It is a familiar drill in nearly all of the nation’s Roman Catholic school systems: a new alarm every few years over falling enrollment; church leaders huddling over what to do; parents rallying to save their schools. And then the bad news.
When the Diocese of Brooklyn last week proposed closing 14 more elementary schools, it was not the deepest but only the latest of a thousand cuts suffered, one tearful closing announcement at a time, as enrollment in the nation’s Catholic schools has steadily dropped by more than half from its peak of five million 40 years ago.
But recently, after years of what frustrated parents describe as inertia in the church hierarchy, a sense of urgency seems to be gripping many Catholics who suddenly see in the shrinking enrollment a once unimaginable prospect: a country without Catholic schools.
From the ranks of national church leaders to the faithful in the pews, there are dozens of local efforts to forge a new future for parochial education by rescuing the remaining schools or, if need be, reinventing them. The efforts are all being driven, in one way or another, by a question in a University of Notre Dame task force report in 2006: “Will it be said of our generation that we presided over the demise” of Catholic schools?
Seems to me that there are a lot of problems facing Catholic schools. First is that most of those schools were meant to be neighborhood schools serving the local Catholic communities, and particularly in large cities, the Catholic population has moved out of those neighborhoods. So you have Catholic schools that are 90-95% non-Catholic with no Catholic population within a reasonable distance.
Second, is that during my parents’ day, there was considerable church pressure placed on Catholics sending their children to Catholic schools. That pressure isn’t there these days. With Catholics having the option to utilize other schools, if the local schools are good ones parents ask themselves is it worth the tuition to send my child to a private school if the education is not appreciably better than the neighborhood public school.
Finally, in many cases the actual physical plant of the Catholic schools are not in great shape – and their simply isn’t the money to upgrade them. Dioceses are strapped for funds – particularly if they have been hit by lawsuits, and there just aren’t the diocesan funds to invest in the schools. If these schools are located in depressed areas, the local parishes aren’t in much of a position to upgrade the schools – they are often themselves trying to figure out how to keep the lights on and the roof fixed. The current economic crisis isn’t helping things either.
I think particularly urban Catholic schools are in big trouble. We’ve had a number of them close in my local diocese precisely for the reasons mentioned above.
Catholic schools may go to way of the smaller military academies. There are now less than 100.
Most Americans don’t value what either institution has to offer.
There are a number of problems. First, Catholic schools initially got their start at a time before there was compulsory free public education. RC nuns, running the schools on a shoe string wrought miracles with their usually impoverished population. The “nun wielding a ruler” became a steriotype of the Catholic schools ability to infuse discipline into a ghetto population. When public schools became compulsory (during the Depression as a well of getting companies to hire adults instead of kids) the Catholic schools became less necessary. Legal challenges regarding corporal punishment made it impossible to discipline badly behaved children other than kicking them out to the public schools, so again the Catholic schools lost their purpose as a ladder for the underclass.
Catholic schools nowadays are basically ladders for the middle and upper class, as a sort of slightly cheaper private school. The problem there is two fold. First private school parents shop around, and choose private schools on the basis of excellence, less so religion and cost. Second there are now many excellent Protestant schools which are equally cheap or costly. Third, although the schools are no longer a bargain, and the teachers are no longer saintly nuns who impoverished themselves for their community, Catholic school teachers (I have found) often have a sort of martyr complex (i.e. I’m paid so little and I have given my life to Christ, so you had better not complain about my complete lack of competance in understanding let alone teaching Chemisty. It is much harder to fire an incompetant Catholic school teacher than an incompetant Protestant or Independant school teacher.
Me, I’m Catholic but my kid goes to Lutheran school simply because it is not as mediocre as the local Catholic school, not as drugged/sexed up as the public school, and is not inhabited by the number of spoiled rich “and what color car can I have for my 16th birthday, and can it be a Lamborgeni” as the local independant school.
I will be moving to another town soon, and plan to send my kid to the Catholic school there, however THAT Catholic school (and church) has an important difference. The new pastor (a former Episcopalian, RC convert) moved in and asked everybody to send in their resume’s and reapply for their jobs. It has quite a good reputation academically now, and given equal academics then, I think the Catholic difference is worth paying for.
My two cents (brought to you at a steep discount).
I think its not just Catholic schools but private and parochial schools in general that are all hurting. I am a graduate of a Catholic high school, and I always valued the education that I got at that institution. I think learning Latin and having to translate Cicero was the best thing a teacher ever made me do that prepared me for higher education.
I think the community element of the Catholic community has started to break down somewhat, as civic society has in general. Catholics are now viewed pretty benignly in this country. I don’t think it would ever occur to 95%+ of the population to refuse to vote for a politician simply because they were Catholic. That was not the case a generation ago. As such, I think Catholic parochial schools are not feed by people fearing the lose of their Roman Catholic identity, which is largely what fed the RC Schools back at their height. I also think some of the warm, fuzzy fall out from Vatican II began to chink away at the armor of the appeal of Catholic schools as well.
There are some that have bucked the trend. Many of them are independent Catholic schools, meaning they are NOT diocesan schools. They are accredited by NAPCIS (National Association of Private Catholic and Independent Schools) and seem to be growing in number every year. My kids’ school in Indianapolis, Lumen Christi, is rigorously orthodox. The students have the great privilege of daily Mass, including the Traditional Latin Mass Tuesday through Friday, Latin. Anyone interested in finding out if a NAPCIS affiliated school exists in their area should check out the NAPCIS website. God bless.
Ooops, strike the “Latin” typo. 🙂
Back in the day (1950’s) at least a couple times a year every Catholic priest would thunder from the pulpit that it was a mortal sin to endanger your kid’s soul by sending them to public schools if a Catholic school education was available. I am wondering; exactly what dramatic improvements have occurred in our nation’s public school system since the 1950’s that no longer make this true? Could someone please enlighten me?
therecusant, thanks for the head’s up on NAPCIS. I wasn’t aware of this organization’s existance, and it turns out there is a school near me in Bear, Delaware.
Now, my son is only 7 months old (and there’s another on the way), but I’ve been trying to decide whether or not to go the Catholic school route with all the associated expenses. This helps!
#7. No dramatic improvements. Just too much competition. I recall when I sent my kid to an Episcopal school, the majority religion in the school was Catholic, despite the fact that there were no shortage of Catholic schools. (I was Episcopalian at the time).
My kids have attended a Baptist school at one time also, and had a superior education to the Catholic alternative in the city, but we eventually pulled them out because the imbecile Baptist pastor made a point of talking about how “Catholics were all going to hell”, and “how Catholics thought that they could sin and do whatever and then go to confession and make it okay”.
It ain’t easy to find a private religious school that both has orthodox religious doctrine, is not crazy fundamental lunatic, and is not piously mediocre. After that you need to pay for it. Sometimes the public schools seem like rare and refreshing fruit…
My child attends pre-school at a Catholic school in Chicago. It is a pleasant community institution, among the better of the Catholic schools. But the level of religious education is abysmal. The Christmas concert for the younger children was full of Frosty, Rudolph, and rocking around the Christmas tree, with not ONE carol, hymn, or prayer. My son has not learned the Lord’s Prayer, Hail Mary, or Gloria Patri — though they do say “Thank you for the world so sweet” at snack time. The older children seem appallingly badly catechized. We’re thinking of sending our son to a secular school and doing the Christianity at home instead. I don’t think this is unusual, from what I’ve learned.
Austin, I think you’re right. Again, the exceptions are growing in number (though still the exceptions). Again by way of personal experience, my kindergardener has already learned the Our Father, the Hail Mary, St. Michael prayer, and the table blessing in English, as well as the first two of those in Latin. Good things are happening. I think the Opus Dei run school in/near Bucktown is quite good.
My children went to Catholic schools from 4th grade through high school (my daughter is a senior now). While the academics are not light years ahead of the public schools, the discipline and behavior of the students are. The uniforms help blur the distinction between rich and poor students (though the Hummers, and BMWs in the high school parking lot stand in stark contrast to my daughter’s 2001 Corolla) and I like the fact that they begin everything with prayer and have mass twice a week. My son’s high school graduation was wonderful with a full mass with four priests and communion for all attendees. My daughter will be attending a Catholic university as well.
The downside was the expense. One year at the high school costs more than my entire four years tuition at our state’s flagship public university (class of 1976)! It’s a good bit cheaper for RC’s though (we’re Anglicans).