Catholic schools: the next challenge
BY MSGR. DENNIS MURPHY
Catholic Register Special (Week of August 25-
After years of
fighting outside forces, Catholic schools must face the challenge from within.
Over the better part of two centuries hundreds, indeed
thousands of committed people have been convinced that their Catholic schools
were a treasure of great worth. Lay people, especially parents, clergy, both
priests and bishops, religious women and men, trustees and teachers, all
recognized the unique and distinctive value of Catholic schools.
They recognized that these schools would continue to exist
only if together they sacrificed and struggled against all of the pressures and
forces which directly or indirectly sought to abolish them. It was relatively
easy in most times to recognize those forces hostile to the Catholic school
system.
In recent years, however, an increasing number of people
believe that the threat to the Catholic school system is not so easily
recognizable. It no longer comes from outside. The threat, they say, is from
within. In the words of Pogo, the cartoon character created by Walt Kelly,
"We have seen the enemy and it is us." One may choose to agree or
disagree with this assessment. Certainly opposition external to the Catholic
school system continues to exist. However, from within what seems particularly
disturbing is the lack of common effort, commitment and consensus about what
fundamental goals and objectives should be occupying our attention and energy.
It can hardly be debated that all social institutions and
programs are increasingly scrutinized as to their relevance. Bernard Blishen in his study of
Few would argue that with the completion of the Catholic
system to the end of secondary school in 198586, and with the advent of
equitable funding in the next decade, the quest for social and legal legitimacy
has in large part been realized. The question that faces us now is whether
there are new challenges which confront us, what they are and whether there
exists within the Catholic school community the necessary consensus to deal
with these.
An Environmental Scan of our Church and Society
Both organizations and individuals speak today of the need to do what is called an environmental scan when considering such questions. Such a scan examines personal and communal experiences, the world around us, the tasks we perform, the relationships that make up our lives and the often contradictory drives and passions that give us direction. For Christians this represents something more than a sociological exercise. For us, identifying and naming our personal and communal experiences is also a way to recognize the words and the language through which God reveals His face to us. The great Spanish mystic John of the Cross tells us that "The language of God is the experience God writes into our lives."
An environmental scan for Catholic educators searching out
the meaning of the present moment and some guidance for their way into the
future must include at least a summary consideration of the present situation
of both society and church, including a decreasing level of practice and
credibility, a lack of transparency in the church, the aggressive and often
hostile secularism of the times, the religious illiteracy of our younger
generations and the contemporary expressions of our never-ending search for
God. A word about each.
Faltering Practice and Credibility in the Church
Well before the scandals which have recently rocked our
Catholic community there was an evident disenchantment with the church by many
Catholics both young and middle-aged. Participation in the life of the church
is peripheral to the daily experience of most Roman Catholics in the
As all this happens, those who have traditionally provided
the leadership in our community, priests and religious, are fewer and fewer in
number and greyer and greyer in appearance. And few are the parents who
encourage their sons and daughters to follow the call to the priesthood or
religious life.
A Lack of Transparency
In recent days and weeks as Catholics have sought to cope
with the humbling reality of sexual abuse by the clergy, what has surfaced
beyond this shame is the discovery within our church of a climate of secrecy
and a lack of transparency. It is a secrecy and lack of transparency not only
in dealing with sexual abuse by the clergy. This latter tragedy has served to
reveal a similar hiddenness surrounding
decision-making especially regarding the appointments of both priest and
bishops. This hiddenness allows little clarity as to
the reasons that prompt various pastoral appointments. How the members of the
church, of a diocese or parish benefit remains obscure. Such practices run the
threat of sustaining a clerical culture which too easily can be tempted to
place clerical concerns and ecclesiastical politics above the pastoral care of
God's people. Not unrelated is that the promise of lay participation,
especially through parish and diocesan pastoral councils as encouraged by
Vatican II, seems to have fallen on hard times.
Aggressive Secularism
As all of this has transpired within the church a supposedly
neutral secularism in society reveals an increasingly value-laden agenda and a
face often hostile to all religious belief. The Catholic Church - and in many
cases the Christian Church - is in disfavour not only because of clergy sexual
abuse. It is also in disfavour because its social teaching criticizes a society
that continues to elect at both the provincial and federal levels governments
whose priorities are to make the rich richer rather than address issues like
child poverty and shameful global disparities of wealth. Catholics and other
religious groups are in disfavour because of opposition to government policies
that reduce social assistance to single parents, marginalize the poor and weak
and make economic growth the ultimate goal of society. Catholics are in
disfavour today because of continued insistence on these and other life issues
such as abortion and euthanasia. Catholics are in disfavour for refusing to
accept that premarital and extramarital sex is behaviour that has no
consequences on human sexuality and the family. The avowedly secular agenda of
many of the social and cultural institutions of our time - particularly the
news media - is often diametrically opposed to these positions.
This same secularistic agenda also
supports more often than not one public homogenized educational system as an
ideal to be achieved. Usually this opposition to Catholic schools is based on a
The Search for God
The paradox is that amidst the humbling of the church, the
aggressiveness of the secularists, faltering Catholic practice and credibility,
there remains as a dominant feature of our times a pervasive search for God.
The words of the late member of the Beatles, George Harrison, reflected the
urgency of this seeking. "Everything else can wait, but the search for God
cannot wait," he said. Sociologist Reginald Bibby's
latest survey seems to indicate that there is an increase again in
participation in church life in
In 1991 best-selling Canadian author Douglas Coupland published his book Generation X. It examined the lives of his contemporaries - lives
he described as empty of meaning, hopelessly lived in a culture of conspicuous
consumerism and saturated with media. A few short years later (1994) he published
Life after God. This series of short
stories told again the disillusionment of his contemporaries. In the last story
in the latter book, after describing the after-20s lives of his friends, the
main character concludes his story with these words: "Now - here is my
secret: I tell it to you with an openness of heart that I doubt I shall ever
achieve again, so I pray that you are in a quiet room as you hear these words.
My secret is that I need God - that I am sick and can
no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem
to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of
kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love" (p. 359).
In the popular poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen's new CD Ten New Songs, he talks about "
Our society, no less than people of every
age, want to know, have to know, what "
Unfortunately, perhaps, the vast majority of these spiritual
self-help tomes seek to lead the individual to find meaning in life only within
the self. However, there is another phenomenon of our times - a phenomenon
which recognizes that a self-centred search for meaning in life surrenders only
a very partial understating of the human journey. More and more people today
are searching to discover some coherent and consistent sense of meaning and
direction within their families, their ancestors, their history, their story.
It is sometimes called the "roots" phenomenon.
Probably this latter phenomenon comes about because we are
experiencing ourselves as a people without any real continuity in our lives, a
people whose story has been so deconstructed and relativized
that we appear to be nothing of significance, to be hardly worthwhile. Almost
intuitively we sense that it is our story, or our history which gives some
sense of direction, some meaning and some importance to our personal lives.
Without a story, a history, we sense that the human journey has no meaning
because it has no coherent sense of beginning or end.
In the recent Third International Congress on Vocations in
Montreal, Sr. Marie Chin, RSM, spoke of the aboriginal people of Australia who
have a practice of walking hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles in a year,
tracking the patterns that their ancestor gods have left on the landscape as
they created the world and its occupants in the mythical time known as the
"Dream Time."
Apparently as they walk through particular areas they sing
and chant the story which describes the events that took place in Dream Time in
the region through which they are passing.
It seems that in recalling their deep stories people
everywhere find fundamental values, beliefs, ways of
acting and inspiration which give meaning to their present. Our stories hold a
transformative power which touches our soul and provides a framework for belief
and hope and peace in the midst of whatever fears and uncertainties may trouble
us.
Religious Illiteracy
Another reality - indeed an anomaly - confronting the
Catholic community is that our young people, despite their search for God, and
as generous and as altruistic as ever, do not know the story of our faith.
Those professors who teach the religious education courses in the faculties of
education are unanimous in reporting that very many of the Catholic students -
those who intend to teach within our Catholic school system - are, in large
part, religious illiterates as far as the Catholic and Christian story is
concerned.
Many of the young people in our Catholic secondary schools
betray an obvious lack of familiarity with the Eucharist, how to participate in
it, and how to comport themselves. They betray both a lack of any sense of the
sacred and of any conceptual context within which to place the Eucharist as the
centre of our Catholic life. Such fundamental questions as the nature and
meaning of sacraments and how sacraments have been traditionally understood in
the life of the church are understood in very incomplete fashion by students in
many of our elementary schools. This religious illiteracy may be due in part to
the failure in the schools, but mainly it is result of children from families
where faith is hardly practiced, seldom celebrated, and attributed little practical
importance (Cf. "Catholic Education at the Crossroads," The Catholic Register, Aug. 25, 2001).
The Challenge for Catholic Schools
These are some of the elements of the environment in which
Catholic schools find themselves today. As members of a troubled church we find
ourselves in a country where many opinion makers wish to secularize all our
social institutions according to an American model quite different from our
Canadian experience. On the one hand people everywhere give witness to a hunger
for God; and on the other hand many students in Catholic schools seem to know
precious little about God. They know too little of the story of our faith which
speaks of the very God who has given us the life we treasure, the air we
breathe and the universe in which we find ourselves. This is the paradox we
live, and the challenge that confronts us today in our Catholic schools.
As our society seeks a story that will provide meaning, we
seem afflicted by a form of religious illiteracy or amnesia. We seem to have
lost our story or perhaps lost the capacity to tell our story in words and ways
that resonate with contemporary experience. We seem as well to be on the verge
of losing that sense of community and religious belonging which is the medium,
the context within which the story can be ever told anew. This is the threat
from within and the challenge we face. It is a threat that challenges the
Catholic educational partners to achieve consensus and commitment on how to
deal with it if we are to move successfully into the 21st century.
The challenge which we face is therefore twofold. In the
first place it is to tell our Christian story in words and ways that will
resonate with the experience, the search, and the desires of both the parents
and the kids in our schools. The challenge is to announce anew and in
contemporary fashion the Christian and Catholic answer to the perennial search
for our souls. The challenge is to articulate anew the myth, the narrative
which has given hope and meaning and coherence to the Christian journey of our
forbears.
The second part of the challenge is to create, in our highly
individualistic society, the Christian community which is essential to the
telling of the story. To know the story and to have it affect our lives
requires that we be part of community which has created and continues to create
this story. For it is the community which gives flesh and blood to the story.
It is the community which clothes the story in contemporary garments and
thereby makes it comprehensible to succeeding generations.
I would not hesitate to suggest that this challenge is of
such importance that all partners in our Catholic school system in consensual
fashion must make of it the fundamental and distinctive goal according to which
we will measure the success or failure of our schools in the days ahead.
If together we can commit to this we should be assured that
there is no reason to believe that we are presiding at a deathwatch. Ultimately
this is a challenge not just for the school system but for the whole church.
Catholic schools are uniquely positioned to respond to this new challenge. We
cannot ignore the fact that more Catholics touch the life of the church at the
level of the school than at the level of parish and diocese. The incredible
resource our school system represents within our church in
None of these people is perfect. But the story of our faith,
our sacred writings, tell us that those called by God have seldom been perfect.
The Peters and Pauls, the Isaiahs
and Moses, the Martin Luther Kings and Mother Teresas
have all been flawed and wounded human beings. They were people who, often with
some reluctance, recognized the disruptive call of God as it breaks into
ordinary lives and asks ordinary people to bear a mission of human
transformation. Our hope is in these ordinary people to pick up the challenge
and achieve these two fundamental goals of telling our story anew and of
creating the learning environment of Christian community in which it must be
told.
Telling the Story throughout the Curriculum
To consciously and intentionally hand on a heritage and
tradition, a history and a way of living, and an anthropology which tells us
who we are, entails more than courses in religious education. It involves
educating young baptized Catholics within a philosophy and context of learning
in which all curriculum, all subjects and disciplines are inspired and informed
by the faith story recounted in our sacred writings and tradition. Ours is an
understanding of learning and teaching, ours is a philosophy of education
founded on the conviction that the sacred and the secular are ever related one
to the other. Our approach to education is grounded in assuring that the well
educated graduate of a Catholic school system will be equipped to make the
connections in life between the wonders of the physical universe, the beauty of
the arts, the magic of language, and that mystery of life who is our God. This
approach is well articulated in the Institute for Catholic Education's
"Ontario Catholic School Graduate Expectations."
This is what is distinctive in Catholic curriculum. It
reflects a shared conviction that there are no neutral economics, or
literature, or drama or hard or soft sciences courses in Catholic school
programs. The story we tell has meaning for all subjects and disciplines and
implications for all of life.
Catholic educators do not pretend that this approach to
education occurs in some kind of social and cultural vacuum. With the wide
variety of value systems, ideologies, stories and world views which compete
every day for the attention and even the commitment of young people, with so
many families which live the life of practical atheism, Catholic educators are
in no way assured of winning the Christian commitment of all students. Catholic
schools should, however, recognize a fundamental responsibility, a primary
purpose. This fundamental responsibility is that their graduates in all
disciplines and other curricular experiences will be taught the story, the
tradition, the moral code and the ways of prayer and worship of those people
who throughout the centuries have followed the meaning of life as revealed in
the Good News of Jesus Christ. In making known to our students the rich
heritage of the Christian faith our hope is that they reach out and grasp this
message as a way of life and apply it to all dimensions and experiences of
their human journey.
The assessable and measurable goal is that they be taught
and come to know this story and heritage. That they will believe in it and
commit their lives to the Christian way happens only in the mystery of God's
gift of faith.
Telling our Story with New Words
Confronted with the reality of religious amnesia, of varying
degrees of religious illiteracy among the student, few Catholic educators have
not realized that our language, our words, our teaching, do not seem to have
the power to communicate that they once possessed. More is involved than
children not knowing our tradition and heritage. There is also urgent need for
new words, for a new language - a language which resonates with contemporary
experience and which can communicate with the present generations.
Vaclav Havel, the poet of the
Czechoslovakian revolution, in speaking of our present times has said,
"Today, many things indicate that we are going through a transitional
period, when it seems that something is on its way out and something else is
being painfully born. It is as if something were crumbling, decaying, and
exhausting itself, while something else, still indistinct, were arising from
the rubble." It is not surprising that often the very words and concepts
of our faith often seem to have been hollowed out, to have lost their
transforming power.
In this context it is helpful to remember just how
significantly the words we use lose or change their meaning. Someone wrote recently
that it was not too long ago that:
Only in recent years has it been clearly borne in upon us
that a radical rearticulating or re-speaking of the faith is necessary. It
serves no purpose simply to shout louder with a language that is foreign to the
ears of our contemporaries, be they our young people or their parents.
At the time of the Second Vatican Council Pope John XXIII
obviously sensed the new moment which humanity is living. He told us that
although the eternal and essential truths of our faith remain ever the same
they must effectively be clothed in and expressed in new words, new concepts,
in a new language, if they are to touch and affect the lives of contemporary
men and women.
So we need new words, a new language. The lexicon of this
new language will include the mind-boggling discoveries of the physicist and of
the astronomer, the vocabulary of information technology, and the marvels of
evolution and of genetic engineering. More importantly the accent of our
language, the distinctiveness of our language must bespeak care and compassion,
conversion, prayer, beauty, and inclusiveness.
A Language of Care and Compassion
As Catholics seek to discover the proper new words to
express the age old traditions and teaching of our faith, as we struggle with
the language of the new orthodoxy, we must speak more loudly than ever that
language of human care and concern that beats at the heart of the gospel. Our
schools within the classrooms, at the board table, and in all the many
relationships involved in a school system must be seen to reflect not so much
the commandments or the imperatives of our tradition as the beatitudes of the
gospel. If the language of orthodoxy is once again in the making, the language
of orthopraxis
- of doing what the gospel calls us to - remains ever clear. The words of our
new language most importantly will be words expressed through the medium of
social justice, of compassion, care and commitment seeking always to express
the reality of a God of love. Perhaps in our present climate it is this
language which will best be understood, especially with our secondary school
students. Interestingly even the secular world which often flinched at the
religious words and theology of Mother Teresa was profoundly moved by the words
which her actions bespoke. One hopes that this language of Christian orthopraxis can
lead us anew to the language of prayer as mentioned below.
A Language of Conversion
In assuring that our story and its teachings, beliefs, and
moral codes be told in clear and uncompromising fashion in all of our schools,
we cannot ignore the fact that so many of our kids come from non-practising
families where they live in a formative context of practical atheism. As they
enter a Catholic school classroom many of them can hardly be called believers.
If they are not believers then we should speak not a language of catechesis but
of conversion. This has consequences for how we teach in Catholic schools and
how we develop our catechetical programs.
Recognizing that a search for meaning, for God, for
something that transcends ourselves, is part of the
experience of all students is the starting point. In a world of values in which
students ricochet from pillar to post young people, indeed all of us, sense the
need for some consistent worldview, something that will make sense out of death
and the moral ambiguities that all face. The Catholic story is about the wonder
and dignity of each of us, created by God and held in his hand. So we must tell
young people above all else that they are worthwhile. Young people want to hear
that message even though they may not realize how much they want to hear it.
Psychologists in giving advice to parents whose young children were traumatized
by the events of Sept. 11 suggested that above all they should hug them and
hold them.
This is the kind of precious zone of personal stability
which a Catholic school should offer. Students need a place where there is some
coherence. In this space which allows for the quiet of their own souls, Catholic
educators let young people grapple with the questions and the value systems
which compete for their attention. If we create this coherent and consistent
zone of stability then we can offer them a contemporary kerygma, a simple statement of
the essential message of the gospel, and pray that they will be converted to
it.
A Language of Prayer
The language of prayer in its own mysterious way seems to
communicate with us all. It is not too much to say that our schools should
teach a language of contemplation. Contemplation has been described as
"... a gracious act of waking up, taking notice of, paying attention, and
becoming alive to time, place and the world around us. It is engaging God who
is present in the here and now" (Sr. Marie Chin). Surely it was to this
contemplative approach that John Paul II was referring when addressing
educators in
Our Catholic tradition offers many different ways and paths
that lead one into the life of prayer. Ignatian, Teresian, and Benedictine spiritualities are but parts of
our rich heritage. Of particular importance is that prayer of mysticism that
brings together, unites one with, and immerses one in the wonder of all life,
the marvel of the entire universe, and the mystery of a creating God. This
mystical tradition finds echo in today's ecological and environmental concerns
as well as in the search for some meaning that transcends the all-consuming
materialism which so reduces us. Centred in the quietness of God, our prayer
traditions resonate with the words of the Indian poet and philosopher, Rabindranath Tagore: "The
same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the
world and dances in rhythmic measures."
In our elementary schools we should put emphasis on teaching
children to pray. Never before has prayer been so essential to maintain
individual faith as in our increasingly secular society. Perhaps centring
prayer or some prayer which uses the imagination would best be taught to them
before their religious imagination is in some way atrophied by the secularism
of our times.
A Language of Beauty
The language of our narrative should also be one that finds
expression through the arts and all the cultural riches of both our tradition
and contemporary society. Recently Liona Boyd, the
Canadian classical guitarist, quoted the German poet and dramatist Johann
Goethe. He once said: "A person should hear a little music, read a little
poetry and see a live picture every day in order that worldly cares may not
obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human
soul" (Globe and Mail, May 4).
Our words must allow for the wonder and the awe which beauty
inspires. Our curriculum must be as much about appreciation as about
information - appreciation for the miracle of life and the universe in which we
live. Towards the end of his life the great American rabbi, Abraham Joshua Heschel, in the preface to his book of Yiddish poems wrote,
"I did not ask for success: I asked for wonder. And you gave it to
me." The American priest sociologist and novelist, Andrew Greeley,
suggests that in Catholic schools, "At every step of the educational
process we must attend to beauty - that small tear in the surface of the world,
as Simone Weil puts it, that pulls us through to some vaster space. Beauty
lifts us off the ground, spins us around and then deposits us back on the
ground perhaps only a few inches away. It is not that we no longer stand at the
centre of the world; we never did. Rather, we are still in the power of that
which has happened to us in our encounter with beauty. But
encounters with beauty open us up to their own alchemy, which gently guides us
to goodness and truth" (
A Language of Inclusiveness
Our new language should be such that it renders no one
invisible. In the language of all subjects but perhaps particularly in religion
the language of a Catholic school would recognize the power of words to include
and empower, or to exclude and make invisible. The sometimes rigorously
masculine language of our tradition would be modified so as to bring all into
its expression. In the use of language we should make our own the Wisdom of the
American poet, Maya Angelou, "We did what we knew how to do, and when we
knew better, we did better."
Creating the Learning Environment of Christian
Community
A second fundamental goal or objective of a Catholic school
is to assure that students are exposed not only to the notions, ideas, words
and language of Christian faith, but to the experience of people striving and
indeed struggling to follow in a secular society this way of life, this
journey, as revealed in the gospel story. In other words consensual commitment
to the creation of the unique learning environment of Christian community
within the school is needed as a privileged objective. This will be a basic
criterion in determining whether we are being effective in the delivery of
Catholic education. Community in the Catholic theological tradition is the
primary locus revelationis
- the primary place where God speaks to us and reveals his face to us. Creating
community is not accidental to the Catholic educational enterprise but at the
very heart of what we do.
There is a visceral realization in Catholic practice that
the living out of our faith is never a flight of the alone to the Alone. For
Catholics moments of deep meaning, of birth and baptism, of love and marriage,
of the meal of Eucharist, and of death and dying, are not moments to be lived
alone but with one another. Community may be a reality that is difficult to
define - but usually it is easy to recognize.
For some people in our society it is little more then a
social construct - a grouping of people coming together simply to realize an
achievable goal. More thoughtfully, however, others such as the late spiritual
writer Henri Nouwen have recognized that "community is created when we
care for the vulnerable." Community is created when not only a school
staff but also those who support the school recognize that in some way we are
jointly responsible for a group of vulnerable people who have been entrusted to
us, in other words when we realize that we are responsible to give life-meaning
to the very vulnerable, mysterious and precious commodity that are our
children.
It is not easy to be a community person today. All involved
in Catholic education like many believers today are tempted to go it alone in
their quest for God. It is part of the individualism of our times. The
temptation may be particularly strong as our Roman Catholic community is
confronted with the sins of the clergy, with the unpopularity of our social
justice teaching, and the political incorrectness of opposing things like
abortion and euthanasia. In all of this we might listen with profit to the same
Henri Nouwen, who despite his own problems with the church had this to say:
"First of all, listen to the church. I know that isn't
a popular bit of advice at a time and in a country where the church is
frequently seen more as an 'obstacle' in the way rather than as the 'way' to
Jesus. Nevertheless, I'm profoundly convinced that the greatest spiritual
danger of our times is the separation of Jesus from the church. The church is
the body of the Lord. Without Jesus there can be no church; and without the
church we cannot stay united with Jesus. I've yet to meet anyone who has come
closer to Jesus by forsaking the church. To listen to the church is to listen
to the Lord of the church. Specifically, this means taking part in the church's
liturgical life. Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost;
these seasons and feasts teach you to know Jesus better and better, and unite
you more and more intimately with the divine life He offers you in the
church" (Nouwen, Henri J. M., Show
Me the Way: Readings for Each Day of Lent, pp. 111-12).
It is true that there can be spirituality without formal
religious practice. It is true that the liturgy in some parishes doesn't seem
to do much for our relationship with God.
But to believe in our secular world we do need a community,
a structure, a place to be before God with other people struggling like
ourselves.
It may well be that the most important exercise or object of
all professional development for both educators and trustees will be discussion
concerning the ways of creating community. This should surely be the principal
objective of every school principal and staff. They should, as well, be aided
in the achievement of that objective by all of the support services for which
supervisory officers are responsible.
To sum up, the fundamental goals or objectives of telling
our story in contemporary language and creating the learning environment of
Christian community are defining characteristics of a modern Catholic school.
In the language of the day efficient and effective schools are those which
achieve their stated goals and objectives. It is, therefore, the Catholic
school which attains these distinctive goals that will be an efficient and
effective Catholic school. The attainment of these two goals defines the particular
kind of efficiency we look for in effective Catholic schools. Our second
question must be to determine how the partners in Catholic education should
hold themselves accountable in the attainment of these goals or purposes.
Accountability in Catholic Education
If consensus can be achieved about the importance of these
fundamental goals for effective or efficient Catholic schools, our way into the
future also demands that we develop some consensus around a process of
accountability for their attainment.
Essential to determining the distinctive efficiency of
Catholic schools will be the creation and implementation of measures or
standards applicable to boards and to teachers, to students, and to parents,
and to parishes and dioceses - measures which can assess how efficient our
schools are in communicating the Christian story and how efficient they are in
creating Christian community.
The obvious and immediate objection to this will be that
these objectives are not measurable as are numeracy
and literacy. The objection is that we would be trying to quantify that which
is unquantifiable. The answer to this objection is that assessment and
evaluation from a Catholic education perspective cannot be reduced only to the
quantifiable. To do so is to agree with an educational approach that would
measure literacy and numeracy alone - and would
measure them in ways that allow only for the rigidly mathematical type of
evaluation which can be fed into a computer and analysed. Such is the very
limited kind of evaluation which technology can provide.
There are, however, other legitimate and commonly recognized
educational goals such as moral reasoning, social co-operation and other
behavioural goals. These goals are found not only in the Catholic school
system. The achievement of these goals is difficult if not impossible to
evaluate in rigid numerical fashion, but we must evaluate them nonetheless,
albeit in different fashion. This, surely, is already done in what is termed
"portfolio assessment." Catholic schools with their additional and
distinctive educational goals represent an enlargement of the envelope of
portfolio assessment. Such evaluation can apply not only to students but to
boards and teachers and the other partners in the Catholic educational enterprise.
Accountability for the Traditional Partners
Although every partner must in different ways be accountable
for providing efficient Catholic education, here only the accountability of the
traditional partners of schools (boards and educators), parishes/dioceses, and
parents is addressed.
Accountability for Boards
If communicating the Christian story is a primary goal of
Catholic education, then an indicator of an efficient Catholic school board
will be its acceptance of responsibility and allocation of resources for
assuring that teachers in Catholic schools have every opportunity to become
knowledgeable in the Christian story and tradition, and knowledgeable in how
the gospel relates to their particular disciplines or subjects. Another
indicator will be the extent to which the board provides to all employees
insight and technique in community building skills so that educators especially
will be as well equipped as possible to create that distinctive learning
environment that is the community of a Catholic school.
To do this, boards must determine what recognized needs
their teachers have in this regard. Then they must provide the resources
necessary for whatever remediation may be necessary. In responding to whatever
needs are identified the Catholic school community might introduce its own
programs and procedures for assuring the constant professional updating of the
teachers within its system. Perhaps to assist in such a needs assessment the
Catholic school community might consider following up on the Blishen Report, which provided a snapshot of the Catholic
Education community in 1990. Is it not time to ask where we are today in terms
of the perspective which the different partners bring to our common task?
Another indicator for which a Catholic board should be
accountable relates to the physical realities of community building. There is
more than adequate research which indicates that certain schools sizes
effectively render the building of a school community impossible. If smaller
buildings are out of the question for financial reasons, it is still possible
to have more than one school community within the same building. This
experiment has proved quite successful within other educational jurisdictions.
For Catholic school boards to move in these directions
probably means that the current funding formula needs refinement in how the
boards spend their dollars. This is not primarily to
ask for more dollars (although such seems needed) but to impress upon the
government that a distinctive school system must be distinctively funded if the
constitutional guarantees for Catholic education are to be honoured. It
probably means, as well, that the broader Catholic community seriously
investigates whether it will financially support our schools to pay for the
various programs that lend distinctiveness to the system and for which the
Catholic system will not receive more dollars than the public system.
Accountability for Educators
In speaking of accountability as applied to the educators in
the Catholic school system considerable enlightenment is to be found in the
judicial decision of Mr. Justice Sharpe regarding the constitutionality of
section 136 of the Education Act. This section, inserted into the Education Act
at the time of the legislation that completed the Catholic system, took away
the power of Catholic boards to discriminate in the hiring of teachers. No
longer would they be able to give preference to teacher applicants who shared
the Catholic faith. The section was successfully challenged by the Ontario
Catholic School Trustees' Association. In his 1998 ruling regarding this matter
Justice Sharpe underlined and emphasized the centrality of the teacher to the
Catholic educational process. In support of his decision he quoted the Supreme Court
of Canada which said, "The religious or doctrinal aspect of the school
lies at its very heart and colours all its activities and programs. The role of
the teacher in this respect is fundamental to the whole effort of the school,
as much in its spiritual nature as in the academic" (Daly and the Attorney
General of Ontario, p. 41).
The secular courts of our land have recognized that Catholic
education ultimately will rise or fall on the commitment, the competence, and
the dedication of its teachers. Anyone involved in education knows that after
all the theory, all the administrative procedures, all the financial support,
education achieves its goals or fails to do so when the classroom door closes
and teachers interact with their students. The heart of Catholic education will
always be its teachers. And in Catholic schools the story of our faith and the
sense of community which it engenders will only happen through the classroom
teachers.
Perhaps we must ask them, as the professionals, how they
would envision a process of accountability in this regard. Their association
may find that this is a task for which they have no taste. If this is the case,
how can we turn to the teachers themselves to provide the answer to this
essential question?
Accountability for Parishes/Dioceses
The present moment in the history of Catholic education is
not marked by a particularly close relationship between parishes/dioceses or
between priests/bishops and Catholic schools. A variety of reasons may account
for this. Ever larger school administrative units over the past few decades
have created not only physical but psychological distance between school and
parish. Diminishing numbers of clergy and religious in the teaching profession
have resulted in fewer personal bonds between different church institutions.
Fewer parish priests have meant fewer school visits by priests who in the past
most often provided the link between parish and school. Rightful emerging lay
responsibility has not always happened in the most felicitous of circumstances.
Some 13 years ago the bishops of
More than ever, therefore, is there need to determine today
the role and the responsibility parishes/dioceses have in Catholic education,
and how they are to be held accountable.
If telling the story of our faith and creating a learning
environment of Christian community are the crucial and distinctive goals and
objectives then surely bishops, as the overseers of the faith, and priests as
their primary collaborators have an essential role. The primary role of the
bishop is to teach the faith along with his presbyterium,
his priests. Other educational partners should expect, therefore, leadership
not simply in repeating the teachings of our faith but in applying them amidst
the welter of personal and social moral issues that confront the education
community every day.
Such teaching requires regular contact with the other
partners. The questions should be asked: What regularly scheduled meetings
should take place between local bishops and school board, parent, and teacher
representatives? And what regularly scheduled meetings should occur between
parish representatives and the other partners?
This kind of regular consultation among the partners on the
provincial level produced the well informed and well received teaching of the
bishops as seen in their Fully Alive series on family life and in the above mentioned
brochure This Moment of Promise. But should this not happen in more regular
fashion in ways that would address the ever new and contemporary faith and
moral questions relating to school board policy, ministry decisions, social
change, bioethics and so on?
And if such involvement and responsibilities fall upon the
shoulders of priest and bishop, the next question is: How do they see
themselves as being accountable to the rest of the Catholic education community
in the fulfilment of these roles?
Accountability for Parents/School Councils
If there is a single obvious weakness in the legislation of
the Ministry of Education regarding school councils it is that so much is
expected of the latter that they are liable to be paralyzed by over-choice. In their
brochure "Involving Other Parents: the Primary Focus of a Catholic School
Council," the Catholic trustees' association has suggested a way out of
this dilemma. This association suggests that if school councils are primarily
about improving student learning then Catholic school councils should focus on
involving as many parents as possible in the education of their own kids as the
best way to make this happen. The trustees put forward two major reasons for
making the involvement of parents in the education of their kids a fundamental
focus and priority. First of all, from a theoretical perspective Catholic
education philosophy has always made parents the primary educators of their
children; secondly, research continues to pile up showing how parental involvement
is of such crucial importance in improving the learning of children.
There surely are other roles for Catholic school councils as
articulated in Regulation 612 of Ontario's Education Act. Catholic school
councils, however, should give precedence to the task of involving as many
parents as they can in the education of their own kids.
As well, Catholic school councils should include in their
bylaws the stated objective of assisting in the creation of a learning
environment of Christian community in their schools. In so doing they would
accept some responsibility for involving not only parishes but other Catholic
institutions and agencies in the community education efforts of Catholic
schools.
These same school councils must also devise processes of
accountability whereby they report back to those who elect or appoint their
members.
Only if the Catholic school community is commonly committed
to the pursuit of the fundamental goals, objectives, and purposes outlined
above will there be a truly efficient Catholic system. And only an efficient
Catholic system can hope to survive in the months and years ahead.
Allow me to conclude with words other than the language of
efficiency and accountability. In our Christian and Catholic vocabulary we tend
to speak more of promise and covenant. In our celebrations of baptism, of
confirmation, of marriage and ordination our words are words of promise - of
promise to one another, to the community, and to God. When Catholic men and
women run for the office of trustee, when teachers accept the responsibility to
teach in a Catholic school they make promises to the rest of the community.
They promise that they will strive to see that the young people who enter a
Catholic school will enter a learning environment that is like no other, that
they will experience a community where the face of God is discoverable around every
corner, that in all the struggle of our human living great hope and trust and
love are possible.
Thornton Wilder's play, By The Skin of Our
Teeth, provides a powerful insight into the meaning of promise. One of the
main characters is Maggie Antrobus. Her husband,
George, is running off with another woman. In the second act we hear Maggie
saying this to him, "I didn't marry you because you were perfect, George.
I didn't even marry you because I loved you. I married you because you gave me
a promise. That promise made up for your faults. And the promise I gave you
made up for mine. Two imperfect people got married and it was that promise that
made the marriage... and when our children were growing up it wasn't the house
that protected them; and it wasn't our love that protected them - it was that
promise."
Teachers and trustees, and all involved in Catholic
education, make promises fully aware of the weakness of our every endeavour, of
the flabbiness of our human commitments. It is, however, in our ongoing
struggle, in our own search and striving, that the Christian story is told and
that the community of the church, of God's people is created. When such happens
we have efficient and accountable Catholic schools which will be beacons of
hope for both our church and our society.
(Msgr. Murphy is a priest of the
diocese of Sault Ste Marie. He was the founder and first director of the
Institute for Catholic Education, a member of the Royal Commission on Learning
and latterly the director of Catholic education for the Ontario Catholic School
Trustees' Association.)