Catholic culture, a great Providential blessing for the Church, is the rightful heritage of Catholic students. Catholic schools succeed in large part to the extent that they form students who are fully at home in this culture.

 

 

Catholic parents are usually grateful that their children are enrolled in Catholic schools. Often they punctuate their expression of thanks with the remark that "at least there I know my kids are getting some instruction in the Catholic faith." When I hear such remarks, I get the impression that sometimes parents think that a school is Catholic because of religious instruction and that the "school part," the rest of the curriculum, is outside of Catholic learning, only a vehicle in which catechism happens to ride as a passenger.

 

 

Holy Family Academy in Manchester, New Hampshire, places great importance on its faculty development program. Mary Mosher, executive director and acting dean, says its goal is to build an intellectual community. "Evangelium Nuntiandi says that one believes a teacher if he is first a witness. We need to nurture the joy of learning in our faculty, so they can witness that to their students."

 

 

Dr. Andrew Seeley reviews Curtis L. Hancock's Recovering a Catholic Philosophy of Elementary Education.

In a brief hundred pages, Dr. Hancock's book, Recovering a Catholic Philosophy of Elementary Education, presents a clear vision of the goals of Catholic education and the human person it is meant to develop.