-environment factors have an additive relationship with child well-being. That is, children who live in an intact family and attend religious services regularly generally come out best on child development measures, while children who do neither come out worst. Children with one factor in their favor, but not the other, fall in between, scoring less well than those who have both factors going for them, but better than those who have neither factor in their favor.
Grade repetition, school contacts, and parental concern about child achievement are more strongly linked to a lack of an intact two-parent family than to a lack of religious participation. For problem behavior and social development, the strength of the association with religious attendance is about equal to that with family integrity. An intact two-parent family and regular religious participation are also associated with the parent reporting less parenting stress and a better parent-child relationship. These family functioning differences may help to explain the parallel differences in children’s well-being.
Much social science research on child development has focused on the role played by social class and socioeconomic factors like childhood poverty and family income, low parent education, and the more limited opportunities and negative influences faced by minority children. And indeed, the survey data show that the developmental problems listed above are more common among children from low-income families, families where parents have less than a high school education, and Black and Hispanic families. Some social scientists even contend that family structure and religious participation are only linked to developmental outcomes because of their association with socioeconomic disparities. (See reviews by Glenn & Sylvester, 2008; Bridges & Moore, 2002). However, when these socioeconomic factors are taken into account through multiple regression analysis of the survey data, the lack of an intact two-parent family and of regular religious training continue to be linked with developmental problems among children and adolescents. The strength of the statistically-adjusted regression coefficients is somewhat reduced compared to that of the uncontrolled correlation coefficients, but family structure and religious participation remain statistically significant explanatory factors. And their associations with children’s developmental difficulties are comparable in magnitude to the associations with family income and poverty, low parent education, and minority-group membership.
Unfortunately, I cannot afford to buy a ticket right now. Another unfortunate: I have local charities (including my own school) that need quite a bit of help right now, and when I do get the money, I will probably use it to buy a ticket for our big auction fundraiser. However, I hope Saint Joseph School has a great fundraiser and continues to provide a quality Catholic education for young persons in Greenville, SC!
Saint Joseph seems to be a model of success on how to run a Catholic school, at a time when others seem to be declining. Fr. Longenecker explains the school’s development:
They started with $800.00 in the bank and nine students in a house borrowed from the local Lutheran pastor. Sixteen years later we occupy a 38 acre campus and have nearly 550 students in grades 6 – 12
St Joseph’s is a school that can best be described as ‘classically Catholic.’ We are orthodox and always faithful to the church’s magisterium. This sounds maybe a little bit, ummm shall we say, ’stuffy’?
Not so. The school is an open hearted, loving and enthusiastic community with truly committed families, faculty and staff. With a full range of fine arts and athletics programs as well as high academic standards, the school also has a fine committment to the pastoral work and spiritual development of the students–seeking to form hearts and minds in the image of Christ.
Nationwide, other Catholic schools aren’t doing so well. I think we are in an emergency situation right now. One of our big donors, who lives in Chicago, has been asked by the archdiocese of Chicago to help the schools there, and I know that Chicago is not alone. In my smaller town, our school is struggling too, although we are still doing all right. I think we need a strong effort from our bishops, teachers, and school chaplains like Fr. Longenecker, to revitalize our Catholic schools. A big part of it may involve the retirement of quite a few folks, but that is certainly not all that is needed. One of my projects (among many) is to approach my bishop about this and see what can be done. There are some very successful Catholic schools out there, and it would benefit the Church to study why these schools are successful. Some schools are probably just going to close because of demographics (some neighborhoods were once nearly 100% Catholic, but are now hardly Catholic at all), but others are faltering for other reasons.
I have heard some suggest that Catholic education isn’t worth saving, because Catholic schools have fallen victim to 1970s flakiness and liberalism. However, we must remember that the opposite of misuse is not disuse, but correct use. Is the idea of a Catholic school a bad one, or just one that was improperly implemented after Vatican II? I think the latter is true. Many parishes and bishops also became flaky after Vatican II, but I don’t hear calls to close all the parishes or get rid of bishops. We do need a revitalization, and Saint Joseph School is an exampe of how this should happen, but it isn’t going to happen without a good bit of effort, and support from teachers, pastors, and ordinary Catholics.
Here is Father Robert Barron’s sermon for All Souls day.
SUMMARY:
Why do we speak of the “soul?” We do so because there is something in us that links us to the eternal. Though the body fades away, the core of the person does not. And therefore, we remain connected to those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith. We should pray for them in the hopes that one day we might live in communion with them.
“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.” –Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States and principal author of the Declaration of Independence.
What is the just thing to do this coming November 4 in regards to the presidential election? To answer this question we must first and foremost define what justice is.
JUSTICE: “the constant and permanent determination to give everyone his or her rightful due”–Fr. John Hardon, Modern Catholic Dictionary
Given that the protection and preservation of human life is the principal duty of the American government, all American citizens who will participate in the 2008 presidential election must begin the process of deciding who they will vote for by asking themselves: Which presidential candidate is committed to the protection of human life? Which candidate is determined to give the unborn their rightful due? Or again: Which candidate is willing to act justly in regards to unborn children?
I ask you: What is the rigthful due of unborn children, death or life? It is completely obvious, isn’t it? Death shouldn’t even be considered a plausible answer, yet we live in a nation that “lawfully” says that, in some cases, the rightful due of unborn children is death. To make the matter worse, we have a person (Obama) who is running for president who maintains that the rightful due of unborn children is, under certain circumstances, that their lives may be terminated. His position is unjust given the fact that he is infringing on the natural, rightful due of unborn children; that is to say, Obama holds a position that maintains that the natural right to life may be taken away from the unborn. Once again, as boldly as possible, Obama’s position on human life is unjust and it is at odds with the most fundamental obligation of a good government.
Dear reader, I beg you, take heart, please do not perpetrate against the most fundamental human right, do not promote injustice against defenseless human beings by voting for Obama. For the sake of the common good, take a stand for life, take a stand for justice!
Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander. –Holocaust Museum, Washington D.C.
I am taking an online post-Master’s class on the sacraments, and without a big library nearby, it is difficult to find resources in print. I have been using Google Books for help. Google Books has copies of a lot of books (some complete, most incomplete), that are searchable. Even though you can’t see every page of every book (since you have to pay for that privilege with modern, copyrighted, books), there are enough pages of most books to do basic research, and find some good citations.
Some older, out of copyright, books are completely searchable and downloadable! It really is a helpful tool, and a way to collect books that are rare and out-of-print. For instance, you can download an entire copy of A History of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States by Catholic University Professor Thomas O’Gorman. For most of you computer savy readers, this is old news I am sure, but it is new to me!
I am super excited about the truly amazing work that Fr. Robert Barron is doing. If you think that his work is worth it, PLEASE help him through your prayers and through your monetary contributions.
I suspect that many people will be drawn to the Church after watching this documentary.
Posted by David Bennett 
Posted by David Bennett 
Posted by David Bennett 
