Catholic education: "how can we give people the tools to succeed in American without communicating the negative values of North American society?"

National Catholic Reporter, March 29, 1996 by Leslie Wirpsa

Catholic educator's in the United States have never sidestepped cultural diversity. Historically from kindergarten to college, Catholic schools have played a pivotal role in the lives of many ethnic communities in America.

According to Jesuit Fr. Allan Figueroa Deck, who teaches theology at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and directs the National Catholic Council for Hispanic Ministry, "Catholic education became a very important channel for the Americanization of the traditional immigrant groups."

Today, as Deck and many other voices in this special issue concur, the rich diversity of culture, race, ethnicity and class comprising U.S. society presents Catholic institutions of learning with new challenges -- and with unique opportunities for creativity and growth.

The myriad crises confronting U.S. society as a whole are played out in Catholic schools and colleges: Racial discrimination has resulted in backlashes of hatred on campuses; urban violence is just outside -- and sometimes inside -- the portals of inner-city Catholic schools; severe class divisions promise; privileges for a few members of the Catholic community, marginalization for many. The practice of values inherent in Catholic teaching -- compassion, community, justice, love -- is under siege in these forums as it is in the broader social spectrum.

In this context, Catholic educators are learning that they must provide their multicultural, multiracial and multiethnic students with much more than tools of assimilation and knowledge of the Catholic faith.

They are faced, Deck said, with an intriguing question: "How can we provide a good Catholic education to people, give them the tools to succeed in Amenea, without communicating the negative values of North American society?" His answer: Catholic education must become "a means for a creative new way of being American" by "not just helping our students relate to what has been or what is, but also to what can be."

NCR's glimpse at Catholic schools serving multicultural student populations reveals a commitment by many Catholic educators to the cutting-edge process described by Deck. Our writers discovered a daycare center in Los Angeles where single Latina mothers obtain early-childhood education degrees while also providing child care for toddlers; an award-winning elementary school that taps the community values of Hispanic families; a new Jesuit-run high school in the heart of Chicago offering an innovative work-study program for Hispanic youth that makes a traditional Jesuit education both affordable and progressive.

These institutions provide a sample of the way in which many Catholic elementary and middle school educators, working within immigrant, multiethnic and multiracial communities, are forming what Deck calls "articulate Catholics who can contribute to American society, to the direction of the mainstream ... without, succumbing necessarily to the dominant cultural environment."

At the same tame, Catholic, colleges and universities that traditionally served largely Caucasian populations, like Fairfield University in Connecticut, are finding innovative ways to respond to bitter outbreaks of racial and ethnic discrimination. Other schools, like the University of Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, which boasts the largest number of minority students of any U.S. Jesuit university, is educating topnotch young adults who possess a powerful sense that, as professionals and potential leaders in society, they must "give back" the privileges granted to them.

From daycare centers to university corridors, this generation of Catholic, students and educators is forging a new set of relationships between faith, intellectual development and professional vocations based on the deepest Catholic values: respect for the human person and solidarity with the marginalized.