Needed: the vision thing; Rethinking the mission of Catholic primary schools

Commonweal, April 9, 2004 by Maurice Timothy Reidy

The most intriguing alternative is in the early stages of implementation in New York, and one hopes it is adopted elsewhere. John J. Piderit, SJ, the former president of Loyola University of Chicago, has helped found two after-school programs that target Catholic students in public schools. The Catholic Enrichment Academy, as it is known, provides religious instruction and homework assistance to elementary-school students in the Bronx and in Beacon, New York. The program meets for three hours a day and is staffed by teachers trained in religious education. The goal is to provide both a much-needed service--after-school care--and a more comprehensive alternative to existing catechetical programs. The program only began last year, so its effectiveness is still unclear. But it is potentially an affordable way to reach a larger number of Catholic students. "My goal is to increase the market share without an investment in bricks and mortar," Piderit told me.

This kind of experimentation is, unfortunately, too rare. It shouldn't be. Finding ways to reach more Catholic students should be a top priority for church leaders. Before any experimentation can begin, though, the church must set clear and realistic goals for its school system. At a conference at Boston College last summer, George J. Henry, the superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of St. Louis, called for a Fourth Plenary Council, to determine where Catholic schools are headed. That makes sense. A vision is needed to drive planning, just as it was in 1884. That vision may differ for urban and suburban schools. The important thing is that educators ask hard questions about the effectiveness of the current system.

As it stands now, the Catholic Church cannot achieve all it has set out to do. It cannot educate the poor and pass on the faith and serve as a corrective to the public school system. "Without a significant input of funds from new sources," Hallinan writes, "Catholic schools will continue to close." Some hope those funds will come from vouchers. But it seems unlikely that enough states will approve of voucher programs to make a difference. Even in Cleveland, one of the few cities to adopt vouchers, the number of students who attend Catholic schools has not changed dramatically, according to the superintendent of that district. What's more, while the Bush administration has talked about the importance of school choice, it seems unwilling to spend the kind of political capital needed to make it a reality.

Parish schools are not in danger of disappearing tomorrow, or even ten years from now. On that most experts agree. That is a good thing--these schools not only provide a solid education, they foster a communal ethic that offers a much-needed counterbalance to the larger culture's strident individualism. Yet it seems clear that with time the influence of parish schools will wane. That is unfortunate. But perhaps things could be different if, like those educators forty years ago, we thought imaginatively about the problem. "If the energy and resourcefulness and dedication that has gone into building up our present Catholic educational institution is used to solve the new problems presented by our time," Ryan once wrote, "these institutions may be transformed in ways as yet unforeseen and undreamed of."