Creeping public schoolism has done irreparable damage to the formerly in-your-face Catholic schools. I attended a parochial grammar school in New Haven, CT. One nun out of 26 had set foot in a college classroom. Naturally, she was the only liberal. We were two years minimum ahead of the New Haven Public School kids.
Now savor the full meaning of this. The New Haven Public Superintendent of Schools was a woman named Marion Sheridan, whom I later had the privilege of getting to know. By the time I attended the Jesuit prep school, she had retired. She was as liberal as I am conservative. She was a founder and proprietor of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. When she found that I was taking two summer courses at a public summer school that she ran, she told the astronomy teacher to have me come to her office on the first day of class. Smartass even at 14, I went, introduced myself and asked, since this was the very first day I had darkened the door of a public school (too old for summer camp, too young to be left completely on my own by factory-working parents, i.e. they wanted babysitting), what I had done to deserve the honor of being called to the principal's office after my very first and utterly uneventful class. Dr. Sheridan said: I understand that you are the one who goes to the Jesuit prep school. I am always looking for ways to improve our schools and the Jesuits are very good at what they do. Would you mind spending time with me each week so I can learn from you how they succeed? We spent a lot of time together. Years later, armed with a driver's license, I used to leave my summer job at the railroad, pick her up and drive her home to the suburb where both of us lived by then just for the pleasure of her company and to get a better insider's look at the degeneration of public schooling. She was an honest and wonderful woman and despised her successors and their "educational philosophy."
Marion Sheridan was wonderfully educated, thoroughly competent and utterly dedicated. My grammar school drawing its students from families of public officials, professionals, factory workers and public housing residents was a full two years ahead of the New Haven Public Schools EVEN under Marion Sheridan. I grew up in a three-family house owned by my factory-working parents. We rented the first floor apartment to a Lutheran family whose daughter was one of my pals and of the same age and who attended the neighborhood public school (as good as any in town). She was two years' behind us at the same grade level in spite of being quite intelligent. Public schools are a crime.
Now, since "Catholic" schools are imitating public school "standards" and even "certification" (the guarantee of professional pedagogical inbreeding and incompetence), they too have become ignorance factories. When my wife's school takes in parochial school transfer kids, they need re-education camp to get phonics and competent math levels just like the public school transfer kids. The homeschooled kids are generally at or above grade level on the same entrance qualification tests taken by each new student.
The sole remaining advantages of diocesan or parish Catholic schools is the ability to easily expel bad actors, to fire bad teachers and the fact that some form of religion is taught although usually a Kumbaya sort which is probably worse than useless and worse than none at all. What is left of the parochial school I once attended taught my eldest on at least five occasions (Kindergarten and 1st Grade) that Christ did not know He was God at the time of His crucifixion. I also do not want to have to waste time telling my kids that their Catholic school teachers mean well but are rank idiots who would not know Catholicism if it jumped up and bit them.
BTW, not only am I sending my youngest child to the Catholic school which the parents here created, but I have another at Hillsdale Academy which is not Catholic but is very good and does not offend. That ordinary diocesan and parochial schools are still a smidgeon better than gummint skewels does not mean I will abandon my kids to such schools. Homeschooling would be a considerably better alternative than most any public or parochial school.
Finally, the Lancastrian or 19th Century industrial model for organizing schools is over, finished, done for. The kids have figured out that it is nothing more than the lazy school's method of crowd control and that it has little to do with actual education. Even at the Jesuit prep school I attended, we had 43 kids per class, very capable teachers and a good library of our own as well as that available at the university on the same campus. Homework is what caused most of us to actually learn. Using Latin as an example, four years were required. In senior year, my homeroom translated the entire Aeneid (ca. 360 pages of grammatically difficult poetry). In junior year, we translated many of Cicero's orations (Against Gaius Verres, Against the Catilinian Conspirators, etc., turgidly complicated lawyer's grammar, never saying anything once when it could be said three different ways). That was in addition to Fr. Henle's book for the appropriate year. We were also required to learn Greek for at least two years and a modern language for two or three.
I have never seen a public school system even on the Connecticut "Gold Coast" which is at all competent. Greenwich and others have taxpayers fund a high school year in Europe for the pampered darlings.
Try an experiment. Go to a homeschooler conference as though you were considering it. Meet the parents and the leaders. Look at the textbooks being sold. Listen to the lectures. See an important part of the future. See a part of your competition. So long as public schools last, they will experience some improvement by the competition we offer to your students' families for the future of their kids.
Unless and until, the ordinary Catholic schools go back to their origins in militant Catholicism and no compromises with teacher's unions, I want them closed along with the public schools. What I do not want to subsidize with my taxes, I do not want to subsidize with my Church contributions or tuition payments. In fact, it is better to keep the virus of educational credentialism and liberalism in the gummint skewels lest Catholics be confused.
BTW, I now live in a very rural town of 300 next to the town of 1,000 where the local public schools are. Local good friends include the school board chairman and some other members and some teachers but they don't get to educate my kids subject to the standards of Chicago atheists and other liberals.
Wow! I don't mean this as anything but an observation, not a flame war...but, Fr Hesburgh is generally regarded in academia as one of the finest Catholic scholars ever to grace a campus of higher learning; besides, he was probably dutifully following the general parameters set forth in the educational dictates of Vatican II. Please describe to me the general differences between fundamental Roman Catholicism and the protestant Evangelical set because I don't see much sunlight between the two (discounting certain liturgical domains such as Marian philosophy, naturally).
I have a sister who has taught in Catholic schools for 33 years...all of the faculty there are extremely qualified. The school is an elementary and middle school, and the students usually attend the Catholic high school in another part of town. I have had many friends graduate from the high school and some went on to professional careers, which (knowing them and their ability to con their parents) I doubt would have happened if they had been homeschooled.
Dear BlackElk,
"Now, since 'Catholic' schools are imitating public school "standards" and even "certification" (the guarantee of professional pedagogical inbreeding and incompetence),..."
That's true more often than not, now. When we were trying to figure out what to do with our older son for elementary school, I was appalled at how far the local Catholic schools had fallen. This was especially true at the nearest elementary school, that was literally in the middle of a major dumbing-down project.
These schools are still better than any of the public elementary schools in the region, but not by much than the better public schools (although by lightyears better than the middling and poor public schools).
However, at the high school level, not all of our local Catholic schools have gone that way. My own alma mater has the temerity to hire large numbers of faculty who have degrees in the fields that they teach, rather than education degrees. We're considering the school for my older son, now (he's in 7th grade, homeschooled throughout). We went to the Open House a few weeks ago, and one of the handouts they gave us was a list of the faculty members.
I was delighted that only about 20% of the faculty have any sort of education degree of any kind, and only three faculty members have only education degrees. As well, many of the folks with only education degrees work primarily in the school administration, not as full-time teachers.
This very excellent private high school puts very little faith, apparently, in NEA-credentialling.
However, unlike Catholic schools of yore, all of the teachers are degreed, the majority with at least masters degrees, and quite a few with terminal degrees.
They have this insane idea that folks who teach, say, math should have a math degree, or folks who teach, say, chemistry should have a chemistry degree. Bizarre. ;-)
Here's a fun fact: I graduated from this school in 1978. Over 15% of the faculty at the school today were already teaching when I was there from 1974 - 1978. About another 15% are alumni. My sons were a little surprised at how many folks knew me, and how many folks I knew. LOL.
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