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Civil Rights in Public Education www.CRIPEweb.org |
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Research Note #10
Concerns
of Roman Catholic Educators
Excerpts
from the book “Catholic Education — Ensuring a Future”
By James
T. Mulligan, a Canadian Holy Cross Father. Novalis, 2005
James T. Mulligan has
worked in Roman Catholic secondary education and faith formation for Roman
Catholic teachers for 35 years. Since 1990 he has worked on a number of
education endeavours in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Newfoundland.
What Catholic education?
On page 119, Mulligan
looks at internal factors affecting Roman Catholic education. With regard
to Newfoundland, emphasis added: “Most parents could not see the
difference between a Catholic school and an integrated (public) school.
Catholic education was making no special contribution to the community,
offering no compelling reason to guarantee the continued existence of
Catholic education. Too many schools were Catholic in name only.”
Page 123: “I remember
reading the comment of a Newfoundland teacher who cited an
‘indistinguishable Catholic education’ as one of the reasons some
Catholics were willing to vote to close Catholic schools. You couldn't
tell the difference.”
Page 129: “I first got
involved in Catholic education in 1997 by running as a trustee because my
children were beginning school. The situation in Newfoundland and Labrador
hit home. The speed with which the Constitution can be amended to change
the rights of some if a bare majority wants it is shocking. I am a
lawyer, and I would say it is so true.”
Page 130:
“The demise of Catholic education in Newfoundland and Labrador, as we have
seen, poses profound challenges for committed Catholic educators and parents
and local churches in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario. They understand
now that there are limits to the
British North America Act protection of their
publicly funded schools.”
The unchurched
Page 273: “Most of the 70 to 75 per cent
of unchurched students in Catholic schools have been baptized Catholic
and have received the sacraments of Eucharist, reconciliation and
confirmation. Many are in Catholic schools because of their parents’ or
their own instinctive sense of relationship and comfort.”
Another referendum?
Page
286: “We would be naive to think that there is no further threat to
survival because our minority rights to Catholic education are enshrined in
the Constitution. Newfoundland and Quebec both demonstrated that what
was constitutionally done can become politically undone. It is sobering
to keep in mind that while Catholic schools are legitimate
constitutionally, in the eyes of the Supreme Court of Canada they
violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and
Freedoms; and in the eyes of many Canadians, and indeed in the eyes of the
United Nations, Catholic school funding is discriminatory.
So it is not unreasonable to think that a referendum could take place on the
Catholic school question. If such a referendum takes place, what should
we expect? It is a scary question. So the real challenge is to
demonstrate to both the Catholic and non-Catholic public, the taxpayers,
that Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario would become immeasurably
impoverished without public Catholic education.”
Start negotiations now
“Bob
Anderson, Director of Catholic Education for the Ontario Catholic School
Trustees' Association, claims that if Catholics are going to hang on to a
distinctively Catholic education system, they...have to do a lot of work
convincing the broad public that Catholic education is not only
worthwhile but necessary for the common
good of Ontario. (Of course, what he
says of Ontario is true also for Alberta and Saskatchewan.)”
“Try to...look at Catholic
education through the eyes of those in the public domain who are not
Catholic school ratepayers.” “Does the public really see a difference?” If
not: “We can start legal negotiations now. Which properties and
resources will remain with the Catholic church, and which will go to the
government for the new and expanded public school system?”
Read the
following for more concerns
and a
study on the outcomes of Roman Catholic schools.
A
posting on the web site of the Halton District Catholic School Board
included a section entitled “Calling all partners in Catholic education ~
act now!….. Preserve The Legacy Of The Enduring Gift Of Catholic
Education”. Excerpts follow. Emphasis is added.
“Dr. Mark
McGowan, Principal of St. Michael's College, University of Toronto,
acknowledges in his paper – "The
Vision. Purpose and Current State of
Catholic Education",
how the Catholic
educational environment has changed in response to our rapidly changing
social, economic and political world. Some of the signs of our times include
funding completion, the creation of large school boards, equitable funding,
the demise of the publicly-funded Catholic Education systems in both
Newfoundland and Quebec - which we must safeguard against, ongoing
political and legal challenges to the very existence of Catholic schools
by other educational organizations, as well as the funding shortfall in
education that is certainly another challenge that frequently causes
friction among the Partners in Catholic Education and encourages
opponents of our system to advocate for one unified system.
“Our continued status as
part of the publicly funded education system is not only dependent on
legislation (provincial and federal), but it is also dependent on the
political commitment of the prevailing government of the day, and the
political will is in no small way influenced by prevailing public opinion.
“Survey
results of a Vector Poll for the
Canadian Opinion Coalition,
conducted in June, 2001, presented a very disturbing challenge to Catholic
education from within. The results stated that 56% of Catholics who
responded to the poll indicated that they believed a unified school system
(Catholic and Public) would cost less to run and save money, while 52% of
the Catholics polled said that a unified board would be more accountable and
provide better education.
“There is clearly an
urgent need to better inform the supporters of Catholic education about its
value, its distinctiveness and its traditional excellence. In today’s
secular world, in which the landscape of education has been reshaped by the
politics of the day, the Catholic school system is in danger and has
reached a “defining moment”. All Catholic supporters must be convinced of
the value and distinctiveness of Catholic education or it will disappear
into the public system.”
* * *
“Sister Clare believes
that if Catholic supporters do not believe in, and publicly promote the
value of, Catholic education, then it will eventually be taken away.”
LESS
THAN 5 PER CENT
There is a perception among many that
progress toward the elimination of public funding for Roman Catholic
separate schools is almost impossible because of politics and the Roman
Catholic vote. The fear is that Roman Catholics will be told how to vote by
their priests. However, a recent newspaper article stated that: “...while
more than one billion people in the world are Roman Catholics, attendance at
Sunday mass is less than 5 per cent in Europe and North America.” Another
reason to treat the fear as groundless.
FOR WHAT
PURPOSE
do public funds
go to Catholic schools?
PERCEPTIONS?
OR FACTS?
If we discount politics,
and look for other reasons, we find that there are only perceptions — no
facts.
The perceptions seem to be
that Roman Catholic schools have moral teachings where public schools do
not. Another is that the students are better behaved than public school
students and are not as prone to get into trouble.
The facts are — oh, where
are the facts? What! There are no facts? No studies? Why? There is no
doubt that if either of the above perceptions were true, we would be hearing
about them over and over again. But we don’t.
Research, however, has
turned up an American booklet with a study. The following is reprinted by
permission from: “Catholic Schools: The Facts” by Edd Doerr, Americans for
Religious Liberty (ARL), Box 6656, Silver Spring MD 20916 USA (c) 1993,
2000. “ARL is a non-profit public interest educational organization, founded
in 1981, dedicated to preserving the American tradition of religious,
intellectual, and personal freedom in a pluralistic democratic state.”
The following paragraphs, in
arial type are quoted
from the aforementioned book.
ROMAN CATHOLIC SCHOOL
OUTCOMES
Since, unlike public schools, Catholic schools spend a considerable
amount of effort and time throughout the school year on religious
instruction, which includes a strong moral education component, it would be
expected that differences between Catholic and public schools would be
detectable with regard to the values, beliefs, and behaviors of products of
the two systems.
There is a vast literature about Catholic schools, their purposes and
goals, instructional techniques and curricula, and the what and where for of
religious education. There is also a vast literature of special pleading
about the value of Catholic schools and arguments for its support from
public funds. But, curiously, there is very little to be found on the
subject of how the results of Catholic schooling differ from those of public
schools in the area of values, beliefs, and behaviors.
*
* *
FOUND — A 1987 STUDY
Reporting to the 14,000 attendees at the annual convention of the
National Catholic Educational Association in New Orleans, sociologist Peter
L. Benson, president of the Search Institute, said that, "The Catholic high
school does a good job of promoting important values in kids, particularly
in religion, but it isn't as good at preventing adolescent behavior we want
to prevent."
In
reading the results of this study, keep in mind that in the United States,
religious schools must charge fees to cover the full cost of operation as
there is no public funding whatsoever.
Benson reported that the study of 16,000 high school seniors from public
and nonpublic schools nationwide, including 1,000 from Catholic schools,
showed that "significantly greater percentages of Catholic-school seniors
said they used alcohol, cocaine, and marijuana than public-school seniors."
Benson's analysis found that: 45% of Catholic school seniors said
they had been drunk in the two weeks before the survey, compared to 39% of
public school students; 21% of the Catholic school students said they had
tried cocaine, compared to 17% of public students; 57% of Catholic school
students said they had used cocaine at least once, compared to 54% of public
students; 44% of Catholic school students had smoked marijuana in the six
months before the survey, compared to 41% of public students; 28% of
Catholic school seniors had used marijuana in the preceding 30 days,
compared to 26% of public school seniors; 40% of Catholic school students
surveyed said they had shoplifted during the past year, compared to 29% of
public students. (Apart from the report published in Education
Week, these data have not appeared elsewhere.)
These findings are particularly significant because the Catholic school
seniors attend schools which are academically more selective and elitist
than public schools and which stress religious education generally on a
daily basis, and come from families with higher average incomes than public
school students, families which are somewhat more likely than public school
families to have both parents present.
CLEAR CONCLUSION
Even on the basis of these limited data, it is difficult to avoid these
conclusions: that Catholic schools are not superior to public schools with
regard to influencing behavior in a socially positive direction; that formal
religious instruction in full time day schools and the permeation of the
curriculum with religious content do not produce graduates with better moral
values than the religiously neutral public schools continually denigrated by
many supporters of private education; and that any "superiority" which
Catholic high schools may have over public schools is owed primarily to
their selectivity.
SO NOW YOU KNOW
The next time you are
presented with the belief that Roman Catholic schools are any better in a
moral sense, ask for the proof. Chances are you will find that there isn’t
any. But you can cite the above, the study done by sociologist Peter L.
Benson, president of Search Institute.
The bottom line is that
the extra $0.5 to $1 billion that we pay each year to support the Roman
Catholic separate school system is for nothing more than support of the
Roman Catholic Church.
There being no social
benefit, it is for no other reason.
The author of the book,
Edd Doerr, obtained most of his elementary and secondary education in Roman
Catholic schools in Indianapolis, but during a 3-year period, switched back
and forth six times between public and Roman Catholic schools. Edd has a
B.S. in education from Indiana U.
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