Classical Catholic education on the rise
Jay Boren, headmaster of St. Benedict Elementary in Natick, Mass., writes in First Things of the growing appeal of a Christ-centered classical Catholic education.
“Though the classical curriculum is a distinguishing marker for a classical school, the faith life of the school must be vibrant as well. A Catholic school must be unapologetically Catholic. All truth learned in every subject must be ordered towards the cardinal Truth—Jesus Christ. If Christ is not the center of the day, then the entire enterprise is lost. Learning should inspire children to contemplate the goodness of God’s creation. If it falls short of doing so, then it has abandoned the goal of Catholic education and ceases to be an institution devoted to the formation and evangelization of its students.”
Read the whole thing.
Catholic school adopts classical curriculum
Everything old is new again.
St. Michael School, a grammar school in Connecticut, is implementing a Catholic classical curriculum which emphasizes Latin, classic literature, and the history of Western civilization.
It will be the only Catholic school with such a curriculum in the Diocese of Norwich, “but an increasing number of Catholic schools across the country have made widespread changes to their curriculum with the debate over Common Core and some parents seeking a return to more traditional Catholic instruction,” according to TheDay.com.
Principal Doris Messina said in a press release: “Students will study the great ideas of Western Civilization. Democracy, science, art, and literature will provide the impetus for understanding how the past influences and unifies our culture. Great classical literature and primary sources will be utilized, allowing students to discern the original intent of the writers and the truths of the documents.”
Politico: Catholic Church eyes ‘game-changing’ school choice plan.
A number of Catholic education proponents are meeting with Republican legislators and the White House in hopes of helping to create a federal tax credit scholarship plan they believe would put Catholic education in reach for many parents who simply can’t currently afford it, reports Politico.
Such legislation could have a massive impact on Catholic schools.
“We see this as game-changing,” said Greg Dolan, associate director for public policy for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Catholic Education.
Catholic universities tackling the pressing social problem of… ‘whiteness’?
Loyola University Chicago will continue offering a program limited to those who self-identify as white, according to a report at The College Fix.
The three year old course titled “Ramblers Analyzing Whiteness” is described as an “’affinity space on campus for self-identified white students’ who are seeking to ‘become anti-racist, anti-supremacist White allies.’”
According to the College Fix report, “[w]hile students who join the program must be ‘white-identified,’ students who are also biracial or multiracial are permitted to attend as long as they identify as white….”
The Loyola program declares that there is no single definition of white, but instead notes that “whiteness” is “a socially constructed category that is normalized within a system of privilege.”
Meanwhile, The College Fix also reports that Fairfield University Associate Professor Kris Sealey spoke at a Fairfield-hosted diversity conference for Jesuit college employees in which she urged students to devote time to solving the “problem that is whiteness.”
“So more and more, the courses that I teach on race have become courses in which I expect my students to engage in the hegemonic power of whiteness,” Sealy said.
Leave a Reply