Secular Resources Can Be Dangerous to Catholic Education

There are many popular academic programs and resources available to Catholic educators, but most are secular, designed primarily for public schools.

Does “secular” mean that they are unsuitable for Catholics?

So long as the content does not oppose Catholic teaching, it may seem appropriate to use secular materials and programs. Catholics do not hide from the world. There is no conflict between the truths of our faith and the truths of science, math, history and other human studies. We are not afraid to explore every branch of knowledge, and we respect the methods appropriate to each academic discipline.

Still, there is more to consider when evaluating secular resources. Do they positively advance the mission of Catholic education? Does their use crowd out authentic Catholic formation and learning? Do they implicitly teach relativism and falsehood?

These are questions addressed in The Cardinal Newman Society’s reviews of secular resources including Advanced Placement courses, the Common Core State Standards, the International Baccalaureate program, the Habits of Mind program and secular character development programs.

Recently, we also published Policy Standards for Secular Materials and Programs in Catholic Education, an overview of Catholic principles and recommended standards for Catholic school policies.

“Catholic educators teach and do more,” write the Newman Society’s Dr. Denise Donohue and Dr. Dan Guernsey. “This means they must ask more of any material or program imported into the educational environment and be ready to heavily adapt it toward a greater end.” They also must recognize that “some resources will be woefully insufficient, and others may have elements that actually work against the Catholic mission.”

Three missing elements 

Secular education is never complete and can be dangerous, if not enlightened by our Catholic faith. It always lacks three things of the greatest importance:

1) Secular education refuses to admit the insights of Catholic teaching. An education that ignores God withholds understanding from its students.

The lack of catechesis is only part of the problem. Secular education restricts understanding in every course of study by eclipsing the light of the Church’s teachings, and it allows distortions and falsehoods to creep into every classroom. While subjects can be taught without reference to God, the approach is backward and narrow, deliberately limiting a student’s understanding of reality as fashioned by God according to His reason. Ignoring the truths of our faith implicitly denies the unity of knowledge, and it prevents a truly integrated education with God as the common thread.

Concerning the role of theology in education, St. John Henry Newman asked, “How can we investigate any part of any order of knowledge, and stop short of that which enters into every order? All true principles run over with it, all phenomena converge to it; it is truly the First and the Last.”

2) Secular education also lacks a sure moral and ethical foundation. An education that ignores God’s law withholds wisdom from its students.

While natural law and common sense allow people of very different religious faiths to come to some agreement on moral values, these are often skewed by personal biases and manipulated into ideologies. Today public education is dominated by moralistic claims that are often false or lack foundation in a true understanding of human dignity.

Again, according to Newman: secular education has the tendency of “throwing us back on ourselves, and making us our own center, and our minds the measure of all things.” The best scholar can “become hostile to Revealed Truth” and an “insidious and dangerous foe” of the Church. Therefore, while religion may not be essential to studying many subjects, nevertheless a true moral perspective rooted in Catholic teaching is necessary to preserve the “integrity” of education and the human person.

3) Secular education lacks the ecclesial mission of Catholic education, tied to the Church’s mission of evangelization and man’s purpose of seeking full communion with God. An education that ignores God withholds assistance toward sainthood.

Secular materials and programs in math, literature and even virtue development may appear suitable to Catholic education, because they include much of the same content. But mission drives Catholic education before content. Catholic education forms young people to use their unique human gifts of reason, free will and selfless charity toward the end for which they were created.

Whereas secular education helps students accumulate information and perhaps even develop skills of reasoning, Catholic education “ascends” above knowledge toward transcendental reality—another Newman insight—to better understand and appreciate God’s truth, goodness and beauty as found in creation and in the Church.

Ultimately, then, the gulf between secular and Catholic education is much wider than it may first seem, and secular resources are never as suitable as those designed with an authentic Catholic perspective. Only a faithful Catholic education can integrally form young people in both mind and soul, as God intends.

It is important that Catholic educators remain confident in the superior formation that a faithful Catholic education provides. Secular programs and materials should be examined cautiously, with a preference toward resources that are built upon a Catholic foundation.

Habits of Mind 

An example of the dangers of secular programs can be found in the Habits of Mind program, which is popular in public schools and is making inroads in Catholic schools. Developed by Arthur Costa and Bena Kallick, Habits of Mind teaches 16 intellectual behaviors to help students make productive choices, especially when faced with dichotomies, dilemmas or uncertainties.

Catholics will find much to like in the program. “Many of the Habits of Mind correlate to moral virtues, such as: taking responsible risks (prudence), finding humor (affability), thinking interdependently (circumspection), remaining open to continuous learning (docility), managing impulsivity (temperance) and persisting (fortitude),” explains Dr. Denise Donohue in the Newman Society’s review.

Nevertheless, we have serious reservations about the program. It attempts to brand a set of virtues that have been promoted since ancient times, and it can tend to overshadow other and even more important habits that should be central to Catholic education, such as the Beatitudes and other Christian dispositions such as humility, gentleness, patience, faithfulness, goodness, godliness, joyfulness, modesty and love.

With regard to intellectual virtues, the Habits of Mind have a limited focus on problem-solving. They are less helpful in developing the “philosophical habit of mind” that St. John Henry Newman proposes as the aim of education. A graduate of Catholic education should be able to “ascend” above knowledge to seek truths that are foundational to reality and larger than experience, as in contemplating the natural and eternal law. The Habits of Mind, designed primarily for public schools, are focused on observation and experience but not transcendental truths leading to God the Creator. They also neglect the development of sound reasoning in support of a thesis and respect for authoritative sources, including the Catholic Church.

A good Catholic education should have no need for a program like Habits of Mind. In a Catholic curriculum, virtues overlap and occur throughout all levels and types of student formation. More than problem solving, Catholic education teaches truth and forms students for a lifetime of inquiry that leads to Truth Himself.

We offer recommendations for adapting the Habits of Mind program to Catholic education, but it would be better to adopt to the Newman Society’s Catholic Curriculum Standards. Our review of Habits of Mind includes a “crosswalk” to show how each of the program’s virtues are already included in the Catholic Curriculum Standards—and so much more.

Common Core

The Common Core State Standards are another secular remedy intended to improve public education yet adopted by many Catholic schools. Their focus on college and career is inadequate to serve the evangelical mission of Catholic education.

In 2013, the Newman Society’s Dr. Dan Guernsey offered 10 Critically Important Adaptations to the Common Core for Catholic Schools—an important aid to schools attempting to work with the new standards. But Guernsey warned that such adaptations ultimately fail to address “the fundamental conflict” between the Common Core and the “integral formation of students.” Catholic education teaches truth, goodness and beauty across the entire curriculum. “And, since the object of every academic discipline is truth, the Catholic curriculum should be based on the conviction that all truths ultimately converge in their source—God.”

Other Newman Society analyses helped clarify concerns about the Common Core. Guernsey and Donohue found that the standards’ “close reading/new criticism” approach to literature is contrary to Catholic education’s emphasis on the “real, rich and wonderful world outside the text.” The standards suggest that “the value of literature is not so much what it teaches us about how to live well, but that it teaches us how to read well (e.g. Just tell me what’s in the report, Johnson!).”

Guernsey was lead author of the Pioneer Institute’s 2016 report, After the Fall: Catholic Education Beyond the Common Core, which celebrates “the tremendous insight the Catholic intellectual tradition has always offered into the wonder, value, and glory present in all of God’s creation. Authentic academic inquiry and a fuller understanding of the human experience are completely fulfilled in the Catholic educational experience.”

Today many dioceses are still using the Common Core, part of a tradition of adopting state standards. As states shift to new standards, it is a good time to consider an alternative like the Newman Society’s Catholic Curriculum Standards, which fully embrace the mission of Catholic education.

International Baccalaureate

Recently it seems the International Baccalaureate (IB) program has been making inroads into Catholic schools, if the IB ads in Catholic publications are any indication. But when the Newman Society published its review of the IB program last year, Catholic schools were only about 2 percent of the 1,800 American schools adopting the program.

The Geneva-based program says it “aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.” Specialties include its college-directed “diploma program” in the last two years of high school and the foundational Theory of Knowledge course.

According to the Newman Society’s reviewers Dr. Denise Donohue and Dr. Dan Guernsey, the IB “takes a relativistic approach to truth” and “insists upon the exclusive use of the constructivist learning approach to the exclusion of other proven instructional methodologies.” This can encourage a constructivist philosophy, suggesting “that man constructs his own knowledge—even of reality —and that nothing exists that is not constructed in one’s own mind.”

Like other secular programs, the IB can crowd out more fully Catholic education. For instance, it requires schools to adopt its learner profile: “All IB learners strive to be Inquirers, Knowledgeable, Thinkers, Communicators, Open-Minded, Caring, Risk-Takers, Balanced, Principled, and Reflective.” But Donohue and Guernsey warn that these can be limiting and fail to incorporate many Christian virtues that are essential to Catholic formation.

The Newman Society recommends that schools not adopt the IB program. But for those that already have done so, our review recommends many steps that can be taken to adapt the IB program to be more suitable to Catholic education. These changes to the program are extensive and may conflict with IB resources and teacher training.

catholic education

Catholic Curriculum Standards: Faithful to the Core

When Jill Annable began her role as assistant superintendent in the Diocese of Grand Rapids, the staff was working on rewriting its curriculum standards for all subject areas and all grades, to try to integrate Catholic identity across all content areas.

Educators who have worked on school standards know that it’s no small task. Fortunately for Annable and the Diocese of Grand Rapids, timely help provided just what they needed.

“We were drafting and drafting,” Annable recalled in a recent podcast produced by the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA), where she now serves as the executive director of academic excellence. She remembers when her superintendent walked into her office and excitedly shared, “It was published, you can use it!” She meant the Catholic Curriculum Standards, which had just been released by The Cardinal Newman Society.

“When I opened it up, I realized that it was the missing piece,” Annable told Dr. Denise Donohue, the Newman Society’s deputy director of K-12 programs, who was also a guest on the podcast. “It was the language I needed to use without trying to invent it ourselves.”

The Diocese of Grand Rapids isn’t the only diocese to find our Catholic Curriculum Standards helpful.

“Since, in every school, the curriculum carries the mission, these Catholic Curriculum Standards are an invaluable contribution to Catholic schools everywhere,” says Father John Belmonte, S.J., superintendent of the Diocese of Venice.

“Catholic schools have benefited from the standards-based reform movement in education with one notable exception: the absence of rigorous standards rooted and grounded in our Catholic tradition,” Fr. Belmonte continues. “Implementation of the Catholic Curriculum Standards will provide a renewed sense of mission for our Catholic schools operating within the increasingly secularized world of education today.”

Today, at least 28 diocesan school systems and many other Catholic schools across the United States—serving more than 270,000 students—use the Catholic Curriculum Standards to replace or supplement their existing diocesan standards.

Common Core concerns 

Over the last decade, many public and Catholic schools across the country have adopted the Common Core State Standards. But the Common Core is a secular program designed with utilitarian goals—to lift up under-achieving public school students for success in college and careers. Aside from disagreements about its embrace of controversial methods and educational theories, the Common Core was never intended for the fullness of human flourishing that the Church demands of Catholic education.

Giving voice to the concerns of many Catholic families, the Newman Society’s “Catholic Is Our Core” program has informed Catholic educators about shortcomings of the Common Core. It began with a campaign by mail, email, social media and web outreach to educate Catholic families, leaders and educators and to urge Catholic schools to reject or at least radically adapt the Common Core standards to the mission of Catholic education. Our analyses have been featured in national Catholic publications and on Catholic radio and television.

In 2013, consistent with many of the Newman Society’s concerns, a cadre of Catholic college professors (132 altogether) signed a joint letter stating they were “convinced that Common Core is so deeply flawed that it should not be adopted by Catholic schools” and that those who had adopted it “should seek an orderly withdrawal.” The following year, the education office of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement warning that the Common Core standards alone are insufficient for Catholic schools.

Today it is clear that the Common Core has failed to produce the promised improvements in both public and Catholic schools, and states and dioceses are pulling back from the misguided standards. What now should replace them? The Common Core experience, though messy, helped spark widespread interest among Catholic bishops, educators and families for something better. It is toward that goal that the Newman Society’s staff turned, striving for a uniquely Catholic set of standards.

Providing a solution 

In 2015, the Newman Society resolved to answer a question posed by several bishops and diocesan superintendents: “If Catholic education is distinct from secular education, then where are the standards for Catholic educators?”

Our response is the Catholic Curriculum Standards, rooted firmly in the Church’s teaching on Catholic education and her long tradition of liberal arts formation in truth, goodness and beauty.

“The first time I read them, I thought this isn’t the ‘Catholic Common Core.’ This is the why and the how, and gives the beauty to why we teach math, why we inquire in science. You wouldn’t just slap these standards on top of Common Core,” said Annable.

The standards specifically cover the core subjects of English, history, scientific topics and mathematics, but Annable says her diocese was able to apply the standards to elective courses as well, which she says was a “true gift.”

Developing the Catholic Curriculum Standards was a labor of love. The Newman Society staff spent two years analyzing Church documents to identify key elements the Church expects to find in all Catholic schools. Those were distilled into the Newman Society’s Principles of Catholic Identity in Education, which are similar to Archbishop Michael Miller’s “essential marks of Catholic schools,” but capturing more of the language and balance of Vatican documents.

For the standards project, the Newman Society’s Dr. Dan Guernsey and Dr. Denise Donohue studied these Principles, Church documents, scholarly works related to Catholic education and the Catholic intellectual tradition, and books articulating the nature of liberal arts and classical education. They also met with more than a dozen professors from faithful Catholic colleges to consider what knowledge and formation one should expect from a Catholic school graduate.

A Catholic foundation 

The Catholic Curriculum Standards include “dispositional” standards for each academic discipline, along with expected “content” or “intellectual” standards.

As Guernsey and Donohue were reviewing Church documents for curricular application, they noticed much discussion about the formation of dispositions within students. That topic was much more prominent than concerns about course content. For example:

The Catholic school aims at forming in the Christian those particular virtues which will enable him to live a new life in Christ and help him to play faithfully his part in building up the Kingdom of God. (The Catholic School, 1977, 36)

Creating the dispositional standards has proven beneficial for Catholic schools needing to address the National Standards and Benchmarks for Effective Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools (NSBECS) for accreditation purposes. Schools using the Catholic Curriculum Standards, along with a solid virtue program, are able to address numerous benchmarks required for accreditation.

For the mathematics standards, the Catholic perspective is primarily dispositional. The Catholic Curriculum Standards expect students to identify truth and falsehood in relationships and to acquire the mental habits of “precise, determined, careful and accurate questioning, inquiry and reasoning.”

Examples of English literature standards include, “Explain how Christian and Western symbols and symbolism communicate the battle between good and evil and make reality visible” and “Demonstrate how literature is used to develop a religious, moral and social sense.” The English standards especially earned high praise from Sandra Stotsky, Ed.D., who is a national consultant in standards development and author of the highly regarded Massachusetts Academic Standards. She proved very helpful to the Newman Society’s work as well.

“The K-12 standards and suggested readings in Appendix C for the reading/literature curriculum in Catholic schools reflect more than the uniqueness of their intellectual tradition,” Stotsky said. “They also provide the academic rigor missing in most public-school English language arts curricula.”

Inspiring and crucial 

The impact of the Catholic Curriculum Standards over the past five years has been exciting.

“The Catholic Curriculum Standards are EXACTLY what I have been wanting—specific in the areas of faith formation and the pursuit of goodness, truth and beauty, but broad enough to give the teachers latitude in their instructional methods,” said Lynette Schmitz, the principal of St. John Paul II Preparatory School, a Catholic classical hybrid school in St. Louis, Mo.

Derek Tremblay, headmaster of Mount Royal Academy in Sunapee, N.H, agrees. “I thoroughly love the Standards that The Cardinal Newman Society has put out and have yet to find anything comparable.”

Another Catholic school principal, Janice Martinez, principal of Holy Child Catholic School in Tijeras, N.M., said: “I find the standards of education you have recently publicized to be inspiring. I believe the work you do is crucial and support your mission.”

Despite the great success of the Catholic Curriculum Standards, there’s much more work to be done. Standards help establish a school’s priorities and promote the right outcomes of truly faithful Catholic education. But curriculum standards alone can never determine what happens in the classroom.

We hope that the Catholic Curriculum Standards will promote greater integration of the faith in every academic discipline, leading eventually to new and improved textbooks, lesson plans, teacher training and school evaluation.

The complete Catholic Curriculum Standards are available to educators at no cost on the Newman Society’s website, together with helpful appendices and resources to support implementing the standards. Feel free to reach out to The Cardinal Newman Society if you are interested in knowing more about the standards and how they might be used in your diocese, school or homeschool program.

catholic education

Procedure and Checklist for the Evaluation and Use of Secular Materials and Programs in Catholic Education

Instruction in Catholic education should not be driven by any particular text or program, but rather by rich and comprehensive standards that are informed by Catholic priorities. Resources such as the Catholic Curriculum Standards and Standards for Christian Anthropology can assist in this effort.

With proper standards in place, the first goal should be to seek out excellent Catholic programs and materials to aid in instruction. Should these not exist, or if available Catholic programs and materials are found insufficient, secular programs might be considered but should be carefully evaluated for their congruence with the mission of Catholic education. The following checklist, derived from The Cardinal Newman Society’s Policy Standards on Secular Academic Materials and Programs in Catholic Education, may be helpful.

Keep in mind that all secular programs, no matter how effective, will need to be supplemented with materials that present a Catholic worldview and understanding of the subject at hand.

Procedure for Considering the Use of Secular Materials and Programs

  1. Identify and validate (especially in terms of mission impact) the motivation behind the change.
  2. Research best practices in Catholic education and available means to address program needs.
  3. Seek out faithfully Catholic programs and materials for initial review, and only if they are insufficient or non-existent, explore other types of programs.

Checklist for Evaluating the Use of Secular Materials and Programs

Determine whether the program or material:
 
Yes / No
advances positions contrary to Church teaching, causes scandal, or could be a source of confusion about Catholic teaching.
Yes / No      
promotes or encourages atheism, agnosticism, scientific materialism, or a false ideology about the human person.
Yes / No
promotes or encourages relativism or denies the existence of transcendent truth, which is knowable by reason and revelation.
Yes / No
obstructs the goal of uniting faith and reason, synthesizing faith with life and culture, and developing a Catholic worldview or a Catholic understanding of the human person.
Yes / No
is promoted or written by a person or group who might bring scandal to the Catholic institution through formal or material cooperation.
Yes / No
places excessive demands on testing, teacher formation, or another process that crowds out priorities of Catholic education (such as daily theology classes) and a strong Catholic culture.
Yes / No
encourages political and social activism that is not supported by Catholic principles or social teaching, such as subsidiarity or the universal destination of humanity in God, or suggests the permissibility to do evil or commit an injustice so that a perceived good may result.
Yes / No
suggests that man is capable of solving all his problems or attaining heaven through natural virtues and effort, without God’s grace, mercy, and salvation.
 
For any Yes response:
  • If the materials explicitly and positively raise challenges in this area, reject the program.
  • If the materials only tangentially or in a minor way raise challenges in this area, heavily supplement with Catholic instruction and provide teacher training.
  • If the materials subtly and in a minor way raise challenges to a Catholic understanding, either through omission or unevaluated assumptions, supplement with Catholic instruction or eliminate the particular area of concern.
If all responses are “No,” the program is a possibly valid resource. Regardless, it still should be supplemented with instruction to provide for a Catholic understanding of the subject at hand.

Policy Standards on Literature and the Arts in Catholic Education

Catholic education seeks to “bring human wisdom into an encounter with divine wisdom,”[1] cultivate “in students the intellectual, creative, and aesthetic faculties of the human person,” introduce a cultural heritage, and prepare them for professional life and to take on the responsibilities and duties of society and the Church.[2] Literature and the arts[3] are essential tools of Catholic education, helping impart “a Christian vision of the world, of life, of culture, and of history” and an ordering of “the whole of human culture to the news of salvation.”[4]

This document presents principles, standards, and resources to help Catholic elementary and secondary educators select literature and other works of art that are formative for a student’s mind, body, and spirit. This guidance is for Catholic K-12 schools; higher education assumes a different level of maturity, aesthetics, intellectual depth, and complexity. Nevertheless, the principles are the same, and it is our hope that this document can assist educators at all levels as they seek to determine how to select literature, music, films, paintings, and other works of art that are best suited to accomplish the mission of Catholic education.

Principles

Principle 1: Literature and the arts “strive to make known the proper nature of man, his problems and his experiences in trying to know and perfect both himself and the world.”[5]

Because Catholic education strives for the perfection of its students and the world, literature and the arts are a natural and important part of that mission. At their best, they invite truthful exploration of the human condition and development of the aesthetic sense of the soul.

Catholic education does not teach reading simply for reading’s sake or for its utility, such as learning to follow written directions and work a job. Catholic educators teach reading so students can access and evaluate the knowledge, wisdom, creativity and insights of others. Truths distilled from this information can then be applied to their individual quest for truth, holiness, and salvation and shared with others in pursuit of the common good.  

Similarly, Catholic educators do not expose their students to the arts of music, dance, movies, and paintings simply for entertainment or to fill time. The arts can serve a higher end of exploring the complex human condition, delighting the human soul, and facilitating transcendence to and understanding of God through His creation. Training in the arts can also unleash individual artistic insights and powers allowing students to share in God’s creative work.

Literature and the arts provide rich material for reflection on essential questions such as: “What is the meaning of life?” “What is the nature of my relationship, rights, and duties to God and to others?” “Is this a thing of beauty or value?” “Is this representative of good or evil?” In this way, literature and the arts are foundational to Catholic education’s culture and faith-based mission.

Principle 2: Literature and the arts are selected to advance the mission of Catholic education through a “critical, systematic transmission of culture”[6] guided by a Christian vision of reality.[7]

Catholic education seeks to critically and systematically transmit culture, and so it turns to works of literature and the arts that explicitly or implicitly transmit and form culture and values. The academic community, inspired by a Catholic vision of reality, must thoughtfully and deliberately craft a complete program that provides the right literature, music, art, and drama at the right time and integrates it with the cultural and idea-shaping materials students encounter in all academic areas, moving students to see the beauty and inner harmony of all knowledge as ultimately coming from one transcendent Truth, Christ Himself.

Additionally, in Catholic education “the critical and systematic transmission of culture” occurs “in the light of faith.”[8] This requirement precludes simply presenting a wide variety of literature, arts, and music based simply on staff idiosyncrasies and whim. All literature and the arts, including secular selections, are to be carefully chosen and analyzed from a Catholic understanding of reality. Catholic educators should not simply expose students to various books and arts without expert guidance by simply letting them try to figure it all out on their own or studying only those works that might attract an immature fancy. Such an approach can lead to confusion, error, indifference, and despair as a student is fooled into thinking he has created his own standards when in fact he may be at the mercy of personal whims and desires, or worse, may be manipulated by outside forces. Young people encountering weighty issues through these complex media, especially if presented in literature and the arts in ways antithetical to the faith and without proper guidance, may succumb to untoward views due to ignorance, youthful presumption, impertinence, or prejudice.

It is the role of a Catholic educator to suggest and model a response to the critical questions being provoked in carefully chosen works, in order to provide a coherent and consistent Catholic understanding to help youth manage their shifting viewpoints and come to a mature and freely-chosen understanding of reality and its faith-based moorings.[9] The Catholic teacher is model and mentor, not an aloof and uncommitted purveyor of unevaluated content. All literature and the arts must be critically and systematically evaluated and transmitted in the light of faith.

Principle 3: Because Catholic education’s mission is different from that of secular schools, its libraries and its selection and use of literature and the arts should reflect these differences and serve the higher aims of Catholic education.

The mission of Catholic education is uniquely focused on the integral formation of students’ minds, hearts, and bodies in truth and holiness. Catholic education is committed to the pursuit of truth and seeks to explore the harmony between truth and beauty. Catholic education is also concerned with the eternal salvation of its students and Christian service to promote the common good.[10] Catholic educators should approach literature and the arts with an eye toward the impact they have on its mission and the right ordering of the intellect, will, imagination, and spirit.

The exploration of literature and arts in a Catholic education must never effectively work against the mission by leading students into sin, driving them to despair, or impairing their ability to understand and serve the common good of humanity. This concern is greatest at the youngest ages, and older students are increasingly expected to make right choices and judgments while reading increasingly complex and even false material, but care should always be taken to avoid confusion and scandal. Catholic educators should place priority on publications of substantial quality and educational value, including Catholic spiritual formation. Great care must be exercised as older students grow in their awareness and exposure to man in his fallen state. Such knowledge can then be used to better serve the redemptive and evangelical role that Catholic education also serves.[11]

In Catholic education, curricula, libraries, and art programs ought not simply replicate their secular counterparts. Their mission is not to present uncritically all possible human thought and viewpoints, but to present the best literature and arts critically and in the context of a Catholic worldview. Students, in a developmentally appropriate way, need to be exposed to seminal works of literature, drama, poetry, and the arts.[12] Catholic educators can make use of non-Christian sources and of books and arts which present non-Catholic understandings of critical human issues, but these should not remain unchallenged or leave students spiritually or humanly damaged in the process. Accounts of the human experience that are opposed to a Christian understanding of the world can be appropriate for older students who are well-formed and have a good foundation. Such accounts may at times be edgy and uncomfortable but must not be extreme; they should not go left unchallenged; and they should not put a student at spiritual or emotional risk. A Christian humanism, founded in the Catholic intellectual tradition that focuses on the best in literature and the arts, can provide for a balanced approach in forming students to critically examine their contemporary experiences.

However, it must also be remembered that both literature and arts, and western literature in particular, are not just tools of personal and spiritual formation but also fields of study in themselves. Especially at the upper high school and collegiate level, works of art and literature need to be considered as distinct elements in particular academic fields, with their own specific logic and methodologies of creation, study, and evaluation. Students should learn to appreciate the works’ historical development and interactions. Great works of literature and arts are not only tools of human formation and artifacts helpful in the development of academic knowledge but also works of artistic merit. Students should be taught to interpret and value a work of literature or art on its own terms.

Standards for Policies Related to Literature and the Arts

  • Literature and the arts are selected to make known the proper nature of humanity and help students perfect themselves and the world in accord with Catholic virtues and values.
  • Literature and the arts are carefully selected to systematically transmit culture and uncover authentic reality through the light of the Catholic faith and a Catholic worldview.
  • Literature and the arts support the mission of Catholic education and do not lead students to sin, despair, or confusion about basic human goods or the Catholic faith, with appropriate attention to the age of students and their preparation for complex or false material.
  • Literature and art selections assist in the development and fulfillment of students’ aesthetic capabilities as people who “share” in God’s creative work.[13]
  • Literature and art selections enable one to move from the world of senses to the world of the Spirit, to that of the transcendent and invisible God.[14]
  • Library and bookstore holdings are selected in accord with the principles and priorities of faithful Catholic education, with emphasis on materials that are of substantial quality and educational value, including Catholic spiritual formation.
  • All literature and the arts are critically and systematically evaluated and transmitted to students in the light of the Catholic faith. Teachers provide a coherent and consistent Catholic viewpoint to help students come to a mature and freely-chosen understanding of reality.

Operationalizing the Standards

Policies and procedures for the selection of literature and the arts in Catholic education should be written to ensure that the selections:

  • support the mission of Catholic education;
  • have enduring value and educational significance and are selected more for intellectual, moral, inspirational, and artistic weight than for entertainment, popularity, appearance on reading or award lists, or enticing students to read;
  • assist the student to a right ordering of the intellect, will, imagination, and emotions in the pursuit and understanding of truth, beauty, and goodness;
  • include evaluation of themes and events in terms of Catholic norms, values, and worldview so as to provide insight into a Catholic understanding of the human person in his redeemed and unredeemed state and in his relationship to God, family, and others;
  • are free of significant and shocking profanity;
  • are free of explicit discussion, presentation, or description of sexuality, sexual activity, or sexual fantasy;
  • are not a proximate cause of sinful thoughts or actions, or a pathway to the occult;
  • are not contrary to truth;
  • are not a temptation to despair or a diminishing of faith; and
  • are read under the guidance of a knowledgeable and spiritually formed adult particularly when controversial, emotional, or otherwise sensitive material is presented. If assigned for summer reading, parents are made aware of any sensitive material and agree to take on this role.

Because a student is generally not able to opt out of major literature assignments, and because there is a myriad of possible materials that can meet a Catholic school’s literature goals (see the Newman Society’s recommendations),[15] there are many selections that satisfy educational objectives and the recommended policies contained within this document. If exceptions are made, they should be limited to extraordinary circumstances, with primary concern for the students’ purity and formation and with approval from top administrators.

Possible Questions

Question: We want our library holdings to be broad and varied, not limited by Catholic sensitivities or by only weighty content. Shouldn’t we let students read and view what interests them, not what we pre-determine for them?

Response: Educators do not take this view when a school provides lunch or snacks. We give students a choice of healthy options suited to the conditions. If the goal is just to get kids to put something in their mouths, then cotton candy and soda will undoubtedly serve this end better than carrots and grapes. But if the goal is to teach them to appreciate healthy, natural food and build their physical well-being and strength, then candy and chips (which are not bad in and of themselves) may get in the way of something better like juice and crackers.

In the same way, we want rich and varied literature and art which will help build the health of students’ minds, souls, and imaginations. Cynical, dark, titillating, disordered, vain, bitter, or completely frivolous fiction may get in the way of an encounter with more difficult but meaningful and formative materials, which serve a higher end. There are more good and great books and art to experience than any one student can handle, so there is no shortage of material to take the place of the mediocre, meaningless, or malformed material flooding much of the market today.

Question: Shouldn’t we let the English teachers decide for their classrooms, and the librarian decide for the library? They are the content experts, after all.

Response: Curriculum and library holdings should be driven by the mission of Catholic education, not by varied teacher strengths and interests or a librarian who may or may not be intensely knowledgeable of the curriculum and mission. The curriculum transcends departments and teachers. It is a function of the whole academic community, in service to the school’s Catholic mission.

The administration and faculty must work together to ensure mission integrity and the complete Catholic nature of the institution. They must also ensure that it is effectively imparting a Christian vision of the world, of life, of culture, and of history, which transcends all departments and individual disciplines. They cannot in false humility assert lack of competence or vision, but must engage both the academic and faith communities in open discussion about the curriculum and library holdings in light of the Catholic mission.

The administration and faculty must also ensure the necessary integration among the various academic disciplines which, because they all seek knowledge and truth, comes from God and finds perfection and truth in their unified source. As St. John Henry Newman observed, the various disciplines “have multiplied bearings one on another, and an internal sympathy, and admit, or rather demand, comparison and adjustment. They complete, correct, and balance each other.”[16]

Question: Shouldn’t teachers design their own courses and teach books they like and are familiar with? This will help make teaching stronger and more engaging.

Response: Teachers should model the “life-long learning” that is the goal of all schools. As discipline experts they are well-trained to examine and deliver new content (whether of their choosing or not) within the discipline. This content should be set by the school as a whole in line with its Catholic mission. Most Catholic English teachers were trained in secular English departments and are most familiar with works encountered there. The Catholic school must not shy away from asking teachers to master and skillfully teach works that are outside of the purview of modern secular university English departments. They must be trained and prepared to deliver rich works from the Catholic cultural and intellectual tradition and ensure that classic works from outside that tradition are nevertheless critically examined from a Catholic worldview. The Catholic intellectual tradition includes works of literature and art (e.g., The Illiad, The Aeneid, the works of Milton and C.S. Lewis)  that, while not Catholic and even containing problematic elements, have been found to foster authentic cultural, spiritual, and social development for Catholics and indeed all of humanity.  

Question: Many schools stock library books that are recommended by major library associations, have won Newberry awards, or are very popular right now according to major publishers. Don’t the kids need to read these?

Response: No, they do not. Each of these sources of influence have their own agendas, viewpoints, and culture that they are advancing—some even in direct opposition to the Church’s goals. Especially in young adult fiction, book awards are given to works promoting abortion and homosexuality (e.g. Skim and This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki).

To advance the Catholic mission, librarians can carefully select among thousands of books. They should do so thoughtfully with mission in mind, not slavishly based on fashion, popularity, or dubious authority. Catholic librarians’ criteria are how well the holdings serve the Catholic mission, knowing that students have access to virtually all these books on their own through the internet or public library, should they be so inclined to actively seek them out. Catholic education should develop in students a Catholic sensibility, so that they can make good judgments about what is worthwhile. But it takes time and focus to do so.

 

This document was developed with substantial comment and contributions from education, legal, and other experts. Lead authors are Denise Donohue, Ed.D., Director of the Catholic Education Honor Roll at The Cardinal Newman Society, and Dan Guernsey, Ed.D., Senior Fellow at The Cardinal Newman Society and principal of a diocesan K-12 Catholic school.

 

Appendix A: Examples from Specific Schools

This Appendix includes examples of policies in use at the time of publication. These are presented in alphabetical order and are not necessarily exemplary in all possible areas.

Ave Maria Academy (Ave Maria, Fla.)

Books, media and movies must:

  • Be free of significant or shocking profanity.
  • Be free of explicit discussion, presentation or description of sexual activity or sexual fantasy.
  • Assist the student, under the guidance of a faithful and committed teacher, to a right ordering of the imagination, passions, and emotions.
  • Not be a likely proximate cause of leading students to sinful thoughts or actions, leading to a diminishing of faith, leading students astray of truth, or leading them to fall into despair.
  • Characters either undergo positive growth in virtue or their vices show to be detrimental and contribute to their downfall.
  • Have enduring value and educational significance, selected for intellectual, inspirational and artistic weight rather than for entertainment, recent popularity, faddishness or titillation in an attempt to “get them to read.”
  • Be of high-quality writing and artistic value promoting creativity and a Catholic imagination.
  • Be content and ability appropriate for the age.
  • Assist the pursuit of truth, beauty and goodness.
  • Discussion of texts and materials should include evaluation of themes and events in terms of Catholic norms, values and worldview to provide insight into a Catholic understanding of the human person in his redeemed and unredeemed state, and in his relationship to God, family, and others.
  • Movies may not be rated “R.”
  • Any summer reading or outside of class reading assigned by the school should present unambiguous moral themes and characters. The author should clearly resolve all crises within the context of a Christian worldview.
  • All books and movies are to be listed in the course of studies/class syllabus.
  • Teachers may not remove a book from the course of studies without prior approval of the principal. Any new/additional chapter or book added to grade 4-12 must have the approval of the Principal.

If showing a movie:

  • Movies shown during instructional time are to be for pedagogical and not entertainment purposes.
  • Showing an entire movie should be a rare event in class. If searching for rewards for students or things to do during a celebration, games and other social or physical activities are to be preferred over movies.
  • Watching carefully selected scenes rather than entire works can be a very efficient and effective way of maintaining focus and ensuring effective discussion.
  • If the movie is available online (Netflix, YouTube, internet, etc.) consider having the students watch the movie as homework, possibly with their parents or fellow students, and complete a study-guide or reflection questions, which can then be discussed in class, and through the use of snippets shown to the whole group.
  • Movies, if shown in their entirety during class time, should be stopped at frequent intervals for analysis and discussion.
  • The instructor should be actively engaged in watching the movie as well and not attempting other work.
  • Students should be seated to ensure their ability to focus on the film and engage in discussion. Theater type seating as opposed to sitting behind a desk can assist in ensuring the student is not sleeping, accessing social media, or doing other work during the movie.
  • Any brief scenes with foul language, temporary nudity, or other offensive content must be skipped over or blocked from view or hearing.

Frassati Catholic High School (Spring, Tex.)

English Department Philosophy and Mission:

“…A selfless desire for a commitment to calling, a sense that honor is far more valuable than life—these are aspects of the soul that must be awakened by a vision of the high and the noble. And herein lies one of the great values of studying the classics: our poetic heritage gives imperishable form to the heroic aspiration.”
-Dr. Louise Cowan

By placing before us examples of the high and noble, the classic works of literature ignite in us the desire to reach such heights of greatness as well. While distinct from philosophy and science, literature as an academic discipline is comparable to both in its breadth and depth of imparting knowledge. Moreover, as the ancient Roman writer Cicero pointed out, “nothing is sweeter and more useful than the study of literature” because of its power to illuminate the beauty of the truth about the human person. For these reasons, the English program approaches literature as a vehicle of truth that imparts wisdom.

Thus, the English curriculum seeks to cultivate the students’ ability to understand, appreciate, and respond to the great works of our literary tradition. Students search out the wisdom of the poets and refine their judgment by taking part in seminar discussions focused on the chief works of major authors. Students are encouraged to learn what the best of the writers understand about human nature and the human experience throughout the ages. In doing so, they also follow in the footsteps of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, who so loved Dante’s great epic The Divine Comedy that he committed large passages to memory and would spontaneously recite them for his friends.

Throughout the English course of study, students develop their ability to read and think critically, and then to express themselves orally and in written form. Special emphasis is placed on mastery of the written word through an intensive writing program that is carefully woven into each course.

The course sequence parallels the Ethics and Culture department courses. The freshmen English course is organized thematically around the question of the human person’s search for identity, thus dovetailing with the Ethics and Culture course, The Human Person. In the sophomore English course, the literature explores the question of man’s search for happiness, complementing the Ethics and Culture course, Principles of Ethics: The Search for Happiness. The study of logic, rhetoric, and analytical writing in the junior and senior courses also helps students as they address the more complex issues in Bioethics and in their senior writing project.

The mission of Frassati Catholic High School’s English Department is twofold: 1) for students to achieve excellence in writing, interpretive, and critical language skills and 2) for students to achieve a certain excellence of soul, by learning to integrate the knowledge to be gained from great literature not only into their other courses but into their own lives.

Seton High School (Manassas, Va.)

When choosing literature for classroom use, we generally consider a number of criteria. Using The Odyssey as an example will help to clarify those criteria. First of all, is it worthwhile as literature? Here we are often guided by the experience of the ages: if a work is a “classic” of western literature and has been part of its culture for many years, it is likely to have enduring value. The quality of the writing is likely to be high, the story to be appealing, and the themes to be those of universal importance. This is all certainly true of The Odyssey, one of the staples of western education for hundreds of years and an essential point of reference for educated persons for at least as long.

A second consideration is the work’s appropriateness in a Catholic school at the level being considered. While students just beginning high school may have been previously sheltered from certain more adult topics in the past, most do know at least in general about serious problems of morality such as violence and unchastity. While they may be surprised at first to find them in assigned literature because of this sheltering, they realize that immorality is a part of life and that the struggle between good and evil is a universal theme. So, beginning in high school, unchastity may be seen in a number of the classics students’ study (i.e., The Scarlet Letter, Hamlet, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Tale of Two Cities).

Any books with explicit descriptions of unchastity, or which could possibly lead a young person to sin, are eliminated. Most books clearly portray sin as sin: where there could be any doubt in the mind of the student, classroom discussion led by the teacher clarifies the matter. For example, at the very beginning of our study of The Odyssey we explain that ancient Greece was a pagan society, and that the people did not have Revelation to guide them or sanctifying grace to strengthen them. Part of our ongoing discussion is a consideration of the differences between this pagan society and one guided by Christian principles. They discover that the Greeks had a remarkable natural understanding of virtue in some ways but lacked virtue in other ways because their religion was unable to provide them with the Way, the Truth and the Life. In spite of the depiction of the sins of the Greeks (somewhat graphic in violence, not at all graphic in unchastity), we believe that none of our Seton students could possibly be led into sin by the contents of The Odyssey, especially when they are explained by Catholic teachers in the context of a good Catholic education.

St. Augustine Academy (Ventura, Calif.)

From its founding Saint Augustine Academy has endeavored to pass down to our students the most important works of literature in the Western tradition. Given the constraints of time in the school year and the maturity of the students, we very carefully select our class offerings from a variety of genres from across the centuries. We identify important themes and topics by examining the theological, moral and intellectual virtues in various works. We make note of important themes expressed in key passages by organizing them into three columns THEOLOGICAL, MORAL and INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES and by placing these citations along with their location in the text. In this way we can more easily trace the development of these three values and determine whether there is sufficient intellectual, moral and theological content to merit inclusion in our curriculum. By INTELLECTUAL we mean that the work deals with philosophical, historical and political issues. MORAL VIRTUES involve the ethical questions most often centered on Christian and Greco-Roman virtues. THEOLOGICAL VIRTUES refer to Judeo-Christian questions of our relationship to God both as individuals and as a community, and, most specifically, to Jesus Christ as our risen Savior.

In this way we can examine whether our favorite works go beyond the level of a heart-warming tale or a hard-hitting history and moves into the realm of the morally gripping story that is also instructive of the commandments of our faith, of our Lord’s love for us and of our struggle to love and be faithful to Him. If the work contains clear passages of moral and theological content that our students may discover for themselves, then we know that the work will afford the students a chance to reflect and consider these great questions over time in their own lives.

The Lyceum (Cleveland, Ohio)

Because teaching literature effectively would seem to follow from a coherent and true philosophy of literature, we take this opportunity to set forth some general principles that we hope the teacher will agree with and find useful.

  1. Students should read many wholesome works of imaginative literature. Literature addresses itself primarily to the imagination and the emotions of the reader, and therefore is an important tool by which those faculties are formed rightly.
  2. Because of its unique influence on the emotions and imagination a school cannot be too careful in its own selection of literature that it “requires” students to read.

With regard to the first point, we must remember that a work of imaginative literature is not a work of philosophy, nor is it a work of theology. Though imaginative literature would appear to be all-embracing in its ability to include anything and everything (“Homer wrote a cosmos in verse”), nonetheless there is a distinction between a work that addresses itself primarily to the faculty of reason and a work that addresses itself primarily to the “heart” or emotions. As Aristotle points out about the purpose of tragedy in his Poetics, we maintain that imaginative literature is a great tool for disposing the passions rightly; literature has a great power for inclining the passions with moderation towards goodness, truth, and beauty.

On the other hand, a tool which has such a great power for good also has a great power to the opposite, and therefore we note that just as good literature (like good music) has an immediate good effect on the reader, bad literature has an immediate bad effect on the reader. But a school, like a good physician, must above all abide by the words of the Hippocratic Oath when it says, “never do harm.” In other words, a school must keep an especially strict standard about what literature it requires students to read.

Unfortunately, because of differences in human judgment and the difficulty of measuring works of literature, it very well might follow from this “principle of strictness” that students will not encounter certain great works of literature because they have been erroneously cut from the canon because of some “doubt” about their appropriateness.

This leads us to the next three principles by which we select books at The Lyceum:

  1. Texts chosen should be undeniably good or excellent.
  2. Every text must be chosen keeping in mind its suitability for the particular age level for which it is chosen.
  3. Some little regard to “literacy” should play a part in the selection of texts.

Of course it may be impossible to find a single text that is “undeniably excellent” insofar as the poet maintains: “More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise” And so we might most assuredly find someone to deny that any single text is “excellent.” We will, consequently, stipulate that every text in The Lyceum canon of literature be “excellent” in the eyes of most who are liberally educated. Even so it would seem unimaginable that there might be someone who would deny the excellence of The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood.

That every text ought to be suitable for a particular age level is self-evident with regard to the “readability level” of a text. It is more difficult to know which texts are suitable for various maturity levels with regard to the ideas and content of particular works. For example, experienced educators know that Jane Austen’s marvelous Pride and Prejudice can stir the heart and passion of the junior and senior in high school, but very often proves to be a dismal failure for the ninth and tenth grade student. At the same time depending on a particular literature teacher, a work which is arguably more suitable for the 12th grade student with respect to content (e.g. the Iliad) might, in fact, work very well with a younger student.

In general, we believe that works of literature should be just enough advanced for a particular age level to provide a challenge and an opportunity for vocabulary building as well as an opportunity for increasing a student’s individual ability to read with understanding – but not so advanced that the text will prove frustrating and ultimately produce the intellectual fatigue which we call “Great Books Burnout.” This fatigue is especially prone to happen at the small classical school precisely because of the high standards and lofty aspirations that are the hallmark of such a school. On the one hand The Lyceum honors its students by offering the greatest works of the western world, (the school does not insult the minds of its students by giving them unworthy works written by mediocre minds); on the other hand it takes pains to avoid the opposite danger of presenting great works that are simply inaccessible to developing minds.

Needless to say, choosing appropriate works of literature that meet all of these requirements is therefore not an easy task!

Appendix B: Selections from Church Documents Informing this Topic

Catholic schools help form a Catholic culture which is “critical and evaluative, historical and dynamic.”

Numerous Church teachings, especially in the Second Vatican Council and in subsequent Magisterium, have reflected on culture and its importance for the complete development of human potential. The Second Vatican Council, in considering the importance of culture, asserted that there is no truly human experience without the context of a specific culture. In fact, “man comes to a true and full humanity only through culture.” Every culture is a way of giving expression to the transcendental aspect of life; this includes reflection on the mystery of the world and, in particular, on the mystery of humanity. The essential meaning of culture consists “in the fact that it is a characteristic of human life as such. Man lives a truly human life thanks to culture. Human life is culture in the sense also that man is marked out and differentiated by it from all that exists elsewhere in the visible world: man cannot exist outside of culture. Man always lives in accordance with a culture that belongs to him and which, in turn, creates among men a bond that is also proper to them, determining the inter-human and social character of human existence.”

Congregation for Catholic Education, Educating to Intercultural Dialogue in Catholic Schools: Living in Harmony for a Civilization of Love (2013) 30

Moreover, the term culture indicates all those means by which “man develops and perfects his many bodily and spiritual qualities; he strives by his knowledge and his labor, to bring the world itself under his control. He renders social life more human both in the family and the civic community, through improvement of customs and institutions. Throughout the course of time he expresses, communicates, and conserves in his works, great spiritual experiences and desires, that they might be of advantage to the progress of many, even of the whole human family.” Therefore, this includes both the subjective aspect—behaviors, values, and traditions that each person takes on—and the objective aspect, that is, the works of individuals.

Congregation for Catholic Education, Educating to Intercultural Dialogue in Catholic Schools: Living in Harmony for a Civilization of Love (2013) 31

A school uses its own specific means for the integral formation of the human person: the communication of culture. It is extremely important, then, that the Catholic educator reflect on the profound relationship that exists between culture and the Church. For the Church not only influences culture and is, in turn, conditioned by culture; the Church embraces everything in human culture which is compatible with Revelation and which it needs in order to proclaim the message of Christ and express it more adequately according to the cultural characteristics of each people and each age. The close relationship between culture and the life of the Church is an especially clear manifestation of the unity that exists between creation and redemption. For this reason, if the communication of culture is to be a genuine educational activity, it must not only be organic, but also critical and evaluative, historical and dynamic. Faith will provide Catholic educators with some essential principles for critique and evaluation; faith will help them to see all of human history as a history of salvation which culminates in the fullness of the Kingdom. This puts culture into a creative context, constantly being perfected.

Congregation for Catholic Education, Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith (1982) 20

Students will be helped to attain that synthesis of faith and culture which is necessary for faith to be mature. But a mature faith is also able to recognize and reject cultural counter-values which threaten human dignity and are therefore contrary to the Gospel. No one should think that all of the problems of religion and of faith will be completely solved by academic studies; nevertheless, we are convinced that a school is a privileged place for finding adequate ways to deal with these problems. The declaration Gravissimum Educationis, echoing Gaudium et Spes, indicates that one of the characteristics of a Catholic school is that it interpret and give order to human culture in the light of faith.

Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School (1988) 52

The social and cultural context of our time is in danger of obscuring “the educational value of the Catholic school, in which its fundamental reason for existing and the basis of its genuine apostolate is to be found”. Indeed, although it is true to say that in recent years there has been an increased interest and a greater sensitivity on the part of public opinion, international organizations and governments with regard to schooling and education, there has also been a noticeable tendency to reduce education to its purely technical and practical aspects. Pedagogy and the sciences of education themselves have appeared to devote greater attention to the study of phenomenology and didactics than to the essence of education as such, centered on deeply meaningful values and vision… There is a tendency to forget that education always presupposes and involves a definite concept of man and life. To claim neutrality for schools signifies in practice, more times than not, banning all reference to religion from the cultural and educational field, whereas a correct pedagogical approach ought to be open to the more decisive sphere of ultimate objectives, attending not only to “how”, but also to “why”, overcoming any misunderstanding as regards the claim to neutrality in education, restoring to the educational process the unity which saves it from dispersion amid the meandering of knowledge and acquired facts, and focuses on the human person in his or her integral, transcendent, historical identity. With its educational project inspired by the Gospel, the Catholic school is called to take up this challenge and respond to it in the conviction that “it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear.”

Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School on the Threshold of the Third Millennium (1997) 10

Making use of a systematic framework, such as that offered by our philosophical heritage, with which to find the best possible human responses to questions regarding the human person, the world, and God. Lively dialogue between culture and the Gospel message. The fullness of truth contained in the Gospel message itself, which embraces and integrates the wisdom of all cultures, and enriches them with the divine mysteries known only to God but which, out of love, he has chosen to reveal to us.

With such criteria as a basis, the student’s careful and reflective study of philosophy will bring human wisdom into an encounter with divine wisdom.

Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School (1988) 57

 

While respectful of surrounding cultures, a school’s culture must be distinctly Catholic.

The transmission of a culture ought to be especially attentive to the practical effects of that culture and strengthen those aspects of it which will make a person more human. In particular, it ought to pay attention to the religious dimension of the culture and the emerging ethical requirements to be found in it.

Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School (1988) 108

As the Council points out, giving order to human culture in the light of the message of salvation cannot mean a lack of respect for the autonomy of the different academic disciplines and the methodology proper to them; nor can it mean that these disciplines are to be seen merely as subservient to faith. On the other hand, it is necessary to point out that a proper autonomy of culture has to be distinguished from a vision of the human person or of the world as totally autonomous, implying that one can negate spiritual values or prescind from them. We must always remember that, while faith is not to be identified with any one culture and is independent of all cultures, it must inspire every culture: “Faith which does not become culture is faith which is not received fully, not assimilated entirely, not lived faithfully”.

Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School (1988) 53

Catholic schools are called to give dutiful witness, by their pedagogy that is clearly inspired by the Gospel—a fortiori in a culture that demands that schools be neutral and removes all religious references from the field of education. Catholic schools, being Catholic, are not limited to a vague Christian inspiration or one based on human values. They have the responsibility for offering Catholic students, over and above a sound knowledge of religion, the possibility to grow in personal closeness to Christ in the Church.

Congregation for Catholic Education, Educating in Intercultural Dialogue in the Catholic School: Living in Harmony for a Civilization of Love (2013) 56

Indeed, culture is only educational when young people can relate their study to real-life situations with which they are familiar. The school must stimulate the pupil to exercise his intelligence through the dynamics of understanding to attain clarity and inventiveness. It must help him spell out the meaning of his experiences and their truths.

Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School (1977) 27

Catholic schools strive to relate all of the sciences to salvation and sanctification. Students are shown how Jesus illumines all of life—science, mathematics, history, business, biology, and so forth.

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, National Directory for Catechesis (Washington, D.C.: USCCB, 2005) 233

 

Literature and the arts are carefully selected to allow students to reflect on man’s successes and failures, his miseries and joys.

Literature and the arts are also, in their own way, of great importance to the life of the Church. They strive to make known the proper nature of man, his problems and his experiences in trying to know and perfect both himself and the world. They have much to do with revealing man’s place in history and in the world; with illustrating the miseries and joys, the needs and strengths of man and with foreshadowing a better life for him. Thus they are able to elevate human life, expressed in multifold forms according to various times and regions. …Thus the knowledge of God is better manifested and the preaching of the Gospel becomes clearer to human intelligence and shows itself to be relevant to man’s actual conditions of life.

May the faithful, therefore, live in very close union with the other men of their time and may they strive to understand perfectly their way of thinking and judging, as expressed in their culture. Let them blend new sciences and theories and the understanding of the most recent discoveries with Christian morality and the teaching of Christian doctrine, so that their religious culture and morality may keep pace with scientific knowledge and with the constantly progressing technology. Thus they will be able to interpret and evaluate all things in a truly Christian spirit.

Saint Paul VI, Gaudium et Spes (1965) 62

Literary and artistic works depict the struggles of societies, of families, and of individuals. They spring from the depths of the human heart, revealing its lights and its shadows, its hope and its despair. The Christian perspective goes beyond the merely human and offers more penetrating criteria for understanding the human struggle and the mysteries of the human spirit. Furthermore, an adequate religious formation has been the starting point for the vocation of a number of Christian artists and art critics. In the upper grades, a teacher can bring students to an even more profound appreciation of artistic works as a reflection of the divine beauty in tangible form. Both the Fathers of the Church and the masters of Christian philosophy teach this in their writings on aesthetics—St. Augustine invites us to go beyond the intention of the artists in order to find the eternal order of God in the work of art; St. Thomas sees the presence of the Divine Word in art.

Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School (1988) 61

The mission of the Church is to evangelize, for the interior transformation and the renewal of humanity. For young people, the school is one of the ways for this evangelization to take place… Since its educational goals are rooted in Christian principles, the school as a whole is inserted into the evangelical function of the Church. It assists in and promotes faith education.

Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School (1988) 66, 69

Finally, the Church is absolutely convinced that the educational aims of the Catholic school in the world of today perform an essential and unique service for the Church herself. It is, in fact, through the school that she participates in the dialogue of culture with her own positive contribution to the cause of the total formation of man.

Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School (1977) 15

Appendix C: Holistic Rubric for Selecting Literature in a Catholic School

Compare the literature selection to the description provided in each box and circle the score that most closely applies to your selection. Compelling reason must be given for Scale Score 2, along with supports to mitigate areas of concern.

Score

Description

 

4

Excellent Choice

There are multiple or significant timeless themes presented which: transcend culture and politics, allow for a richer and deeper understanding of humanity, and lend themselves to profound discussion about authentic truth and reality from a Catholic worldview. The work powerfully provokes a deeper understanding of virtue (or the destructive consequences of the lack thereof) and its effects on human flourishing. The work is uniquely suited to assist the student to a right ordering of the imagination, passions, and emotions. The work has significant artistic weight and strong intellectual merit. The writing is very well crafted and can serve as a model for student emulation. The work has been read for generations. There is no profanity. There is no blasphemy. There is no description of sexual activity or sexual fantasy. The content does not diminish the student’s faith or innocence or lead the student to sin or despair. The instructor is expertly equipped to provide a Catholic perspective on content and themes.

 

3

Good Choice

There are themes presented which: transcend culture and politics, allow for a deeper understanding of humanity, and lend themselves to discussion about authentic truth and reality from a Catholic worldview. The work allows for discussion of virtue (or the destructive consequences of the lack thereof) and its effects on human flourishing. The work assists the student to a right ordering of the imagination, passions, and emotions. The work has artistic weight and intellectual merit. The writing is well crafted. The work is likely to be read by future generations. There is no shocking or significant profanity. There is no blasphemy. There is no description of sexual activity or sexual fantasy. The content does not diminish the student’s faith or innocence or lead the student to sin or despair. The instructor is effectively equipped to provide a Catholic perspective on all essential content and themes.

 

2

Fair Choice

Themes are primarily cultural and political, somewhat limiting discussion about transcendent concerns. Discussion about authentic truth and reality from a Catholic worldview is possible but not forefront. The work allows for discussion of virtue (or the destructive consequences of the lack thereof) but its impact on human flourishing is ambiguous and/or ambivalent. Disorder in the work may somewhat confuse the students’ passions or emotions. The work is currently popular in some English or liberal arts courses but has not yet proved its staying power over time. There is no shocking or significant profanity. There is ambivalence or neutrality toward the Catholic faith. There is no excessive or explicit description of sexual activity or sexual fantasy. The content does not diminish the student’s faith or innocence or lead the student to sin or despair. The instructor is adequately equipped to provide a Catholic perspective on most content and themes.

 

1

Poor Choice

Themes are primarily cultural and political, limiting discussion about transcendent concerns. Discussion about authentic truth and reality from a Catholic worldview is significantly impeded by a worldview that is provocatively and enticingly anti-Christian. Virtue and vice are confused, ridiculed, or presented as inconsequential. Disorder in the work is not resolved or leads the students’ passions or emotions astray. The work is culturally popular, but rarely found in school curricula, and has not yet proved its staying power over time. There is shocking and explicit violence. There is shocking or significant profanity. The work is blasphemous. There is excessive or explicit description of sexual activity or sexual fantasy. The content may diminish the student’s faith or innocence or lead the student to sin or despair. The instructor is insufficiently equipped to provide a Catholic perspective on all content and themes.

 

[1] Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School (1988) 57.

[2] Congregation for Catholic Education, Educating Together in Catholic Schools: A Shared Mission Between Consecrated Persons and the Lay Faithful (2007) 12.

[3] For purposes of this paper, “the arts” include painting, sculpture, music, poetry, and the performing arts.

[4] Congregation for Catholic Education (1988) 53.

[5] Saint Paul VI, Gaudium et Spes (1965) 62.

[6] Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School (1977) 49.

[7] Congregation for Catholic Education (1977) 36.

[8] Congregation for Catholic Education (1977) 49.

[9] The general educational approach in this section is proposed by Luigi Giussani in his book The Risk of Education (Crossroad Publishing Company, 2001). See esp. pp. 55-65.

[10] Code of Canon Law (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1983) 795.

[11] Congregation for Catholic Education (1988) 66, 69.

[12] There are many lists of literature and spirituality which might be considered part of the “Great Books” in general and the Catholic Intellectual tradition in particular.

[13] Saint John Paul II, Letter to Artists (1999), 1.

[14] Saint John Paul II (1999), 6, 12.

[15] See the Cardinal Newman Society’s Recommended Reading List, retrievable at https://cardinalnewmansociety.org/selected-reading-list-for-catholic-k-12-schools/.

[16] St. John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982) 75.

Policy Standards on Secular Academic Materials and Programs in Catholic Education

Catholic education fulfills a divine mission, to provide for the common good of humanity and the Supreme Good of those being educated.[1] To accomplish this mission, Catholic schools and colleges create authentic, faith-based communities which educate students’ intellectual, moral, emotional, physical, and spiritual gifts within a rich Catholic worldview.[2]

Faithful Catholic education draws upon the best available programs and materials to aid in instruction that fulfills its Catholic mission. Books and programs which are specifically designed to foster a Catholic worldview are a natural choice for Catholic education, but sometimes secular materials and programs—which may include textbooks, lessons, and activities—can also fulfill the requirements of providing content to an already enriched Catholic curricular (e.g., math and science textbook series) and extracurricular foundation.

Such materials and programs must be carefully evaluated to determine if their underlying philosophy, content, and activities are aligned to the mission of Catholic education and, if used, what adaptations might be needed.

The success of Catholic education is not dependent on doing a better job of teaching secular texts or programs or getting higher test scores on standardized tests than public institutions. Catholic educators teach and do more. This means they must ask more of any material or program imported into the educational environment and be ready to heavily adapt it toward a greater end. Catholic educators must also be quick to realize that some resources will be woefully insufficient, and others may have elements that actually work against the Catholic mission.

This guide presents principles, standards, and resources to assist Catholic educators in the evaluation of prospective secular materials and programs. The Cardinal Newman Society also has a series of analyses applying these principles and standards to particular secular resources frequently found in Catholic education, including Advanced Placement (AP) courses, International Baccalaureate (IB) programs, and secular character development programs. The Cardinal Newman Society’s Catholic Curriculum Standards[3] and Standards for Christian Anthropology (with Ruah Woods Press)[4] are also available to provide guidance in ensuring that critical elements central to Catholic elementary and secondary education are being delivered throughout the academic program.

Principles

Principle 1: A fundamental element of Catholic education is the evangelization, catechesis, and sanctification of the student.

Catholic education is an expression of the Church’s mission of salvation and an instrument of evangelization:[5] to make disciples of Christ and teach them to observe all that He has commanded,[6] preparing students to fulfill God’s calling in this world so as to attain the eternal kingdom for which they were created.[7]

Principle 2: A fundamental element of Catholic education is that it forms Christian communion and identity.

As a faith community in unity with the Church and in fidelity to the Magisterium, students, parents, and educators give witness to Christ’s loving communion in the Holy Trinity.[8] The Catholic school or college is a place of ecclesial experience, in which the members model confident and joyful public witness in both word and action and teach students to live the Catholic faith in their daily lives.[9] The community itself is a means of education and formation[10] and is nurtured by the consistent and public witness of employees and volunteers who abide by Church teachings and the moral demands of the Gospel.[11]

Principle 3: A fundamental element of Catholic education is the integral formation of the human person: body, mind, and spirit.

Catholic education promotes the integral formation of the human person by developing each student’s physical, moral, intellectual, and spiritual gifts in harmony, teaching responsibility and right use of freedom.[12]

The religious, aesthetic, and creative senses are developed along with formation of the will and dispositions.[13] Catholic education is rooted in a Christian understanding of the dignity of the human person who, created in the image and likeness of God,[14] is at once corporal and spiritual,[15] made in perfect equality and complementarity as male and female,[16] with a fallen nature redeemed by Christ’s death on the cross.[17]

Principle 4: A fundamental element of Catholic education is that it imparts a Christian understanding of the world.

Catholic education seeks to integrate faith with reason and synthesize faith with life and culture. In the light of faith, Catholic education critically and systematically transmits the secular and religious “cultural patrimony handed down from previous generations,” especially that which makes a person more human.[18] Both educator and student are called to participate in the dialogue of culture and to pursue “the integration of culture with faith and of faith with living.”[19]

Catholic education imparts “a Christian vision of the world, of life, of culture, and of history,” ordering “the whole of human culture to the news of salvation.”[20] A hallmark of Catholic education is to “bring human wisdom into an encounter with divine wisdom”[21] and prepare students for the evangelization of culture and for the common good of society.[22]

Standards for Policies Related to Secular Materials and Programs

In Catholic education, policies involving the use of secular materials and programs (including textbooks, lessons, and activities):

  • support and protect Catholic schools and colleges as educational communities of evangelization that promote the salvation of students and service to the common good;
  • ensure that the school or college environment, staff, and leadership remain fully committed to faithful Catholic education;
  • place priority on the selection of Catholic materials and programs over secular options, whenever possible, and with due consideration of the mission and objectives of Catholic education;
  • ensure fidelity to the magisterium of the Catholic Church in all lessons, activities, and programs;
  • ensure that secular materials or programs do not cause scandal, conflict with Catholic teaching, or cause confusion about the truth of Catholic teaching, including promotion of atheism, agnosticism, relativism, materialism, or false ideology about the human person;
  • ensure that secular materials and programs help students develop their intellectual, moral, emotional, physical, and spiritual talents harmoniously without contradiction to Catholic teaching and Christian anthropology;
  • ensure that secular materials and programs do not impede students’ development of a Catholic understanding of the world and the human person or obstruct the goal of uniting faith and reason and synthesizing faith with life and culture;
  • ensure that secular materials and programs are adapted or richly augmented as necessary with resources and opportunities to integrate Catholic teaching and practice and transmit a Catholic understanding of the human person and the world; and
  • prevent formal cooperation or illicit material cooperation with evil by the use of secular materials and programs, including any collaboration with a secular organization or publisher that causes scandal or confusion about the Catholic faith or causes doubt regarding the school or college’s faithful commitment to the mission of Catholic education.

Operationalizing the Standards

To meet these core standards, policies and practices such as those below can be of assistance:

  • The school or college uses curriculum standards, such as the Newman Society’s Catholic Curriculum Standards and Standards for Christian Anthropology (with Ruah Woods Press) for grades K-12, to specifically target and address the integration of faith and reason and the synthesis of faith and life and culture.
  • The curriculum is designed to facilitate an understanding of objective reality, including transcendent truth, which is knowable by reason and revelation. It specifically counters any secular programs that may seem to promote atheism, agnosticism, relativism, materialism, or false ideology about the human person.
  • The school or college ensures that secular materials and programs do not place excessive demands in testing, teacher formation, or curriculum that crowd out the priorities of Catholic education and a strong Catholic culture.
  • Secular history programs and texts which espouse political or social activism should be avoided, but if used, they are supplemented to ensure that the principles of Catholic social teaching are taught, compared, and understood.
  • Secular science materials and programs are carefully examined for any philosophies, positions, and statements, either explicit or implicit, that may run counter to Church teaching. Such materials and programs should be avoided, but if used, they are countermanded with clear Church teaching and thorough explanation to ensure that students understand the differing philosophies and appreciate the harmony of faith and reason and God and nature.
  • Secular human sexuality programs—and those elements of human sexuality addressed in science, psychology, literature, and history—should always further discussion and Christian understanding of the human person, should be integrated with Catholic religious and moral instruction, and taught in collaboration with parents at the K-12 level.
  • Programs promoting global citizenry should not be allowed to mask the more profound reality and Catholic emphasis on the transcendent and universal destination of humanity in God. The principle of subsidiarity should be emphasized to counter a false globalism. The assumption that human ills are solvable by human programs and human self-mastery alone, rather than reliance on God’s grace, mercy, and salvation, are held in check.
  • Courses in philosophy accompany but do not replace catechesis and theology courses.
  • Instruction in virtue and morality must not pre-emptively surrender or silence religious insight and revelation, by attempting to ground morality and dignity on entirely secular grounds.

Catholic educators should unleash the entirety and integrity of human wisdom, including and especially the Church’s inspired wisdom, in their efforts to equip students to attain and practice heroic virtue in the post-modern world.

Possible Questions

For questions about particular materials and programs—including Advanced Placement courses, the International Baccalaureate program, the Meeting Point sexual education program, and secular character development programs—The Cardinal Newman Society publishes separate reviews with detailed recommendations. See the Newman Society website for these reviews.

Question: The best and most up-to-date materials and the programs with the most resources and supports—especially in science, math, grammar, and social studies—are all secular. They are the only reasonable choices for most Catholic schools and colleges. So why even bother worrying about any of this? There is no “Catholic” math, grammar, or science.

Response: Like secular education, Catholic education studies reality using the appropriate methods for the subject at hand and delves deeply into each specific academic discipline on its own terms. So, yes, Catholic educators can use secular materials in these and other areas. But Catholic education is also specifically and distinctly open to the uncovering of transcendent truths which surpass and integrate the disciplines.

For example, Catholic educators can use secular science materials but will also want to, at some place in the curriculum, ensure that students can confidently explain and promote the relationship and unity of faith and reason. They should know the reality that the God of nature and the God of the Catholic faith are one and the same God. They should develop the ability to evaluate the errors present in the belief system of scientific naturalism, which incorrectly claims that scientific exploration and explanation are the only valid sources of knowledge.

In another example, the study of math can also be better pursued by highlighting its transcendent dimension as a reflection of the good, true, and beautiful. Students should develop the ability to reveal qualities of being and the presence of God in mathematical order. Catholic educators also want their students to evaluate the ongoing nature of mathematical inquiry, its inexhaustibility, and its opening to the infinite. Students should develop a sense of wonder about mathematical relationships and confidence in mathematical certitude, and they should understand the unique nature of that certitude, which is not directly transferable to other areas of inquiry into the truth of things.

There is much more that Catholic educators are doing and exploring in most academic disciplines, so while they can and sometimes must use secular materials and programs, they must not limit inquiry or teaching to secular perspectives alone.

Question: Parents demand and colleges respect secular programs such as the Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate (IB) programs and tests. If a Catholic school does not compete with other schools and provide such opportunities to students, it may suffer in its reputation and enrollment. Shouldn’t Catholic schools go all in and work on the terms of the secular programs, for the good of the school and the students?

Response: Without dismissing the prestige of such tests and their impact on college admissions, it is critical for Catholic schools to remember that their core purpose is not to deliver access to college and credit. Their purpose is the dissemination and discovery of truth, the salvation of students, and service to humanity. Testing need not get in the way of these ends, but if not carefully managed, it can. Catholic schools must protect against this to ensure that authentic learning and the dissemination of a Catholic worldview is not negatively impacted.

Catholic education is expansive and holistic. It teaches things which cannot be easily measured, tested, or translated to academic credit. So, while Catholic schools can offer high-stakes testing and credit, they must ensure that these do not hinder the flexibility, freedom, discovery, and awareness that enkindles a love for truth wherever it might be found.

Question: Why can’t a Catholic school use a secular program focused on virtue, character development, or sexual ethics that is based on the natural law and does not emphasize religion? The ability to construct a universal set of human values based on reason and nature may even make it more palatable and attractive to modern students.

Response: While such programs can be used when necessary, they must be supplemented with biblical and magisterial guidance. Reason and humanity alone are not sufficient, since we also have a religious nature which cannot be denied without peril. The humanism of the best ancient Greeks and Romans, the civic virtues of Confucianism, or the science of human reproduction are not enough to build a complete human character or consistent moral framework consonant with the way and the end for which we were created.

Humanity cannot be saved and find happiness based on programs and ideas of its own making. There is no simple human-based fix or program or series of insights to the problem of original sin and humanity’s weakness. Christ alone fully reveals man to himself and unlocks the keys to virtue and happiness. He cannot be left out of human formation without consequence in any school, let alone a Catholic school, whose very function is to lead students to their destiny and salvation in Him.

 

This document was developed with substantial comment and contributions from education, legal, and other experts. Lead authors are Denise Donohue, Ed.D., Director of the Catholic Education Honor Roll at The Cardinal Newman Society, and Dan Guernsey, Ed.D., Senior Fellow at The Cardinal Newman Society and principal of a diocesan K-12 Catholic school.

 

Appendix A: Selections from Church Documents Informing this Topic

…the Catholic school tries to create within its walls a climate in which the pupil’s faith will gradually mature and enable him to assume the responsibility placed on him by Baptism. It will give pride of place in the education it provides through Christian Doctrine to the gradual formation of conscience in fundamental, permanent virtues—above all the theological virtues, and charity in particular, which is, so to speak, the life-giving spirit which transforms a man of virtue into a man of Christ. Christ, therefore, is the teaching-centre, the Model on Whom the Christian shapes his life. In Him the Catholic school differs from all others which limit themselves to forming men. Its task is to form Christian men, and, by its teaching and witness, show non-Christians something of the mystery of Christ Who surpasses all human understanding.

Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School (1977) 47

 

Since true education must strive for complete formation of the human person that looks to his or her final end as well as to the common good of societies, children and youth are to be nurtured in such a way that they are able to develop their physical, moral, and intellectual talents harmoniously, acquire a more perfect sense of responsibility and right use of freedom, and are formed to participate actively in social life.

Holy See, Code of Canon Law (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1983) 795

 

Students should be helped to see the human person as a living creature having both a physical and a spiritual nature; each of us has an immortal soul, and we are in need of redemption. The older students can gradually come to a more mature understanding of all that is implied in the concept of “person”: intelligence and will, freedom and feelings, the capacity to be an active and creative agent; a being endowed with both rights and duties, capable of interpersonal relationships, called to a specific mission in the world.

Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School (1988) 55

 

The human person is present in all the truths of faith: created in “the image and likeness” of God; elevated by God to the dignity of a child of God; unfaithful to God in original sin, but redeemed by Christ; a temple of the Holy Spirit; a member of the Church; destined to eternal life.

Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School (1988) 84

 

Not a few young people, unable to find any meaning in life or trying to find an escape from loneliness, turn to alcohol, drugs, the erotic, the exotic etc. Christian education is faced with the huge challenge of helping these young people discover something of value in their lives…We must cultivate intelligence and the other spiritual gifts, especially through scholastic work. We must learn to care for our body and its health, and this includes physical activity and sports. And we must be careful of our sexual integrity through the virtue of chastity, because sexual energies are also a gift of God, contributing to the perfection of the person and having a providential function for the life of society and of the Church. Thus, gradually, the teacher will guide students to the idea, and then to the realization, of a process of total formation.

Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School (1988) 13, 84

 

A school uses its own specific means for the integral formation of the human person: the communication of culture… if the communication of culture is to be a genuine educational activity, it must not only be organic, but also critical and evaluative, historical and dynamic. Faith will provide Catholic educators with some essential principles for critique and evaluation; faith will help them to see all of human history as a history of salvation which culminates in the fullness of the Kingdom. This puts culture into a creative context, constantly being perfected.

Congregation for Catholic Education, Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith (1982) 20

 

Catholic schools provide young people with sound Church teaching through a broad-based curriculum, where faith and culture are intertwined in all areas of a school’s life. By equipping our young people with a sound education, rooted in the Gospel message, the Person of Jesus Christ, and rich in the cherished traditions and liturgical practices of our faith, we ensure that they have the foundation to live morally and uprightly in our complex modern world. This unique Catholic identity makes our Catholic elementary and secondary schools “schools for the human person” and allows them to fill a critical role in the future life of our Church, our country, and our world.

U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Renewing Our Commitment to Catholic Elementary & Secondary Schools in the Third Millennium (2005)

From the nature of the Catholic school also stems one of the most significant elements of its educational project: the synthesis between culture and faith. The endeavor to interweave reason and faith, which has become the heart of individual subjects, makes for unity, articulation, and coordination, bringing forth within what is learned in a school a Christian vision of the world, of life, of culture, and of history.

Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School on the Threshold of the Third Millennium (1997) 14

 

Literature and the arts are also, in their own way, of great importance to the life of the Church. They strive to make known the proper nature of man, his problems and his experiences in trying to know and perfect both himself and the world. They have much to do with revealing man’s place in history and in the world; with illustrating the miseries and joys, the needs and strengths of man and with foreshadowing a better life for him. Thus they are able to elevate human life, expressed in multifold forms according to various times and regions.

Saint Paul VI, Gaudium et Spes (1965) 62

 

Teachers should guide the students’ work in such a way that they will be able to discover a religious dimension in the world of human history. As a preliminary, they should be encouraged to develop a taste for historical truth, and therefore to realize the need to look critically at texts and curricula which, at times, are imposed by a government or distorted by the ideology of the author… they will see the development of civilizations, and learn about progress…When they are ready to appreciate it, students can be invited to reflect on the fact that this human struggle takes place within the divine history [of] universal salvation. At this moment, the religious dimension of history begins to shine forth in all its luminous grandeur.

Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School (1988) 58-59

 

Every society has its own heritage of accumulated wisdom. Many people find inspiration in these philosophical and religious concepts which have endured for millennia. The systematic genius of classical Greek and European thought has, over the centuries, generated countless different doctrinal systems, but it has also given us a set of truths which we can recognize as a part of our permanent philosophical heritage.

Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School (1988) 57

 

The curriculum must help the students reflect on the great problems of our time, including those where one sees more clearly the difficult situation of a large part of humanity’s living conditions. These would include the unequal distribution of resources, poverty, injustice and human rights denied.

Pope Pius XI, Divini illius Magistri (1929), 21

 

Literary and artistic works depict the struggles of societies, of families, and of individuals. They spring from the depths of the human heart, revealing its lights and its shadows, its hope and its despair. The Christian perspective goes beyond the merely human, and offers more penetrating criteria for understanding the human struggle and the mysteries of the human spirit. Furthermore, an adequate religious formation has been the starting point for the vocation of a number of Christian artists and art critics. In the upper grades, a teacher can bring students to: an even more profound appreciation of artistic works: as a reflection of the divine beauty in tangible form. Both the Fathers of the Church and the masters of Christian philosophy teach this in their writings on aesthetics—St. Augustine invites us to go beyond the intention of the artists in order to find the eternal order of God in the work of art; St. Thomas sees the presence of the Divine Word in art.

Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School (1988) 61

 

The Catholic school should teach its pupils to discern in the voice of the universe the Creator Whom it reveals and, in the conquests of science, to know God and man better.

Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School (1977) 46

 

…help their students to understand that positive science, and the technology allied to it, is a part of the universe created by God. Understanding this can help encourage an interest in research: the whole of creation, from the distant celestial bodies and the immeasurable cosmic forces down to the infinitesimal particles and waves of matter and energy, all bear the imprint of the Creator’s wisdom and power, The wonder that past ages felt when contemplating this universe, recorded by the Biblical authors, is still valid for the students of today; the only difference is that we have a knowledge that is much more vast and profound. There can be no conflict between faith and true scientific knowledge; both find their source in God. The student who is able to discover the harmony between faith and science will, in future professional life, be better able to put science and technology to the service of men and women, and to the service of God. It is a way of giving back to God what he has first given to us.

Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School (1988) 54

 

Furthermore, when man gives himself to the various disciplines of philosophy, history and of mathematical and natural science, and when he cultivates the arts, he can do very much to elevate the human family to a more sublime understanding of truth, goodness, and beauty, and to the formation of considered opinions which have universal value. Thus mankind may be more clearly enlightened by that marvelous Wisdom which was with God from all eternity, composing all things with him, rejoicing in the earth and delighting in the sons of men. In this way, the human spirit, being less subjected to material things, can be more easily drawn to the worship and contemplation of the Creator. Moreover, by the impulse of grace, he is disposed to acknowledge the Word of God, Who before He became flesh in order to save all and to sum up all in Himself was already “in the world” as “the true light which enlightens every man” (John 1:9-10). Indeed today’s progress in science and technology can foster a certain exclusive emphasis on observable data, and agnosticism about everything else. For the methods of investigation which these sciences use can be wrongly considered as the supreme rule of seeking the whole truth. By virtue of their methods these sciences cannot penetrate to the intimate notion of things. Indeed the danger is present that man, confiding too much in the discoveries of today, may think that he is sufficient unto himself and no longer seek the higher things.

Saint Paul VI, Gaudium et Spes (1965) 57

 

Catholic schools strive to relate all of the sciences to salvation and sanctification. Students are shown how Jesus illumines all of life—science, mathematics, history, business, biology, and so forth.

U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, National Directory of Catechesis (2005) p.233

16. Integration of knowledge is a process, one which will always remain incomplete; moreover, the explosion of knowledge in recent decades, together with the rigid compartmentalization of knowledge within individual academic disciplines, makes the task increasingly difficult. But a University, and especially a Catholic University, “has to be a ‘living union’ of individual organisms dedicated to the search for truth … It is necessary to work towards a higher synthesis of knowledge, in which alone lies the possibility of satisfying that thirst for truth which is profoundly inscribed on the heart of the human person”(19). Aided by the specific contributions of philosophy and theology, university scholars will be engaged in a constant effort to determine the relative place and meaning of each of the various disciplines within the context of a vision of the human person and the world that is enlightened by the Gospel, and therefore by a faith in Christ, the Logos, as the centre of creation and of human history.

17. In promoting this integration of knowledge, a specific part of a Catholic University’s task is to promote dialogue between faith and reason,so that it can be seen more profoundly how faith and reason bear harmonious witness to the unity of all truth. While each academic discipline retains its own integrity and has its own methods, this dialogue demonstrates that “methodical research within every branch of learning, when carried out in a truly scientific manner and in accord with moral norms, can never truly conflict with faith. For the things of the earth and the concerns of faith derive from the same God”(20). A vital interaction of two distinct levels of coming to know the one truth leads to a greater love for truth itself, and contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the meaning of human life and of the purpose of God’s creation.

18. Because knowledge is meant to serve the human person, research in a Catholic University is always carried out with a concern for the ethical and moral implications both of its methods and of its discoveries. This concern, while it must be present in all research, is particularly important in the areas of science and technology. “It is essential that we be convinced of the priority of the ethical over the technical, of the primacy of the person over things, of the superiority of the spirit over matter. The cause of the human person will only be served if knowledge is joined to conscience. Men and women of science will truly aid humanity only if they preserve ‘the sense of the transcendence of the human person over the world and of God over the human person”(21).

23. Students are challenged to pursue an education that combines excellence in humanistic and cultural development with specialized professional training. Most especially, they are challenged to continue the search for truth and for meaning throughout their lives, since “the human spirit must be cultivated in such a way that there results a growth in its ability to wonder, to understand, to contemplate, to make personal judgments, and to develop a religious, moral, and social sense”(23). This enables them to acquire or, if they have already done so, to deepen a Christian way of life that is authentic. They should realize the responsibility of their professional life, the enthusiasm of being the trained ‘leaders’ of tomorrow, of being witnesses to Christ in whatever place they may exercise their profession.

28. Bishops have a particular responsibility to promote Catholic Universities, and especially to promote and assist in the preservation and strengthening of their Catholic identity, including the protection of their Catholic identity in relation to civil authorities. This will be achieved more effectively if close personal and pastoral relationships exist between University and Church authorities, characterized by mutual trust, close and consistent cooperation and continuing dialogue. Even when they do not enter directly into the internal governance of the University, Bishops “should be seen not as external agents but as participants in the life of the Catholic University”(27).

32. If need be, a Catholic University must have the courage to speak uncomfortable truths which do not please public opinion, but which are necessary to safeguard the authentic good of society.

33. A specific priority is the need to examine and evaluate the predominant values and norms of modern society and culture in a Christian perspective, and the responsibility to try to communicate to society those ethical and religious principles which give full meaning to human life. In this way a University can contribute further to the development of a true Christian anthropology, founded on the person of Christ, which will bring the dynamism of the creation and redemption to bear on reality and on the correct solution to the problems of life.
General Norms, Article 4

§ 4. Those university teachers and administrators who belong to other Churches, ecclesial communities, or religions, as well as those who profess no religious belief, and also all students, are to recognize and respect the distinctive Catholic identity of the University. In order not to endanger the Catholic identity of the University or Institute of Higher Studies, the number of non-Catholic teachers should not be allowed to constitute a majority within the Institution, which is and must remain Catholic.

§ 5. The education of students is to combine academic and professional development with formation in moral and religious principles and the social teachings of the Church; the programme of studies for each of the various professions is to include an appropriate ethical formation in that profession. Courses in Catholic doctrine are to be made available to all students.

St. John Paul II, Ex corde Ecclesiae (1990)

 

 

[1] For more on this topic see Pope Pius XI, Divini illius Magistri (1929).

[2] For more on this topic see Principles of Catholic Identity in Education by The Cardinal Newman Society at https://cardinalnewmansociety.org/principles-resources-catholic-education/.

[3] https://cardinalnewmansociety.org/educator-resources/resources/academics/catholic-curriculum-standards/

[4] https://cardinalnewmansociety.org/standards-christian-anthropology/

[5] Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School (1977) 5-7; Saint Paul VI, Gravissimum Educationis (1965) 2; United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, To Teach as Jesus Did (1972) 7.

[6] Matthew 28:19-20.

[7] Holy See, Code of Canon Law (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1983) 795; Congregation for Catholic Education (1965) Introduction; Congregation for Catholic Education, Circular Letter to the Presidents of Bishops’ Conferences on Religious Education in Schools (2009) 1.

[8] Congregation for Catholic Education, Educating Together in Catholic Schools: A Shared Mission Between Consecrated Persons and the Lay Faithful (2007) 5, 10; Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School (1988) 44.

[9] Congregation for Catholic Education (2007) 5; Congregation for Catholic Education, Educating in Intercultural Dialogue in the Catholic School: Living in Harmony for a Civilization of Love (2013) 86; Congregation for Catholic Education, Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith (1982) 18; U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Renewing Our Commitment to Catholic Elementary & Secondary Schools in the Third Millennium (2005).

[10] Congregation for Catholic Education (1977) 26; Congregation for Catholic Education (1972) 23, 108; Congregation for Catholic Education (2007) 12.

[11] Saint Paul VI (1965) 8; Code of Canon Law 803 §2; Congregation for Catholic Education (1972) 104.

[12] Code of Canon Law 795; Saint Paul VI (1965) Introduction; Congregation for Catholic Education (2009) 1.

[13] Congregation for Catholic Education (1982) 12.

[14] Catechism 355; Gen. 1:27.

[15] Catechism 362.

[16] Catechism 369.

[17] Catechism 402.

[18] Congregation for Catholic Education (1982) 12; Congregation for Catholic Education (1977) 26, 36; Congregation for Catholic Education (1988) 108.

[19] Congregation for Catholic Education (1977) 15, 49; Congregation for Catholic Education (1988) 34, 51, 52.

[20] Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School on the Threshold of the Third Millennium (1997) 14; Congregation for Catholic Education (1988) 53, 100; Saint Paul VI (1965) 8.

[21] Congregation for Catholic Education (1988) 57.

[22] Saint John Paul II, Ad limina visit of bishops from Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin (May 30,1998); U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (2005); Congregation for Catholic Education, Educating Today and Tomorrow: A Renewing Passion (2014) II-1.

Analysis of Advanced Placement Courses

The following is part of The Cardinal Newman Society’s series of analyses of secular materials and programs used in Catholic education. Such materials and programs must be carefully evaluated to determine if their underlying philosophy, content, and activities are aligned to the mission of Catholic education and, if used, what adaptations might be needed.

The Newman Society’s “Policy Guidance Related to Secular Materials and Programs in Catholic Education” offers a framework for such evaluation and is the basis for this particular analysis.

Overview

The College Board currently has 38 Advanced Placement (AP) Courses for schools to choose from,[1] leading to exams in May. Some colleges will award credit toward an undergraduate degree if a student’s exam score is high enough.

The benefits of AP courses are sometimes exaggerated. College credit for a good exam score is not guaranteed and eighty-six percent (86%) of the top 153 U.S. colleges ranked by U.S. News and World Report restrict the credit awarded.[2] Additionally, research suggests there is no correlation between taking AP courses and success in college.[3] And students can sit for the exams without ever taking an approved course.

Nevertheless, some educators and parents are attracted to potential college savings and the rigor of AP courses, which suggests academic seriousness. The academic value deserves to be scrutinized: while the workload is heavy and the amount of information is often very large in AP courses, this emphasis may not allow much time for valuable classroom dialogue and critical analysis of the material. Students and teachers may have little time to focus on cultivating good habits of judgment and reasoning. AP course emphasis on skill development or memorization may prevent substantial integration of Catholic teaching, culture, worldview, and anthropology.

To carry the AP label, a course must meet the College Board’s institutional standards—especially the inclusion of a host of names, dates, concepts, events, and critical skill sets—but there is flexibility with instructional approaches and content selection. If a Catholic educator plans judiciously and carefully, it is possible to infuse an AP course with material and approaches to conform it to the mission of Catholic education. A school should carefully monitor whether this supplementary teaching is sufficient for a serious Catholic education, which demands substantial effort.

Recommendations

  • Begin with the mission of Catholic education in mind, which recognizes Christ as the foundation of the school.

  • Incorporate the Newman Society’s Catholic Curriculum Standards into the academic discipline, then include the AP standards.

  • Since AP does not prescribe the specific use of texts or textbooks, carefully select these materials to ensure their alignment with the mission of Catholic education and the presentation of a Catholic worldview or perspective while aligning with AP requirements.

  • Consult the course descriptions and class syllabi of faithful Catholic schools[4] and colleges[5] for ideas on texts and textbooks.

  • Materials including or espousing political or social activism (history, literature, science, and so forth) should be used with care, ensuring that the principles of Catholic social teachings are taught, compared, and understood.

  • Books should not be taught simply because they are “on an AP recommended list.” Choose the books that best fulfill the course objectives and allow for the presentation of a Catholic worldview.

  • For AP literature classes, closely follow The Cardinal Newman Society’s “Policy Guide Related to Literature and the Arts in Catholic Education.” This can help ensure that the selected works aid the student in a right ordering of the imagination, passions, and emotions and allow for teacher-led evaluation of content in terms of Catholic norms, values, and worldview.

  • Be aware that the AP World History exam is focused on history after 1200.[6] Ensure that adequate coverage of pre-history and the ancient world is required in the curriculum to avoid historical gaps.

  • Avoid an over-emphasis on the memorization of dates, names, and events. Take concrete steps to ensure that the “story” in history and man’s place in the world remains in focus. The use of the Catholic Curriculum Standards and its taxonomy for questioning will help toward this end.

  • Ensure that the course is not just focused on teaching to the AP test. Deep and meaningful learning must not give way to extensive but shallow reading and memorization done for test purposes only. Focus should be on the intrinsic value and wonder of the academic discipline, cultivating habits of good reasoning, and evangelization. The pursuit of the true, good, and beautiful[7] is what motivates and inspires the academic enterprise in a Catholic school. Our mission is to educate and inspire; it is not simply to deliver advanced college credit. The credit should not lead but will likely follow.

  • Ensure that the instructor is both a content expert and a knowledgeable and practicing Catholic who can impart an engaging Catholic worldview related to the discipline.

 

Denise Donohue, Ed.D., is Director of the Catholic Education Honor Roll at The Cardinal Newman Society.

Dan Guernsey, Ed.D., is Senior Fellow at The Cardinal Newman Society and principal of a diocesan K-12 Catholic school.

 

[1] See https://apstudent.collegeboard.org/apcourse (accessed on June 6, 2020).

[2] Kelli B. Grant, “Study Up: Scoring AP Credit for College Isn’t Easy,” CNBC (May 4, 2017) at https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/04/study-up-scoring-ap-credit-for-college-isnt-easy.html (accessed on June 6, 2020).

[3] See https://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/role-advanced-placement-and-honors-courses-college-admissions (accessed on June 12, 2020).

[4] See https://cardinalnewmansociety.org/catholic-ed-honor-roll/.

[5] See https://cardinalnewmansociety.org/the-newman-guide/recommended-colleges/.

[6] Colleen Flaherty, “More Criticism of AP World History Timeline,” Inside Higher Ed (July 25, 2018) at https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2018/07/25/more-criticism-ap-world-history-timeline (accessed on June 12, 2020).

[7] Dan Guernsey, “Educating to Truth, Beauty and Goodness” (Oct. 17, 2016) at https://cardinalnewmansociety.org/educating-truth-beauty-goodness-2/ (accessed on June 12, 2020).

Analysis of International Baccalaureate Program

The following is part of The Cardinal Newman Society’s series of analyses of secular materials and programs used in Catholic education. Such materials and programs must be carefully evaluated to determine if their underlying philosophy, content, and activities are aligned to the mission of Catholic education and, if used, what adaptations might be needed.

The Newman Society’s “Policy Standards on Secular Materials and Programs in Catholic Education” offers a framework for such evaluation and is the basis for this particular analysis.

Overview

The International Baccalaureate (IB) program is used in about 5,000 schools in more than 150 countries,[1] including more than 1,800 schools in the United States.[2] The IB program has steadily increased its presence in the U.S., adding about 100 new schools a year in recent years.[3] Catholic schools currently comprise 2 percent of that total.[4]

Originally designed to instruct the children of international diplomats, the IB Diploma Program (IBDP) and its foundational Theory of Knowledge course were officially registered in Geneva in 1968. As the program slowly acquired global recognition, the Middle and Primary Year Programs were introduced, followed by a program geared toward students on a career-related track.

The mission statement reads:

The International Baccalaureate® aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect. To this end the organization works with schools, governments and international organizations to develop challenging programmes of international education and rigorous assessment. These programmes encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right.

The learner profile was developed in 2006 to actualize the mission statement and to ensure the development of dispositions within the student characteristic of “international-mindedness”:[5]

The profile aims to develop learners who are: inquirers, knowledgeable, thinkers, communicators, principled, open-minded, caring, risk-takers, balanced, and reflective.

The IBDP is the oldest and best-known component of the IB. It aims to facilitate entry into college by offering specialized coursework during the student’s last two years of high school. The program is divided into six subject areas of language and literature, language acquisition, individuals and societies, sciences, mathematics, and the arts. Students are required to choose one course from each area and either an additional art course or a second course from one of the first five areas. While teachers have some say in course coverage (content and time spent on each concept), the mandatory externally graded exams drive the instruction. Students must also complete an extended essay (a research project begun in the junior year), a service project, and the foundational Theory of Knowledge (TOK) course.

The goal is to ensure a structured, academically rigorous, internationally focused program. It attempts to secure this goal through extensive teacher training, high levels of accountability, and strict testing regimens. Like AP, the IB uses its intensive testing programs in an attempt to stake out a position as a reliable indicator of college readiness so as to gain the notice of college admissions counselors and families.

Forty-one (41) Catholic elementary and secondary schools in the United States have adopted one or more of the IB’s programs.[6] These schools see the IB’s reputation for academic excellence, focus on the integration of knowledge, and emphasis on global solidarity and service as working in harmony with their school’s Catholic mission.[7] However, the existence of some important commonalities does not translate into a significant fit between IB and Catholic education.

Concerns

  • IB takes a relativistic approach to truth. This is evident in its insistence upon exclusive use of a constructivist learning methodology (see discussion below), and it can be interpreted in its mission to help students “understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right.” The latter statement is certainly correct if understood to support the universality of truth, and matters of taste and opinion in some areas allow for multiple interpretations. Nevertheless, Catholic thought holds that there is much in the universe that is real and exists apart from our tastes, opinion, and often limited insight, whereas the IB program is often too focused on cultural differences. Math, science, and morality are not subject to human whim and limitation. Even though due to our fallen nature we might not always see the truth and may even at times seek to ignore or obfuscate it, we are nonetheless obliged to honor and bear witness to it in its fullness and direct our whole life in accordance with the demands of truth when discovered.

  • IB insists upon the exclusive use of the constructivist learning approach[8] to the exclusion of other proven instructional methodologies.[9] A constructivist learning approach “is a view of learning suggesting that learners use their own experiences to create understandings that make sense to them, rather than having understanding delivered to them in already organized forms.”[10] Key features of a constructivist approach center on the learner as an active participant in the creation of new understanding, building upon their current understanding of a topic under consideration. Social interaction, or collaboration, is an essential component as is the centering of the learning tasks within real-world, meaningful settings.[11] This is a relatively new instructional approach with roots dating back to the early 1900s and the research of developmental psychologists Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky and educational researcher John Dewey.[12]

    Constructivist learning theory tends to bleed over into a constructivist philosophy which states that man constructs his own knowledge—even of reality[13]—and that nothing exists that is not constructed in one’s own mind. Piaget, Vygotsky, and Dewey all rejected an objectivist or realist “view of knowledge and the possibility of attaining truth as it actually exists.”[14] This is something quite contrary to the Catholic perspective,[15] by which man is viewed as capable of knowing and entering into an objective reality. A constructivist philosophy leads to a subjectivist and relativistic view of reality since reality, according to this theory, is based upon each person’s perception.

    Catholic schools must be cautious about an exclusive use of any one instructive methodology. All content and subject areas should be infused with a Catholic worldview, oftentimes requiring a variety of methods of instruction[16] depending upon the learner’s experience and background knowledge of the faith. Embracing a pure method of inquiry alone guarantees that only a partial connection or no connection to the Catholic faith will be made. Catholic schools using the IB program should insist on using other proven instructional approaches[17] such as direct-instruction, lecture-discussion, guided-inquiry, and “learning by heart” (which has a special place in effective catechesis).[18] These methodologies are also valid and hold a place in Catholic school pedagogy.
  • IB has wide-ranging and costly licensing and program requirements, insists upon extensive teacher training in an overwhelming and indiscriminate group of teaching practices and contemporary learning theory, and controls the cumulative tests which drive the curriculum. There is real danger that a Catholic school’s own unique program and specific Catholic teacher training needs could get overwhelmed and crowded out.

    To be approved as an IB school, governing boards must agree that initial and future budgets will include funding for IB course instructors to receive IB professional development, that there is at least one designated IB coordinator in the school, and that teachers teaching IB courses have within their schedule a dedicated collaborative planning session and reflection time.[19] IB standards also highlight the central role of library and multimedia availability, so the program can “ensure access to information on global issues and diverse perspectives.”[20]
  • To onboard the IB program, Catholic schools have included language in their mission statement to describe students as global learners and have changed their graduate profiles to include the required characteristics of the learner profile: All IB learners strive to be Inquirers, Knowledgeable, Thinkers, Communicators, Open-Minded, Caring, Risk-Takers, Balanced, Principled, and Reflective. Catholic schools seek to instill a host of virtues in students as well as attitudes and dispositions described by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Many schools already have graduate profiles that include attributes of service and life-long learning as well as outcomes of living one’s faith and becoming a witness and evangelist for Christ, but when worldly qualities and characteristics become equally or more important to the formation of a student as a disciple for Christ, a school’s Catholic identity can be compromised.

    The IB program requires that each grade level focus upon prescribed concepts and that these concepts are explicitly documented in classroom practice and lesson plans. Oftentimes in Catholic classrooms, pride of place is given to the formation of a specific weekly virtue, including the theological virtues, which is used as a cross-curricular strand for formation purposes. In contrast, some Catholic schools have been moving to the use of philosophical questions such as “What is goodness?” or “How is this beautiful?” as overarching essential questions. The IB program, in demanding a school-wide understanding of concepts such as change, global interactions, systems, continuity, and perspective and how these concepts are viewed from a local, global, and national level, focuses primarily on man and his manipulation and interaction within the world, rather than on the person and his relationship with God.

    With so many requirements from an outside organization, the mission focus of Catholic education may easily be crowded out. This violates the Catholic social principle of subsidiarity, which maintains that a state or larger society not “substitute itself for the initiative and responsibility of individuals and intermediary bodies.”[21] Much like recently failed national education reform movements in the United States, which attempted to drive local efforts, the IB places international, secular humanist requirements created by outside groups upon local schools.
  • IB’s emphasis on creating a globalist and relativist conception of the common good lacks what must be a Catholic school’s evangelical mission to spread the Kingdom of God on earth. Because Catholic education also pursues the common good, it may be tempting to assume a close match with a shared sense of philanthropic nobility and friendliness. But the nature of the common good and the means to advance it are approached differently in the relativistic and secular IB program than in the truth and faith-based focus of a Catholic school.

    IB literature states, “The aim of all IB programmes is to develop internationally minded people who, recognizing their common humanity and shared guardianship of the planet, help to create a better and more peaceful world.”[22] While this is a laudable goal, it excludes the need for strong local culture, the dignity of each human person as made in the image of God and the need to avoid a shared guardianship that increases the subservience of local peoples and cultures to globalist solutions which compromise individual liberty and national sovereignty in ways that contravene.

    IB’s emphasis on global citizenry conflicts with the Catholic social justice principle of subsidiarity, which favors a capable, smaller, and localized institution over dominance by a larger institution.[23]

    IB’s emphasis on a global citizenry can also mask the more profound reality of Catholic emphasis on the transcendent and universal destination of humanity in God.

Recommendations

Given the problems, complexities and dangers of integrating the IB program into a faithful Catholic school, it is best to not attempt to do so. Instead, Catholic schools should develop their own instructional programs to ensure a strong Catholic identity, an integral and harmonious Catholic liberal arts program, and solid teacher training that specifically includes designated opportunities for faith formation as well as the best of both traditional and contemporary educational practices.

However, if a Catholic school has already incorporated the IB and circumstances do not allow for a transition away in the short term for prudential reasons, we recommend that school leaders ensure that their use of IB exemplifies the five Principles of Catholic Identity in Education,[24] paying particular attention to the concerns identified for each principle below.

Principle I: Inspired by a divine mission. A Catholic school seeks to secure the supreme individual good of the students, that is their union with God, and to help serve the common good, the maximum of well-being possible for human society.

  • The Catholic school must be up front and explicit that the eternal salvation of its students is the primary goal, and the secondary goal of service pursues the common good. The Catholic school’s goal of service is of a different order than the IB’s service orientation and is particularly concerned with preparing students “for service in the spread of the Kingdom of God, so that by leading an exemplary apostolic life they become, as it were, a saving leaven in the human community.”[25] Service in a Catholic school has an evangelistic strand for the individual who is serving as well as those who are served.

  • The Catholic school must ensure that it does not fall into IB’s secular humanism with its errant anthropocentrism. This can lead to the assumption that all human ills are solvable by wholly human programs and human self-mastery rather than a reliance on God’s grace, mercy, and salvation. It can also result in a worldview where the manipulation of things and people supplant contemplation and an authentic interpretation of a thing or person’s meaning and proper end as intended by God.

  • The IB mission statement must be interpreted with mental reservation. The IB Mission element which states, “other people, with their differences, may also be right” must be interpreted as “other people may actually be right about some things” or “other people may be closer to the truth than I am on this matter.” Such a proposition is always worthy of consideration and determination; whether or not there are “differences” involved is irrelevant. Assuming that “differences” provide privileged access to the truth or that there are multiple truths so that others can also be right at the same time risks descent into intellectual cowardice and relativism. There is no room for relativism in Catholic schools, as their goal involves truth and freedom, and as St. John Paul II stated, “once the truth is denied to human beings, it is pure illusion to try to set them free. Truth and freedom either go together hand in hand or together they perish in misery.”[26] The ardent pursuit of truth, indicative of Catholic education, should lead all to Christ, who is truth incarnate, and not be left to a relativistic mindset for the purpose of inclusivity and collaboration.

  • The Catholic school must expand the limited profile of an IB graduate to fulfill the mission of Catholic education, not just the mission of international-mindedness, to include aspects of the Beatitudes, fruits of the Holy Spirit, and other dispositions advanced in the Bible such as humbleness, gentleness, patience, faithfulness, goodness, self-control, perseverance, godliness, joyfulness, peace, modesty, and love (see Gal 5:22, 2 Peter 1:5 and Eph 4:2).

Principle II: Models Christian communion and identity. A Catholic school is a faith community united in service and fidelity to the local and universal Church. A warm family-oriented climate pervades the school, where employees model faithfulness to Christian truth and service is oriented in Christian love.

  • The Catholic school must ensure that a globalist mindset does not replace the Catholic principle of subsidiarity—to address needs and concerns at the lowest level possible.

  • The Catholic school must ensure its deeper sense of community. More than just globalist humanistic citizens of the world, Catholic schools develop “universal” citizens with an eternal destiny in the communion of saints.

  • The Catholic school must transcend the IB’s limited and errant understanding of community and community service. If this point is missed, it could lead the school to think it is adequately fulfilling its communal function when it simply helps others through secular human aid projects. A Catholic school’s sense of community and service is called to go deeper. As the Church reminds us, “Every human being is called to communion because of his nature which is created in the image and likeness of God. Therefore, within the sphere of biblical anthropology, man is not an isolated individual, but a person: a being who is essentially relational. The communion to which man is called always involves a double dimension, that is to say vertical (communion with God) and horizontal (communion with people).”[27] We do not serve others to be cosmopolitan, politically correct, or impress colleges and potential employers. We bond with others and humbly serve others—always starting with those closest to us and moving outward—because we and they are made in the image and likeness of God.

  • The Catholic school must ensure that its own teacher training[28] in Catholic identity is strong and effective and does not simply cede teacher training to the extensive IB requirements.

Principle III: Encounter Christ in prayer, scripture and sacrament.  Catholic education, rooted in Christ, is continually fed and stimulated by Him in the frequent experience of prayer, scripture, and the Church’s liturgical and sacramental tradition.[29]

  • The Catholic school, interfacing with IB, must increase its spiritual elements explicitly, given that IB has removed religion from its mission.

Principle IV: Integrally forms the human person. A Catholic school harmoniously forms student’s bodies, minds, hearts, and souls in an environment where there is no separation between time for learning and time for formation.

  • As with the AP test, the IB tests are such high-stakes affairs that they can drain the joy from learning and limit it to the intellectual and to the testable. More holistic Catholic education also teaches things which cannot be easily measured or tested or translated to academic credit. To do this requires an academic atmosphere characterized by flexibility, freedom, discovery, and awareness that enkindles a love for truth wherever it might be found, especially if it manifests itself in un-testable glory.

  • The Catholic school must ensure the well-rounded education of the student, not just a specific focus on how to apply knowledge to “novel situations for which there are no ready-made answers.”[30]

  • The Catholic school must ensure that students continue to grow in physical ability and skill, since the last two years of the Diploma program heavily emphasize the acquisition of academic content along with sociological projects.

  • The Catholic school must ensure the teaching and practice of Catholic social teaching, specifically the dignity of the person as made in the image and likeness of God—and not the dignity of the person simply because he has the ability to think and make his own choices and establish his own community. The Catholic school will teach the right to life and the sanctity of marriage and the family.

Principle V: Imparts a Christian understanding of the world. A Catholic school critically and systematically imparts a Christian vision of the world, of life, of culture, and of history, ordering the whole of human culture to the news of salvation. It also ensures the illumination of all knowledge with the light of faith and allows formation to become living, conscious, and active.

Two specific IB areas need to be addressed: literature selection and the Theory of Knowledge Course.

Literature selection: In any high school literature course, the IB requires that roughly half of all works taught must come from a prescribed list of authors (any work from an author can be selected). This list is large enough that a savvy and well-formed Catholic educator, who knows the works and authors to emphasize and avoid, can piece together an acceptable curriculum.

  • A Catholic IB school should carefully study and implement the Newman Society’s Catholic Curriculum Standards for Language Arts[31] and “Policy Guidance Related to Literature and the Arts in Catholic Education” in its program.

Theory of Knowledge (TOK) Course: This is the keystone IB course which attempts to unify the IB diploma curriculum, and it is the only course of study that all IB Diploma students must follow.[32] It is a general overview of epistemological theories of how humans come to know anything. It is a type of secular metaphysics course which raises fundamental philosophical questions about truth, meaning, certainty, relativism, reality, theology, morality, freewill, freedom, perception, logic, language, and a host of other philosophical and theological concerns. Significantly, this is all done in an ostensibly neutral way, which simply lists claims and counterclaims for each critical element while avoiding a position on the truthfulness or accuracy of the claims.

This is a particularly dangerous and presumptive approach and can pose a grave threat to the intellectual and spiritual lives of students, who may not be in a position to adequately process and assess philosophical conundrums and crises which humanity has been debating for centuries. The material may be too weighty to be adequately digested by some teen minds. The dangerous combination of being overwhelming, oversimplified, and unresolved can lead to confusion, overconfidence, or despair. Ideas which students are not yet equipped to process on their own can risk leaving them adrift in a sea of relativism, rather than anchored in reality.

Natural philosophy requires a dynamic union with faith in order to purify it and liberate it from presumption and despair.[33] In many cases the Catholic Church has provided definitive answers to these questions through centuries of reflection using both reason and revelation. Clear Catholic presentation on these topics is absolutely critical. In reality there is no neutral position, as every textbook or instructor presents a course through a particular worldview or lens, and a Catholic curriculum demands that its courses be taught from a Catholic worldview.

When one tries to be everything to all people, one can be nothing to anyone—a truth that is evident in the presentation of the Ethics and Religious Ways of Knowing (WOK) sections. The morality subsection of the TOK course bends to proportionalism and consequentialism, inferring that the use of a deontological system of rules is backward—thus the following of the Ten Commandments as one of many ethical systems is inferred as an unadvanced way of knowing. It is also suggested that morality has many “matrices,” all of which can be correct depending upon your point of view.

According to one of the TOK textbooks, “It is not easy to know where to draw the line between one’s self and the groups we identify with… It is in this sense that we recognize that while there are multiple views on nearly all issues of importance—morality being central to our thought just now—no one can decide for you what is right and what is wrong no matter how tight the community bond is.” The very humanist view of morality is evidenced here, “At the very least, we can give our best thinking to important issues and one way to do this is to continue to ask questions of ourselves, thereby revising, rejecting, or reaffirming our own moral views.”[34]

It is the responsibility of Catholic educators to present cogent, compelling, and lived answers to the greatest of life’s questions, such as when discussing the difference between intelligent design of creation and the theory of evolution. Unfortunately, in one TOK text a faith-based answer to this type of discussion is met with incredulity:

The fundamental flaw in this argument is that a designer must logically be more complex than his or her design—a proposition which also needs explaining. Despite this, this line of thinking survives in what is known as ‘intelligent design’—proposed as an alternative explanation to evolution. Unfortunately for the ‘theory’, intelligent design amounts to little more than an admission of ignorance when faced with a phenomenon that is not understood. Most of the favourite examples (e.g. blood clotting mechanisms, the structure of the bacterial flagellum, the functionality of the eye) used by the advocates of intelligent design have been shown to have credible origins and developmental pathways through evolutionary processes (italics not in the original).[35]

To the contrary, Catholic educators are not neutral or disinterested spectators about these topics or the morality of these issues in the lives of their students. Teachers must be both passionate about the truths they discover and about the freedom and responsibility of their students to engage with these truths with growing independence. It is the student’s responsibility to probe and test the insights presented in their classes in their own lives. Students are ultimately free to reject the truths and reality which confront them, but teachers must in charity and freedom provoke the confrontations with reality whose ultimate source is Christ, the Word—the Logos—and Truth incarnate.

Catholic schools should heed Pope Leo XIII, who warned, “we must avoid at all costs those unfortunate schools where religious beliefs are indifferently admitted with equal treatment, as if, in the things that regard God and divine affairs, it matters little to have or not to have the right doctrine, or to embrace truth or error.”[36] Secular TOK courses are deeply prone to this danger. Catholic IB schools must do all they can to counter it.

Therefore, if choosing to use the IB program:

  • The Catholic school must ensure that the TOK teacher is deeply and faithfully trained in Catholic metaphysics and philosophy and has sound theological insight and training. It cannot be left to chance or simply handed off to a person of deep intellect and sincerity; the instructor must possess and be able to powerfully share a deep and felt Catholic intellectual worldview to counter the secularism and relativism saturating TOK texts.

  • The Catholic school must ensure the use of its own supplemental textbooks to present relevant materials and objections from a Catholic philosophical and theological tradition. A Catholic TOK program must ensure that significant readings or insights from Fides et Ratio, Veritatis Splendor, Redemptor Hominis, Dei Filius, and Gaudium et Spes (Part 1, Ch. 1-4) are included when “faith” is discussed as a required “Way of Knowing (WOK).”

  • The Catholic school must ensure that the TOK course does not supplant catechesis and theology courses and must accompany a standard four-year, full-credit Catholic religion regimen. Because of the distinct secular philosophy driving so much of the curriculum, it is essential that the school double down on Catholic instruction, including the teaching, comparison and understanding of Catholic social justice principles, and be even more explicit in its Catholic identity than other schools.

  • The Catholic school must challenge the IB perspective that theology and religious knowing are just other possible ways of knowing. Some texts condescendingly say that religious knowledge should not be rejected out of hand by IB students, as it is theoretically one of many possible ways of knowing that some may find helpful. This is a far cry from a Catholic understanding of theology as the queen of sciences.

  • The Catholic school must ensure that its teachers are prepared to counter the relativism which saturates TOK texts with clear teaching that the universe is human-friendly and was made for humanity. Reality is not unknowable or a trick of uncaring nature (materialist assumption) or of a god who wants to fool us.

  • The Catholic school must be aware that the relativism which informs the TOK course is also present in the critical pedagogy and constructivist elements required by the IB program. Such ideologies are founded on the notion that reality is a product of the mind or of the culture, and by changing the culture we can change reality and the truth. The IB program celebrates, “Teaching and learning in the IB celebrates the many ways people work together to construct meaning and make sense of the world. Through the interplay of asking, doing and thinking, this constructivist approach leads toward open, democratic classrooms.”[37]

  • The Catholic school must ensure that the “Areas of Knowledge” of religion and ethics, subsets of the TOK course, are not taught from secular textbooks but from the Catholic perspective, as incorporated in a traditional Catholic world religion class or Catholic morality course and based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

 

Denise Donohue, Ed.D., is Director of the Catholic Education Honor Roll at The Cardinal Newman Society.

Dan Guernsey, Ed.D., is Senior Fellow at The Cardinal Newman Society and principal of a diocesan K-12 Catholic school.

 

[1] See https://www.ibo.org/about-the-ib/ (accessed on June 12, 2020).

[2] See https://www.ibo.org/country/US/ (accessed on June 12, 2020).

[3] “International Baccalaureate: Guided by a Mission” at https://www.newsweek.com/insights/best-usas-ib-accredited-schools-2016 (accessed on June 12, 2020).

[4] See https://www.ibo.org/programmes/find-an-ib-school (accessed on June 12, 2020).

[5] See https://www.ibo.org/benefits/learner-profile/ (accessed on June 12, 2020). See also Bastian, S., Kitching, J., & Sims, R., Theory of Knowledge, 2nd Ed. (Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 2014) 11. 

[6] See https://www.ibo.org/programmes/find-an-ib-school (accessed on June 12, 2020).

[7] John White, “The International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme in U.S. Catholic High Schools: An Answer to the Church’s Call to Global Solidarity,” Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice (Vol. 15, No. 2, March 2012) 179-206 at https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ969995.pdf (accessed on June 12, 2020).

[8] While the philosophy of the IB program as articulated within its Standards and Practices suggests the use of a “range and variety of strategies” and the use of differentiated instruction to meet student needs (see https://www.ibo.org/globalassets/publications/become-an-ib-school/programme-standards-and-practices-en.pdf), Section A: Philosophy: Standard A, 3 (c) for the Primary Year Program states “The school is committed to a constructivist inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning that promotes inquiry and the development of critical-thinking skills.” The professional instruction webinar series titled Strengthening programme implementation: Collaborative practice (2016) advances that a school commits to a constructivist approach to teaching and learning. See slide “Action Plan, A: Philosophy: The school’s educational beliefs and values reflect IB philosophy. 3c. The school is committed to a constructivist, inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning that promotes inquiry and the development of critical-thinking skills” at https://www.ibo.org/programmes/ib-world-school-webinars/ (accessed on June 12, 2020). The middle school and Diploma Program build on this constructivist approach with required collaborative, action-oriented, community-based projects.

[9] Kirschner, P.A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R.E., “Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist discovery, problem-based, experiential, and inquiry-based teaching,” Educational Psychologist 41(2) (2006) 75-86.

[10] Eggen, P. and Kauchak, D., Learning & teaching: Research-based methods (6th ed.) (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2012).

[11] Eggen and Kauchak (2012) 313.

[12] “Constructivism” at https://www.learning-theories.com/constructivism.html#contributors (accessed on June 12, 2020).

[13] See Gerard O’Shea, Educating in Christ: A Practical Handbook for Developing the Catholic Faith from Childhood to Adolescence (Brooklyn, NY: Angelico Press, 2018) 82-85.

[14] O’Shea (2018) 83.

[15] See Saint John Paul II, Fides et Ratio (1998) 82.

[16] U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, National Directory for Catechesis (Washington, DC: USCCB, 2005) 96.

[17] See O’Shea (2018), Chapter 13 for a discussion of effective and ineffective instructional approaches to use when infusing the Catholic faith into subject areas.

[18] O’Shea (2018) 102-103.

[19] “Resources and Support,” Programme standards and practices (2014) at https://www.ibo.org/globalassets/publications/become-an-ib-school/programme-standards-and-practices-en.pdf (accessed on June 12, 2020).

[20] “Resources and Support,” Programme standards and practices (2014).

[21] Catechism of the Catholic Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993) 1894.

[22] Programme standards and practices (2014).

[23] Catechism of the Catholic Church (1993) 1894.

[24] The Cardinal Newman Society, Principles of Catholic Identity in Education Overview (2017) at https://cardinalnewmansociety.org/principles-catholic-identity-education/overview/

[25] Saint Paul VI, Gravissimum Educationis (1965) 8. 

[26] Saint John Paul II (1998) 90.

[27] Congregation for Catholic Education, Educating Together in Catholic Schools: A Shared Mission Between Consecrated Persons and the Lay Faithful (2007) 8.

[28] See https://cardinalnewmansociety.org/principles-catholic-identity-education/faculty-staff-service/.

[29] Saint John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis (1979) supra note 39, at 59.

[30] International Baccalaureate, Theory of Knowledge (2nd Ed) (2015) 8.

[31] The Cardinal Newman Society, Catholic Curriculum Standards for English/Language Arts 7-12 (2016) at https://cardinalnewmansociety.org/catholic-curriculum-standards/englishlanguage-arts-7-12/.

[32] Theory of Knowledge (2nd Ed) 7.

[33] St. Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio (1998) 75-76.

[34] Theory of Knowledge (2nd Ed) 302.

[35] Theory of Knowledge (2nd Ed) 321. .

[36] See http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/it/letters/documents/hf_l-xiii_let_18890719_e-giunto.html (accessed on June 12, 2020).

[37] This quote originally came from “What is an IB education?” (2013) 4 at https://www.thinkib.net/leadership/page/22536/a-note-on-constructivism (accessed on June 12, 2020). The updated version at https://www.ibo.org/globalassets/what-is-an-ib-education-2017-en.pdf eliminates this claim yet retains the emphasis on critical pedagogy and addressing real-world problems through educational projects.

Analysis of Secular Character Development Programs and Materials

The following is part of The Cardinal Newman Society’s series of analyses of secular materials and programs used in Catholic education. Such materials and programs must be carefully evaluated to determine if their underlying philosophy, content, and activities are aligned to the mission of Catholic education and, if used, what adaptations might be needed.

The Newman Society’s “Policy Guidance Related to Secular Materials and Programs in Catholic Education” offers a framework for such evaluation and is the basis for this particular analysis.

Overview

By their very nature, schools form character; as long as schools have existed, there have been character development programs and materials. Many are designed for public schools and are therefore secular in orientation.[1]

Because public schools cannot directly address the theological foundations of virtue, morality, and character, they primarily rely on cultural, psychological, or philosophical assumptions to ground their efforts. Unfortunately, many programs and materials designed primarily for public schools have been tainted by atheistic humanism or relativism. Other resources are more promising, based on concepts of natural law and a traditional Western understanding of the human person without explicitly teaching traditional Christian norms.

The latter approach may be a good choice for public schools seeking stronger, more thoughtful, and more compelling character education. However, Catholic schools should be wary of using such resources; if used, they should be adapted significantly.

Programs and materials written from a “morally neutral,” purely humanistic, or relativistic perspective should only be used after an extensive integration of Catholic values and morals to make them suitable for Catholic school use. Such adaptations will help counter the modern culture’s assumptions that humanity, on its own, can figure out and achieve human perfection and excellence without God’s guidance and grace. Such a humanistic sense is antithetical to the fundamental mission of Catholic education.

St. John Paul II reminds us that, “In Christ and through Christ man has acquired full awareness of his dignity, of the heights to which he is raised, of the surpassing worth of his own humanity, and of the meaning of his existence.”[2] In a Catholic school, any attempt to discuss humanity, morality, and goodness without final reference to Christ, who fully reveals man to himself, is unthinkable. The very reason we have Catholic schools is to address these critical issues in the fullness of truth and with the guidance of Christ’s teaching and grace. To import a secular program which a priori was forced to surrender these truths to suit an international or public-school restriction is inadvisable.

One of the critical functions of a Catholic school is to impart a Christian understanding of the world, which allows students to interpret and give order to human culture in the light of faith.[3] Unadapted use of secular programs and materials related to human formation violates this principle of Catholic education. The Catholic school is called to transmit an understanding of humanity that is inspired by Catholic wisdom and scriptural insight. This understanding is not meant to remain theoretical but is meant to be put into practice in a student’s life, so as to provide for the integration of culture with faith and faith with living. Human wisdom is not enough in considering issues of humanity and human excellence; divine wisdom must also be carefully considered and applied. Secular efforts which are limited to defining human beings through their relationships with other human beings and with nature do not offer a complete answer to the unavoidable, fundamental question of, “Who is man?”

For Catholic schools, all routes must always explicitly end with Christ. This is because all human values find their fulfillment and unity in Christ. This awareness expresses the centrality of the human person in the educational project of the Catholic school, strengthens its educational endeavor, and renders it fit to form strong personalities.[4]

A strong personality and a mature faith will be able to integrate both natural and supernatural elements related to human nature and activity.

It is true that natural law cases can be made for things such as justice, loyalty, compassion, marriage between a man and woman, chastity, and honesty. It is also true that some of the writings of Catholic thinkers such as St. John Paul II can be marshalled to assist with natural law arguments. However, the strength of the thought of St. John Paul and the fullness of an understanding of these things cannot be presented without reference to the divine. John Paul beautifully proclaims, “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”[5] 

Even if natural law and Christian value-based programs are inspired by Catholic thought or the philosophical or anthropological insights of St. John Paul II, to attempt to convey such teaching without uniting faith and reason ultimately obfuscates these critical teachings. Catholic schools must unleash the entirety and integrity of human wisdom, including the Church’s inspired wisdom, in their efforts to equip students to attain and practice heroic virtue in the post-modern world.

Similarly, attempts to protect and promote human dignity cannot be fully advanced without grounding such dignity in a transcendent and objective source. Humanity simply affirming its own dignity does not guarantee that dignity. There has to be something outside of humanity guaranteeing this dignity and the freedom which it protects from hostile forces. Vatican II affirms that it is God’s revelation which discloses and affirms the dignity of the human person in its full dimensions.[6] Human dignity is ultimately anchored in man’s status as being made in the image of God and being redeemed by Him through the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ. St. John Paul II’s sense of human anthropology is built on the centrality of this notion which inspires his teaching, “God so loved the human being that, in the Incarnation, human flesh was divinized. The act of the Incarnation, in which the eternal Word of God took on human flesh, reveals the ‘greatness, dignity, and value’ of the human being.”[7]

Catholic schools must ensure that their students fully appreciate that they, and all whom they meet and serve, are made in God’s image and redeemed by Him. The fullness of this teaching can help them better understand their individual significance and the significance and dignity of all others as well. Simply teaching them that man has dignity de facto is not enough to withstand the massive and complex assaults on human dignity taking place all around them.

While good-willed secular character and dignity programs fight the good fight as best they can within the limitations placed on them by national and international government entities, Catholic schools must use their freedom to dig much deeper in preparing their students for the intensity of the battles ahead. They must assert their autonomy and the broader worldview such autonomy currently allows. They must not pre-emptively surrender or silence themselves by attempting to simply ground morality and dignity on secular grounds. This is sandy soil which cannot support the edifice of human dignity, which must be built on Christ. Efforts limited to natural reason alone are not only unfaithful to Catholicism’s broader insights but are also destined to fail if left on their own. Pope Leo XIII warns about strictly secular youth formation efforts:

Let nobody easily persuade himself that piety can be separated from instruction with impunity. In fact, if in no period of life, whether in public or private affairs, can religion be dispensed with, much less can that inexperienced age, full of life, yet surrounded by so many corrupt temptations, be excused from religious obligations. Whosoever, therefore, organizes education so as to neglect any point of contact with religion is destroying beauty and honesty at their very roots, and instead of helping the country, is preparing for the deterioration and destruction of the human race. For, once God is eliminated, who can make young people realize their duties or redeem those who have deviated from the right path of virtue and fallen into the abyss of vice?[8]

Recommendations

  • The Catholic school ought to first consider specifically Catholic character-formation programs and materials before looking to secular school programs that do not openly teach Catholic doctrine and ethics, even when claiming to be consistent with Catholic teaching.

  • The Catholic school that chooses a secular character-formation program or material must ensure that additional Catholic resources are explicitly and intentionally integrated into the course’s standards, lesson plans, and curriculum.

  • The Catholic school must ensure that the concept of human dignity taught in the program is rooted in man’s status of having been made in the image and likeness of God and in the incarnation, passion, and resurrection of Christ.

  • The Catholic school must seek first to emphasize the timeless and piercing insights from Scripture, Church teaching, and great Catholic philosophers and saints and attempt to avoid anecdotal and story-based activities that eventually become dated and lend themselves to meandering opinions of youth.

  • The Catholic school must be aware that, without firm theology and philosophy, such programs may not meet the needs of well-formed Catholic students. Whenever possible, older students should work directly with Scripture and original Church documents and encyclicals.

 

Denise Donohue, Ed.D., is Director of the Catholic Education Honor Roll at The Cardinal Newman Society.

Dan Guernsey, Ed.D., is Senior Fellow at The Cardinal Newman Society and principal of a diocesan K-12 Catholic school.

 

[1] There are numerous, widely varied programs. By way of example, but without endorsement, these include such programs as Alive to the World, an international character-building program; Character Counts, used in public schools across the U.S.; the Center for the 4th and 5th Rs, which promotes moral virtue; the Human Dignity Curriculum of World Youth Alliance; and the Heart2Heart program of Illinois Right to Life.

[2] St. Pope John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis (1979) 11 at http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_04031979_redemptor-hominis.html (accessed on June 12, 2020).

[3] The Cardinal Newman Society, Principles of Catholic Identity in Education Overview (2017) at https://cardinalnewmansociety.org/principles-catholic-identity-overview/ (accessed on June 12, 2020).

[4] Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School on the Threshold of the Third Millennium (2002) 9.

[5] St. John Paul II, Fides et Ratio (1998) introduction.

[6] Pope Paul VI, Dignitatis Humanae (1965) at http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651207_dignitatis-humanae_en.html (accessed on June 12, 2020).

[7] John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, supra note 39, at 59.

[8] Pope Leo XIII, Militantis Ecclesiae (1897) at http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_01081897_militantis-ecclesiae.html (accessed on June 12, 2020 6/12/20).

Good Seed: Standards for Christian Anthropology Released

Two weeks ago, on a video call from Rome to Florida, Dr. Joan Kingsland and Dr. Denise Donohue wrapped up a most important project: educational standards for grades K-8 based on St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body teachings. The Standards for Christian Anthropology provide a solid basis for incrementally transmitting a vision of the human person according to God’s loving design.

But the significance of the completion date, May 18, did not strike the authors until later. It was the 100th anniversary of the birth of John Paul II!

The new standards’ simple yet robust framework provides the guidance that has been sought by educators for some time now. The Standards for Christian Anthropology support the curricula published by Ruah Woods Press and complement the Catholic Curriculum Standards published by The Cardinal Newman Society, which cover English language arts, history, scientific topics, and mathematics. The new standards—a collaboration of the two organizations—situate the person in proper context as son or daughter of God, heir to the Eternal Kingdom, and brother or sister to all. Anthony Esolen, Catholic writer and social commentator, said, “If you don’t get man right, you don’t get education right.” The Standards for Christian Anthropology lay the groundwork for “getting man right,” a foundation for other subject areas.

Although this work was begun in 2016, its completion was inspired by the most recent document from the Congregation for Catholic Education, Male and Female He Created Them: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education (2019), which addresses the current identity crisis affecting many classrooms today. The Vatican document was generated to present Christian anthropology and to encourage institutions of higher learning and research centers to provide professional development and programs for educators. The Standards for Christian Anthropology are a direct response to this call.

More fundamental than sex ed, Theology of the Body goes deeper, to the heart of personal identity. “It’s a gamechanger for someone to be deeply convinced of their personal self-worth, dignity and purpose, knowing themselves to be infinitely and unconditionally loved by God and called to live in a communion of persons in his image. This self-knowledge includes respecting and revering oneself, others and above all God. It affects the choices made by young people about how they will treat others and expect others to treat them, including in the area of sexuality. It’s a unique, theological approach to Christian anthropology that lays out the pathway to a happy, deeply fulfilled life.” (Introduction to Standards for Christian Anthropology, 2020).

Although these standards were created based on the completed work of Ruah Woods’ ROOTED K-12 curriculum, they also provide guidelines for other publishers and programs. Existing programs might find that their curricula already align to the Standards, or that this would be possible with minor modifications. It is a framework that hopefully will complement already solid religious education standards chosen by Catholic schools and will touch the hearts of young people. Knowing that they are created in the image of the Triune God and are called to live in communion, they will learn that fulfillment comes through a sincere gift-of-self.

View and download the Standards for Christian Anthropology.

Register for an upcoming webinar that will explore the Standards.

For more information, contact Dr. Joan Kingsland (JKingsland@RuahWoods.org) or Dr. Denise Donohue (DDonohue@CardinalNewmanSociety.org).

 

children nature

Questions and Answers on Christian Anthropology Standards

Editor’s Note: We recently asked the authors, Dr. Joan Kingsland and Dr. Denise Donohue, about the new Standards for Christian Anthropology which were released by Ruah Woods Press and The Cardinal Newman Society.

1. What are the Standards for Christian Anthropology?

“Early in his pontificate St. John Paul II offered what he termed an adequate anthropology through 129 talks given during Wednesday audiences that stretched from 1979-1984. These audiences were then published under the title Man and Woman He Created Them. Commonly referred to as St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, these teachings offer a profound vision of the dignity, goodness and worth of the human person. Created in the image of God who is a communion of persons, each person will find fulfillment and happiness, in whatever state of life, through the sincere gift-of-self” (Introduction to Standards for Christian Anthropology, 2020).

These standards, based on St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body teachings, provide a solid basis for transmitting incrementally, K-8, a vision of the human person according to God’s loving design and St. John Paul’s teachings on the human person.

2. What are some of the key concepts that they try to convey?

“In the area of expectations, it’s important to understand that they do not address matters of sexuality through a “frontal approach”. In fact, these are not standards for teaching sexuality as such. Instead, they go deeper, to the foundations of personal identity. It’s a gamechanger for someone to be deeply convinced of their personal self-worth, dignity and purpose, knowing themselves to be infinitely and unconditionally loved by God and called to live in a communion of persons in his image. This self-knowledge includes respecting and revering oneself, others and above all God. It affects the choices made by young people about how they will treat others and expect others to treat them, including in the area of sexuality. It’s a unique, theological approach to Christian anthropology that lays out the pathway to a happy, deeply fulfilled life” (Introduction to Standards for Christian Anthropology, 2020).

Prominent themes extracted from St. John Paul II’s teachings and reflected in the Standards include: Creation as a Gift, Original Solitude, Original Unity, Original Nakedness, Communion of Persons, Gift-of-Self, Body-Soul Unity, Body Reveals the Person, Historical Man – Fall and Redemption, Purity of Heart/Virtue, Vocation, Eschatological Man – Resurrection.

3. Why did you create the Standards for Christian Anthropology?

The Standards were created to assist educators who choose to use the teachings of St. John Paul on the human person with a format that is familiar to them. Many teachers are familiar with standards as a way to focus curriculum to ensure the presentation of specific content; a pathway of sorts. We wanted to create a familiar pathway for those teachers currently using the Ruah Woods curriculum and for any school that might consider incorporating a K-8 component focused on Christian Anthropology within their current Religion program whether they use the Ruah Woods curriculum or any other curriculum.

4. Are they meant to fill a gap in Catholic education that exists today?

In recent years there’s been a surge in the ever-widening gap between the mainstream take on the identity of the human person versus a Christian vision rooted in Sacred Scriptures. Teachers and administrators of Catholic schools across the nation are finding themselves unprepared for the maelstrom of demands and challenges pressing upon them from students, peers, parents and society at large to accommodate their standards to what in fact would be harmful to the true good of their students.

For instance, the most recent document from the Congregation for Catholic Education, Male and Female He Created Them: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education (2019), addresses the current crisis we are seeing of the practice and discussion among young people of “gender transitioning;” the bifurcation of one’s biological sex from one’s gender. This “phenomenon” often begins with the young person (sometimes as young as toddler age) claiming to identify more closely as a person of the opposite biological sex. Some have treated this psycho-sexual disorder with a “wait and watch” approach which has largely resulted with young people resolving their identity with that of their biological sex. More and more we are seeing a radical advocacy, along with political legislation, which demands a “gender affirmation” approach where those guiding the young person are required by law to agree with the disillusionment of the youth and facilitate the gender transition with behavioral modification (i.e., dressing as someone of the opposite sex or using a name or pro-nouns of the opposite sex), the use of hormone blockers to retard the natural biological sexual development of the young person, and even surgical treatments to reconstruct or remove one’s healthy genitalia. The document was generated to present the Church’s position of this “phenomena” in the much broader context of Christian anthropology and to encourage institutions of higher learning and centers of research to provide professional development and programs for educators to help them understand this phenomena and to assist those to whom it affects. Ruah Woods was ideally positioned to respond to this call.

5. Why is it so appropriate that these standards were completed on the 100th anniversary of Pope St. John Paul II’s birth?

The project was actually started some years back by Ruah Woods. I (Joan) took it on when I began working there early in 2016. I (Denise) joined the effort in June of last year, and we worked toward completion thinking it would be last fall.  The project grew, though, from the creation of standards by grade level to that of themes with the inclusion of two additional themes and a glossary. Adjustments were made after reviewer comments all culminating with the conclusion of the document coinciding with St. John Paul II’s 100th birthday. Though it certainly wasn’t planned that we would finish our last edits then, it’s meaningful that a day commemorating the birth of this great saint aligns with the debut of Anthropological Standards based on his teachings. St. John Paul II showed a lot of interest in the youth and spoke to them along the same lines as are found in the Standards.

6. As Catholic educators plan their curriculum for the next academic year and beyond, why should they consider incorporating these standards?

When incorporating these standards beginning in Kindergarten, educators and parents can lay the foundation of concepts and vocabulary that situate man within the rich meaning of an authentic Christian humanity. We have already witnessed how the lives of children and young people are transformed through the assimilation of these teachings. They become convinced of their own self-worth and that of others and their actions begin to show it. They’re kinder and more thoughtful. They become aware of what freedom really means and they become more responsible and focused on achieving what truly brings happiness. It’s heartening to think of the good that can come through the diffusion of these Standards.

7. How do the Standards work together with the Newman Society’s “Catholic Curriculum Standards”?

The Standards for Christian Anthropology complement the Catholic Curriculum Standards published by The Cardinal Newman Society, which cover English language arts, history, scientific topics, and mathematics. The Standards for Christian Anthropology situate the person in proper context as son or daughter of God, heir to the Eternal Kingdom, and brother or sister to all. Anthony Esolen, Catholic writer and social commentator, said, “If you don’t get man right, you don’t get education right.” The Standards for Christian Anthropology lay the groundwork of “getting man right,” a foundation for other subject areas.

8. What’s your hope for young people who are formed by an education that incorporates these standards?

(Answered in 4 above). Two high school students who had only been studying Christian Anthropology for one semester were brought in to give their testimony at a Christian Anthropology in-service for 200 Catholic teachers. The exit survey said it all: overwhelmingly, the witness of these two young people was the highlight for the teachers. These two young people were articulate, confident and optimistic about their futures. They knew who they were as human persons and what makes for happiness. That’s the sort of thing we expect of young people who are being educated in light of the Standards for Christian Anthropology.

9. Anything else you’d like to add?

We would like to add that even though these standards were created based on the completed work of Ruah Woods, they were designed with the intention of providing guidelines for publishers and the writing of other programs. Existing programs might find their curricula already aligns to the Standards, or that this would be possible with minor modifications. It is a framework that we hope will complement already solid religious education standards chosen by Catholic schools.

These Standards are meant to inspire programs that will be transformational, that will touch the hearts of young people and help them form deep convictions about who they are, their self-worth and dignity and that of others. Knowing that they are created in the image of the Triune God and are called to live in communion, they are convinced as well that fulfillment comes through the gift-of-self. St. Augustine likens our life to a sailboat saying that we can afford to forget from where the boat set out, but we cannot forget where we are headed!