How do Catholic public schools further the Church's commitment to social justice?

[kapp19]

Individual virtue cannot be replaced by public policy. Individuals need to rouse themselves into being more generous to support such institutions by donations and even by taking salary cuts (inside the institution). If people believe in an institution beyond the accrual of personal gain, that must be leveraged. But otherwise, the market will drive the price, and nothing can be done about it that doesn’t make things worse in the long run.

There is a diocese in the US (Wichita) that has essentially no tuition in any of its schools, from what I recall… Because the emphasis is put on the importance of making that education available to all, for the sake of its proper function (education and ultimately the flourishing of individuals and society and the glorification of God), those with more money offer what they can, and those who don’t have money can contribute in other ways, and all can send their kids to Catholic school.

 

[EmilyAlexandra]

People from the US would generally turn a rather jaundiced eye to this sort of thing.

Yes, that is something that I have always admired about the US and a reason why I always wanted to emigrate there, which obviously never happened. I appreciate that the US and UK both have relatively low social mobility compared with, say, Scandinavian countries, but I think the main difference between the two countries is that the US has never really been dominated by a ruling class in the same way that the UK always has been. Of course, you have the likes of the Roosevelts and the Kennedys, but there’s never been the same total domination of public life by one class. Out of 55 UK prime ministers, 20 have been educated at Eton, seven at Harrow, and six at Westminster. And it has actually got worse: between 1964 and 1997, all five prime minsters were educated at state schools; since 1997, four out of five prime minsters attended private schools. One only needs to look at Boris Johnson to see how somebody of very mediocre ability can do very well if they have the right start in life (intellectually, he is not even in the same ballpark as Harold Wilson or Margaret Thatcher).

The other difference is that in the US, social mobility is actually encouraged and celebrated and people do not begrudge those who succeed from humble beginnings. I do not have proof that Prince William’s friends mutter “doors to manual” in reference to his mother-in-law’s former occupation as a flight attendant, and I do not have proof that Margaret Thatcher’s ministers used to sneer at the fact that she knew the price of a pint of milk, but these things are all too plausible. I was once having dinner at an Oxford college when one of the students on my table began to mock the principal of the college (who also happened to be chairman of his faculty and a titular professor) because he had attended a grammar school.

This sounds more like it’s some sort of class problem with the social structure of a particular country, not a problem with the Catholic Church.

It is, but I also think it is reasonable for Christians of all denominations to be expected to take a stand against the prevailing values of the society in which they live. We would not, for example, excuse those Protestant churches in the South which promoted racial segregation just because racial segregation was the norm (or similar churches in the UK which made it clear on an unofficial basis that black people were not welcome). As I say, it’s not only the Catholic Church. I am also surprised (possibly more surprised) that Quakers and Methodists (denominations that were historically radical and committed to social action) also run these elite boarding schools. Obviously it does not surprise me that the Church of England is the biggest player in this business, as it is so inextricably linked with the ruling class. So it is not a problem with the Catholic Church, but it does seem to be a problem with the Catholic Church (and Anglican, Quaker, and Methodist churches) in England.

 

[EmilyAlexandra]

Who teaches? Religious sisters and brothers, or lay teachers?

Almost all lay teachers, as in other schools that do not cost up to £40,000 p.a. It is not feasible to imagine that a Benedictine monastery, for example, would have 80 monks of working age who are qualified teachers and who hold degrees spanning the full range of subjects offered. At most, there is likely to be a monk who teaches some religious education and maybe one or two teaching subjects like classics or history.

If we rebuild religious orders either with ourselves or via encouragement, the cost will be driven back down.

Yes, but this would require very big communities and lots of them. Take Ampleforth: there are about 60 monks of whom I think two teach at the school. You would therefore need a community of maybe 140 to fulfil the needs of both the monastery and the school. You would need to have even distribution of ages so that there was not a disproportionate number of very elderly monks. You would also need to encourage monks to take degrees in subjects like maths, physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, technology, sports science, etc, whereas most monks seem to have backgrounds in theology, philosophy, classics, and history. Finally, to make such schools widely available, you would need to have at least one monastery of approx. 140 monks in every town in the country (probably 50 such communities in London alone). And that’s just accounting for secondary schools. To roll this out so that every community had access to an excellent Catholic primary and secondary school, you’d be looking at needing 1 or 2 people out of every thousand of the total population (around 1-2% of all Catholics) to enter the religious life.

 

[jeannetherese]

140 monks in every town in the country (probably 50 such communities in London alone). And that’s just accounting for secondary schools. To roll this out so that every community had access to an excellent Catholic primary and secondary school, you’d be looking at needing 1 or 2 people out of every thousand of the total population (around 1-2% of all Catholics) to enter the religious life.

One conversion at a time; one school at a time.
Once upon a time, before the rulers closed the monasteries and appropriated the lands, and universities, there were many more monks in England. But these also were built conversion by conversion, building by building.
Your work to evangelize and to support Catholic education will bear fruit over time.

 

[po18guy]

The journey of recovery begins with a single step. I believe it was Venerable Fulton J. Sheen who said that, if he was a parent, he would rather send his children to public school and have them defend their faith, than send them to Catholic school only to have them lose their faith.

The barque of Peter takes a very long time to turn around after a 60-70 year malaise.

 

[commenter]

The journey of recovery begins with a single step. I believe it was Venerable Fulton J. Sheen who said that, if he was a parent, he would rather send his children to public school and have them defend their faith, than send them to Catholic school only to have them lose their faith.

The barque of Peter takes a very long time to turn around after a 60-70 year malaise.

Unfortunately public schools have changed a lot since he said this. Based on today’s public schools, I bet now he’d advise sending a child to the best of the available Catholic schools, even if they all are less than they should be.

Or home school.

 

[EmilyAlexandra]

@phil19034 I’m afraid I couldn’t comment on the doctrinal orthodoxy of Catholic schools in the UK. People I have known who attended such schools (or, in a few instances, taught at such schools) seemed fairly orthodoxly Catholic to me, but there may well be nuances that I have missed. I remember the headmaster of Ampleforth talking about the importance of teaching young people the value of chastity. I also knew a housemaster at Ampleforth who was very orthodox in his views on contraception.

no funding from state, funding comes from tuition and other private sources

True, but independent schools in the UK do have charitable status. This status has often been questioned, as it is not obvious in what ways a private school actually has charitable aims. This is why a few years ago they hurriedly began to “share” facilities with local state schools, although it is unclear how much sharing really goes on. It could be that allowing pupils from the local state school to visit the museum at a public school once per year would count as sharing facilities (yes, some public schools do actually have their own museums).

The traditional “parish school” is usually primary school and I’m not sure if the UK has similar and what tuition is like.

This raises an important point and a major difference between the US and the UK. As I understand it, religious schools in the US have to be private, because it would be unconstitutional for the government to fund religious schools. I may be wrong, but my understanding is that the US does not have any state-funded religious schools. In England (and the rest of the UK, but education is now devolved to the governments of the four nations), about one third of state schools are religious schools. Many people send their children to religious schools even if they are not religious. Indeed, in many areas, especially outside of major cities, it is very possible that the only school in the area is a church school. These are mostly Church of England and Catholic, although there are Jewish schools, Muslim schools, and I know of one Baptist school.

Therefore, if you are a Catholic in the UK and you want your child to go to a Catholic school, they can go to one at no cost to the parents (except what they pay in taxes and what they may or may not donate to a church). The school is funded partly by the government and partly by the denomination. Therefore, choosing to send your child to a very expensive religious school is not a necessity but something people do because of the lifelong advantages one derives from such a school. Also, there is an increasing trend for Catholic families in the UK to send their children to elite Anglican schools because these have even better facilities and are even more prestigious. Notably, there has been a trend for Catholics who, a generation ago, would have sent their sons to Ampleforth instead sending them to Eton even though it is an Anglican school. The prestige of going to Eton apparently outweighs the benefits of a Catholic school.

 

[commenter]

I’m not sure why it’s bad to encourage wealthy persons to spend some of their surplus on Catholic education. Would it be more moral to spend it on vacation or a second home in the Alps?

In my US city the Jesuit school charged high tuition. That enabled a limited number of poor students to attend. It also brought together a concentration of Jesuits and lay Catholics who developed many other kinds of ministries, using the building and personnel as a base.

By molding the future leaders of the community, the school encouraged social justice to be implemented in the future. The extra tuition enabled small class sizes, development of intellectual gifts.

There’s going to be an intellectual elite in the future, even if the Church does nothing. Why not focus on evangelizing it?

 

[EmilyAlexandra]

Are the regular citizens complaining about the privileges afforded to the wealthy that seem completely unobtainable to the average citizen?

Some are. To some extent, the problem, as I see it, is that unless you have had direct personal contact with a lot of people who went to these public schools, you don’t really understand just how much of an advantage it is to go to one. I grew up in a very poor area—a level of poverty that many people probably don’t realise can exist in a country like the UK. Through a combination of some ability of my own, a lot of hard work, and a few very good teachers, I managed to get into a good university and get a good job.

As a result, I have gone from a childhood in which places like Eton and Harrow were so remote that they might as well have actually been Hogwarts to an adult life in which most people I meet through education and work went to schools like these (or others not far off like Rugby or Oundle). What I see is that (1) they had a much easier time being successful, and quite possibly achieved that success without having a huge amount of ability or having to work very hard and (2) it’s never going to be possible to catch up entirely with people who had this kind of start in life.

As I stated elsewhere on this thread, 7% of people in the UK go to private schools, yet 83% of Supreme Court justices went to private schools. There’s something not right there. And when you look beyond the mere numbers, you find that it’s not the whole of that 7% who hold all these top jobs, it’s the even smaller proportion who went to the elite private boarding schools. Eton and Westminster send about 80 students per year to Oxford and Cambridge; most state schools send an average around one student every two years.

But, as I say, a lot of people just aren’t that worried about this, because most people are so far off getting into Oxford or Cambridge and ending up as a government minister, an ambassador, a judge, etc that it doesn’t really occur to them that the system is unfair. Or, at any rate, unfair enough to be particularly worried about it.

I am not saying that there is no good teaching in state schools. However, at my state school for example, which would be considered a good state school, one thing I noticed was that the best teachers didn’t stay for very long. I was taught A-level Christian theology by a young teacher straight out of Cambridge University. He was an exceptional teacher and very good at his subject. But after two years at a state school he left for a private boarding school which charges £36,435 p.a. Similarly, we had an excellent English teacher who established a school debating society, but he only lasted five years before he left to teach at a boarding school in Edinburgh.

 

[Pattylt]

Some of the same issues happen here, too, but more along the lines of the best state schools skimming off from the not so great state schools. Teachers tend to really like teaching smart motivated students. Poor schools struggle to keep a good teacher for more than a few years. So, poor schools tend to stay poor and giving a poor to mediocre education, while excellent schools tend to draw the best teachers and thus have the best results.

This is why charter schools became a thing. Many of those poor schools still have parents and students that really want a better education. Getting their kids into those good schools was nigh impossible. Charters were supposed to be the solution but have created an additional layer of difficulty. Just having open enrollment to any school only meant poor school students still not being able to get into good schools because there were no openings. Charter schools have a very high failure rate and have the added problem of a for profit layer in who manages them.

For some reason, keeping the best teachers at the poorest schools never entered their minds. You can’t force teachers to stay but you sure could pay them more…oh, no…that would be putting more money into the state school system. Can’t have that! Those schools are failing so you’d just be throwing good money at bad schools! Instead, let’s throw money at charter schools…which is often also throwing good money at bad schools. A few turn out well, so let’s hold those up as the example!

Here is where small cities and towns actually have an advantage over large cities. There aren’t as many schools and parents tend to be more involved and active with poor schools having high pressure to improve. It sometimes even works!

 

[commenter]

C. S. Lewis in a 1959 follow up to the Screwtape letters, had a spokesman for Hell applauding the trend to eliminate “advanced” schools. Hell’s agenda was to make all citizens equal and interchangeable, so the child capable of reading literature must sit next to the child reading “A Cat sat on a mat”.

Let no one dare to go beyond the herd.

 

[EmilyAlexandra]

I would answer that a Catholic public school through its teaching will form students to be followers of Christ. This formation, will inform the thoughts and actions of graduates, who by loving God with thier whole heart, soul, and all their strength will seek to keep His commandments and to care for their neighbors.

It would be great if that were the case, but, from what I have seen, the evidence seems to be that the main thing that these schools achieve is to give their students and alumni a head start in gaining entrance to Oxford and Cambridge, medicine, law, academia, the civil and diplomatic services, officer training in the armed forces, etc. If Catholic parents just wanted their children to get a Catholic education, we have plenty of Catholic schools they could send their children to without paying anything for it. Likewise for Anglicans, of course.

But otherwise, the market will drive the price, and nothing can be done about it that doesn’t make things worse in the long run.

I can’t help feeling that Christian denominations could just make the decision to get out of the business of private education. In the US this would be more difficult, because the government does not fund religious schools. But in the UK, where we have religious schools that are free to attend, I don’t see the justification for Christian denominations perpetuating a system that has been shown to entrench class distinctions and social inequalities. A school like Ampleforth does not have to be run as an elite boarding school that serves only those who can afford around £38,000 (US$50,000) per child per year. It could negotiate with the government to convert into a day school for local children or a state-funded boarding school. Or it could liquidate its assets and use the proceeds to open maybe two or three day schools in North Yorkshire.

There is a diocese in the US (Wichita) that has essentially no tuition in any of its schools

This is not what the Catholic Church is doing in the UK. The public schools (not to mention prep schools) which the Catholic Church operates in the UK basically set their prices to be more or less in line with what comparable Anglican schools are charging. These schools are not intended to be available to all. The purpose of an English public school is to provide an elite education to the children of the extremely rich. A school like Ampleforth is looking to attract the children of the nobility, foreign royal families, British diplomats and military officers, and the uppermost ranks of medicine, law, and business. English public schools do not wish to be egalitarian institutions or instigators of social change.

 

[commenter]

the main thing that these schools achieve is to give their students and alumni a head start in gaining entrance to Oxford and Cambridge, medicine, law, academia, the civil and diplomatic services, officer training in the armed forces, etc

You haven’t shown this to be a bad thing.

I suppose honors classes, or classes for gifted education, perform that same function. If a student is capable of learning more, a school that can teach him or her that extra degree, seems to benefit society.

I suppose having parents who are PhD gives a kid an unfair(?) advantage. They may teach him things, more than other parents can. Do we want to prevent that?

 

[jeannetherese]

I am not saying that there is no good teaching in state schools. However, at my state school for example, which would be considered a good state school, one thing I noticed was that the best teachers didn’t stay for very long. I was taught A-level Christian theology by a young teacher straight out of Cambridge University. He was an exceptional teacher and very good at his subject. But after two years at a state school he left for a private boarding school which charges £36,435 p.a. Similarly, we had an excellent English teacher who established a school debating society, but he only lasted five years before he left to teach at a boarding school in Edinburgh.

In a free market, teachers may move from school to school. Do you think this should be disallowed?
Perhaps state schools could consider ways of making themselves more attractive to excellent teachers?

 

[jeannetherese]

It would be great if that were the case, but, from what I have seen, the evidence seems to be that the main thing that these schools achieve is to give their students and alumni a head start in gaining entrance to Oxford and Cambridge, medicine, law, academia, the civil and diplomatic services, officer training in the armed forces, etc.

Hopefully, they will be inclined to live out the Christian principles taught by their schoolmasters in their new workplaces.

 

[EmilyAlexandra]

C. S. Lewis in a 1959 follow up to the Screwtape letters, had a spokesman for Hell applauding the trend to eliminate “advanced” schools. Hell’s agenda was to make all citizens equal and interchangeable, so the child capable of reading literature must sit next to the child reading “A Cat sat on a mat”.

Let no one dare to go beyond the herd.

I suppose honors classes, or classes for gifted education, perform that same function. If a student is capable of learning more, a school that can teach him or her that extra degree, seems to benefit society.

I think you are making the mistake of assuming that elite private schools are solely for the children who are the most academically gifted. This is absolutely not the case. No matter your child’s level of ability, if you have the money for pay for a prep school or public school, there will be a prep school or public school willing to educate your child. Schools like Eton, Westminster, Winchester, and St Paul’s do indeed pride themselves on academic excellence. However, there are other public schools, such as Gordonstoun and Millfield, which are not known to be very academic, but which are nonetheless very prestigious.

Conversely, there is no reason why a state school cannot achieve high academic standards. A boy at my state school applied to read mathematics and philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford. The headmaster urged him not to apply to Balliol on the grounds that it was the most prestigious college at Oxford, and he was more likely to get into one of the less prestigious colleges. In fact, the admissions tutor wrote to the headmaster saying that he was not only offering this boy a place at his college, but that he wanted to put on record that he was the most talented student to apply to the college within living memory.

If you are not British, or have not at least spent a lot of time working in Britain, specifically in fields such as politics, the civil service, the diplomatic service, the armed forces, law, academia, or the Church of England, it is probably hard to understand the influence of the public schools. The British army, for example, does not first and foremost recruit on the basis of academic qualifications, but one is seven times more likely to become an officer in the British army if one has been educated at a public school than if one has been educated at a state school. Interestingly, the Royal Navy recruits officers from a much more diverse social and educational background, while the Royal Air Force recruits many of its officers from among other ranks.

In summary, one could say that public schools are a feature of the British obsession with class. For example, there is even a nightclub in London called Public: the name refers to the fact that most of the people who frequent the nightclub were educated at public schools. If you send your child to public school, you are buying them admission into a privileged class which remains dominant in public service, the learned professions, academia, business, entertainment, and every sport except football.