The Eucharist and Catholic Education

The Eucharist and Catholic Education by Randall Smith at The Catholic Thing. The order with which God has created the universe is really amazing once you start to see it. It’s like one of those huge puzzles with little pieces each of which has some lovely colors, but they don’t really make sense until you start to fit them together and you realize what an incredible picture they make. And it is for this reason, among others, that the Eucharist should be at the center of every Catholic school…In classes, we talk about God. Or we talk about God’s handiwork in Creation. But in the Eucharist, God comes to us in person, in the person of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. Read

How Morgan Freeman and Robin Williams Derailed America’s Schools by Frederick Hess at Education Next. My new book, Getting Education Right, dropped last week…I thought it worth addressing a broader thread we dwell upon near the book’s end: how Morgan Freeman and Robin Williams derailed America’s schools. Unfortunately, we’ve permitted an education culture that lionizes the performative. School and system leaders prosper by becoming high-profile standard-bearers for the latest fad. Social media is dotted with teachers proudly sharing how they’re promoting personal agendas in their classrooms. Far too many instructional coaches, advocates, foundations, and vendors eagerly urge educators to use their perch to promote particular social and political dogmas. Read

7 Ways to Keep the Wokeness Out of Your Home and Away from Your Kids by Noelle Mering at Theology of Home. The parent/child fracture is far more painful than the demise of an old high school friendship or a rebuke from a woke cousin in Vermont. There is a patricidal tendency that is particular to totalizing ideologies. Family is a deeply stabilizing force. Cultural revolutions thrive on the instability that comes with the erosion of parental authority. Read

Poverty: An Antidote To Technological Dystopia by Casey Chalk at Crisis Magazine. Poverty, says Régamey, is the antidote to our dehumanizing technological age. That might seem a curious response to the threat of modern technology’s dehumanization. Yet if technological utopianism is a manifestation of self-worship, one can better appreciate the positive role played by poverty…The more detached we are from our possessions, the freer we become—free to be fully human as those subject to God rather than to what we claim to own. Read

Partnering with Parents: Some Implications for Parents as Primary Educators by Michael Moynihan at The Heights Forum. An effective partnership between the school and parents is essential for a school to fulfill its mission…It is not realistic to expect strong results if the home environment does not support the educative mission of the school, if students go home to an environment that is overly media-saturated, or if home lacks the peace and order necessary for real study. A school that is honest about attempting to educate will recognize that efforts to support parents and families must be seen as a key part of the mission of the school. The school as a do-it-alone institution is a broken model. Read

“The Eagles Are Coming!”: Tolkien & the Catholic Hope of Eucatastrophe by Daniel Dougherty at Good Catholic. This beloved author demonstrates that, with the help of the Catholic Faith, fiction can often provide a more effective approach to dealing with our messy world than cold, hard fact. Tolkien’s philosophy does not reject the truth of the physical world, it merely looks at reality from a slightly different perspective: that of the storyteller. And in his stories, this master of tales provides what may be his greatest gift to the human race—his vision of Eucatastrophe…The Eucatastrophe in each of the books clearly shows help that comes from the heavens. Read

Lawmakers in Three States Consider Requiring Schools to Show Students Fetal Development by CatholicVote. Three state legislative bodies recently passed bills that would require all middle and high school students to watch a three-minute video that shows fetal development from the moment of conception as part of their health education curriculum. The bills would require students in public, private, parochial, or denominational schools throughout the three states to watch the video, which shows different stages of fetal development, complete with timestamps and a narrator describing Baby Olivia’s growth. Read

COLLUSION: Rhode Island School District Sends 8,800 Pages of Emails to SPLC, Docs Show by Tyler O’Neil at The Daily Signal. When concerned mom Nicole Solas requested all emails from her Rhode Island school district to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the request turned up more than 8,000 pages of communications …The SPLC runs an education program long known as “Teaching Tolerance.” …The program has advocated for lessons that inculcate critical race theory, transgender identity, and pornographic books in schools. Last year, the SPLC added parental rights groups, including Moms for Liberty, to its “hate map,” in part demonizing those groups for opposing sexually explicit books in school libraries. Read

Augustine Institute Eyes Missouri Move by The Pillar. Augustine Institute president Tim Gray told The Pillar that his organization is in the final stages of discernment, and is likely to soon reach an agreement to purchase the Boeing Leadership Center, a 284-acre training campus in Florissant, Missouri, which includes conference space, classrooms, 204 hotel-like rooms, a 250 seat dining facility, a fitness center and a historic French-style chateau. If the purchase is completed in early May, the Augustine Institute’s graduate school is expected to move its headquarters to the Missouri campus this summer, with other divisions of the institution moving in stages over two or three years. Read 

Throwback Thursday

Children Have a Right to Classical Education by Kevin D. Roberts at First Things on June 20, 2023. Classical education eschews pedagogical fads. It instead steeps students in the great works of literature, philosophy, history, and science—what the poet Matthew Arnold called “the best that has been thought and said.” …Drawing inspiration from Greek and Roman academic traditions, classical education seeks to ground students in the good, the true, and the beautiful. Its highest aim is to form virtuous students grounded in the best of the Western canon. Classical schools instruct students through the sequence known as the “trivium,” guiding them through grammar, logic, and rhetoric. They first establish a knowledge base, then learn how to evaluate arguments, and finally how to articulately express their thoughts. Read