He is neither old nor a priest nor particularly attached to time-honored traditions. At 35, John Eriksen, one of the nation’s youngest Catholic-school superintendents, offers a ruthless assessment of parochial education. “The biggest threat that urban Catholic schools face is nostalgia,” he says both of districts nationwide and of his own diocese of Paterson, N.J. A Notre Dame and Harvard graduate fluent in Spanish and Arabic, Eriksen is part of the next generation of Catholic leaders in search of new ways to halt decades of student attrition. “We’ve been running these schools in a way that might have worked 30 or 40 years ago but doesn’t work now,” he says.
Of that, there is no doubt. Nearly 1 in 5 Catholic schools in the U.S. has closed its doors this decade. To non-Catholics, this may not appear to be something worth worrying about. But parochial schools are one of the largest (if not the largest) alternatives to the American public-education system, and their steady decline inordinately affects urban low-income minorities who would otherwise be left at the mercy of public schools that have proven incapable of educating them.
Many Catholic schools, however, are following in the steps of their public brethren and trying to survive by changing the way they do business….
Me I’ve had a kid in Catholic school, and had kids at one time in private, charter, baptist, Episcopal, Lutheran and public schools (we moved around a lot).
I’m also Catholic and used to sit on the school board. And I’ve attended both Catholic, Episcopal and public schools myself.
The biggest problem facing Catholic schools is that which faces Catholic parishes (and to a lesser extent Baptist schools). The majority are mediocre beyond belief. The good things about Episcopalians and Lutherans is that they do believe in excellence. That excellence is secular excellence to a large degree, often stripped of all that “embarassing God stuff” but certainly academic excellence is valued. By contrast, in Catholic and Baptist schools, being able to speak a swarmy pseudo-pius line about “how slavery is just so wrong, wrong” is more likely to get you an A than writing a red hot analysis of the causes of slavery and whether it was financially viable long term. In this setting, verbal nonsequetors by teenagers about how “we are children of God” is considered “piety”, and being pleased that you did well on the Trigonometry test after studying all night becomes “pride”.
I will also say that I have found that Catholic teachers place an inordinate value on what I would call “brownnosing” and doubtless they consider “respect” while Episcopal and private school teachers would rather that simply understand the material.
Catholic schools do provide a valuble service as an alternative to failing public schools, especially in poor areas. There service is less valuble when directed at middle class areas.
I’ve been thinking about this some more. Part of the problem is that unlike true “private schools”, Catholic school teachers do not receive their salaries from satisfied parents, but instead receive it from parishoners, only about 10% of whom use the schools. This gives Catholic school teachers very little more incentive for excellence than have public school teachers. Indeed, since Catholic school teachers are paid less, they have a chip on their shoulders as they compare themselves to public school teachers instead of private school teachers.
It was different when the nuns ran it, because the nuns (like priests) were an elite. They didn’t care about what parents thought, but they did care about excellence because they were doing it for God.
Personally, I think the only solution is to make Catholic school teachers way more accountable to parents than they are. Until then they will simply be a pious variant of the mediocrity that charactertizes US education.
#2: the motivating factors for teachers are certainly important, but they are not at all as simple as pure contractual obligation to one’s paymaster. Even lay people and non-religious can in fact be motivated by a desire to please God, by a desire to take pride in their work, or even in rare circumstances by charity – or so I have found. However, #2 accurately and poignantly reflects western society’s currently exceedingly low, almost sub-human, estimation of the members of what was once a respected profession. And I think that that is a de-motivating factor.
I have found the teachers of secular private schools to be extremely good, and am grateful to those who educated me in the past, and those who educate my youngest child in the present.
I think the solution for both the “sub-human estimations” and the lack of motivation, would be vouchers.