By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
It is sometimes difficult for older Catholics to explain to family members and fellow parishioners why we recall the Catholic schools of our youths with such fondness. Younger Catholics have seen movies caricaturing the teaching sisters and brothers of the past as cruel and intolerant curmudgeons, and wonder why anyone would want to place their children under their care. We no longer have films such as Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary’s to provide some balance.
A recent (December 19) column in the Jesuits’ America magazine might not be as persuasive as the old Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman depictions of the Catholic clergy and religious, but it deserves a read, especially by younger, more liberal Catholics who are convinced that the decline of the pre-Vatican II Catholic schools is no great loss.
The author of the column is Fr. John J. Conley, SJ, the chairman of the philosophy and theology department at Loyola University in Baltimore. Fr. Conley writes of his memories of Sr. Thaddeus, the nun who was his fourth-grade teacher at a Catholic school in suburban Philadelphia in the early 1960s.
I am not naive about these things. I have met good and clear-headed Catholics who have nothing good to say about the teaching sisters in their past. It can’t be that they are imagining the cruel treatment they experienced.
I can remember one woman who worked with me on a parish committee who told me of how she pleaded with her parents to be removed from the Catholic school she attended because of the harsh way the nuns treated her and her classmates, and of how much happier and productive she was when her parents ceded to her wishes and enrolled her in the local public school. She made sure her own children attended public schools.
All I could say in response was that, although I didn’t doubt her recollections, my experience was different. I had a few grumpy nuns along the way who may have used the ruler on their students’ knuckles a bit too often, but for the most part the teaching sisters were women who did all they could to provide me and my classmates with a sound education in a nurturing environment. Fr. Conley would say the same.
He writes of how Sr. Thaddeus worked with “Vince,” the student with the “worst handwriting in the class,” not by “upbraiding him” but by “cheerfully tutoring him during recess”; of how Sr. Thaddeus would discreetly find a way to “skip over” during oral recitations a girl who stuttered to avoid humiliating her; of how she would go out of her way to locate at school processions and carnivals Conley’s sister Nancy who had Down syndrome, to “give her a small gift. We quickly acquired ‘the Sr. Thaddeus collection,’ a St. Bernadette medal, holy cards of Our Lady, a plastic rosary bracelet.”
Fr. Conley has no doubts about what made Sister Thaddeus the kind of teacher that she was: “Sr. Thaddeus had her own preferential option for the poor. Whereas many teachers play for the stars, Sr. Thaddeus cared for the vulnerable. Her pedagogical compass was compassion. The Gospel made her tick.”
I am sure there are readers of this column who have memories of public school teachers comparable to Conley’s memories of Sr. Thaddeus. Even so, I think that Conley has captured something unique about the impact of the Gospels and Catholic values on the Catholic schools of old. He contends that we may be putting too much stress these days on “technical skills” in the training and evaluation of teachers: “How well does the teacher use PowerPoint, prepare for class, design exams? Questions on a teacher’s moral character are oddly cramped. Is the teacher respectful, tolerant, open to diversity?”
Conley concludes: “Even in the age of email with attached files, education is still about one soul shaping the struggling souls of others. Sr. Thaddeus got it.”
I would say the same of several of the Dominican sisters who taught me in grammar school.
On another topic: the smear campaign against Betsy DeVos, President Trump’s nominee to be secretary of education who has now been confirmed. Fox News host John Stossel recently reported on a story in The New Yorker magazine that charged DeVos was unfit to lead the Department of Education because she once donated $200 million — of her own money — to Christian schools.
The New Yorker also charges that DeVos intends to have public schools “teach creationism.” The New Yorker editorial stated that “DeVos is a fundamentalist Christian with a long history of opposition to science” who “could shape science education decisively for the worse,” distorting our young people’s “proper understanding of the very basis of modern biology: evolution.”
Writes Stossel, “That would be bad — were it true, but DeVos’ critics don’t quote anything she has said that shows ‘opposition to science’.” What about the charge that DeVos wants public schools to “teach creationism”? Stossel has firsthand knowledge of this question. He interviewed DeVos a while back. She told him that she does indeed favor teaching creationism; that “in a free society,” that “shares her philosophy of education some religious schools might teach creationism, but not in science class.”
Notice what The New Yorker did. They took out of context DeVos’ statement about what she thinks would be appropriate for Bible study classes in a private, religious school, and made it seem as if she favored creationism being taught in science classes in the public schools. It is dishonest journalism.
On another topic: We continue to get emails on the topic of books that will help young Catholics withstand the secular leftist influences of our time. M.A.H. of Round Rock, Texas, recommends Life of Christ by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen (Image Books/Doubleday); How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization by Thomas E. Woods (Regnery Publishing); Christ the King, Lord of History by Anne W. Carroll (TAN Books and Publishers); This Is the Faith by Canon Francis Ripley (TAN Books and Publishers).
M.A.H. writes, “These books are easy to read and very insightful. They give us hope and understanding. They show us that God has a plan for us, His children, and how He has gone about this plan since the beginning of creation.”
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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford, CT 06492.
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