| About the Institute | Resources | Programs | News & Events | Contact Us | Links | Home |
| Overview | Chapel | The Headmaster's Office | Trivium | Quadrivium | Natural Sciences | Catholic Culture |
In this section, we focus on the principles of the Catholic school, following magisterial documents and traditional Catholic practice.
What is a School?
[A school is] a place of integral formation by means of a systematic and critical assimilation of culture. A school is, therefore, a privileged place in which, through a living encounter with a cultural inheritance, integral formation occurs. [The Catholic School, n.26]
FORMATION
A school is a place of formation, not of training, nor of informing, nor even simply of educating. The school must be a place that affects the lives of its students. Lessons learned in the classroom cannot be forgotten once the test is over. In all of our teaching and administrating, we need to keep in mind that our goal is forming people of a certain character who will live their lives in a certain way according to that character and according to the vision of life which they gain through our schools.
INTEGRATION
Education in modern times has become divided into many distinct subjects, each with its own facts and methods. The students learn religion in religion class, literature in English class, history in history class, science in science class, math in math class. But a vision of the central goods of human life is at work in each of them. That vision should be one, and common. Students should not experience their studies as parallel series of unrelated facts.
Students also need to learn to integrate their learning with their life. What impact should certain works of literature or characters in history have on choices students will make? School practices and teachers’ example must witness to a life dedicated to the truth.
ASSIMILATION OF CULTURE
The primary instrument of education and formation in a school is a culture. No student or educator can unify the diverse visions of the good, true and beautiful found in the different parts of the curriculum. This is where culture comes into the picture. A developed, lasting, impressive culture is one which has, in its various spokesmen, encountered the whole, diversified experience of human activities, and taken related positions on them. Culture provides unity.
Alexis de Tocqueville’s [Democracy in America] shows how democracy is much more than a political system – it is the dominant characteristic of Western society beginning in 18th century. When a society becomes democratic, its views and tastes in religion, philosophy, art, science, math, history, language, education, all change together. They come to bear the democratic mark, the mark that says that all men are fundamentally equal.
Whether we are aware of it or not, our students are imbibing a culture from their classes and from their involvement in the school community. Becoming aware of this culture, and raising the question of its unity, is a crucial task for any school. Another very difficult task, but absolutely necessary if the assimilation of culture is to be “systematic”. The Magisterial documents identify “cultural pluralism”, the idea that all cultures are of equal value, as the greatest challenge facing education today.
