‘A very pushy kind of folk’: Educational Reform 1944 and the Catholic Laity of England and Wales

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century control over their schools was central to the sense of a Catholic identity for English Catholics, and its defence was a priority of their bishops. The 1944 education act threatened the financial viability of these schools. Between 1942 and 1944 the divided and uncertain response of the Catholic Hierarchy of England and Wales to the state’s proposals for educational reform opened the way for the intervention of lay catholics into the education debate. The Sword of the Spirit movement is commonly remembered as the central organization for lay initiative in Church affairs. However, for Catholics and for participants in the education debate the organization known as the Catholic Parents’ and Electors’ Association (CPEA) was far more significant. From local initiatives in Ilford, south‐east London, and Bradford, in the north, between 1940 and 1942, the CPEA expanded, until by 1944 it could claim a nationwide membership running into tens of thousands, as well as the enthusiastic support of the Catholic press. It engaged in vigorous political activity, in most cases without the sanction of clerical authority. To some extent the movement troubled Catholic authority as much as the education issue itself. With the re‐establishment of authority, following the appointment of a new cardinal‐archbishop of Westminster the movement foundered but was by no means extinguished. It embodied the extending power within the Catholic community of an urban middle class, related to, but increasingly distinct from, the growing Catholic professional elite exemplified by the growth of the Newman Association. The CPEA could be harnessed by the clerical leaders of the Catholic community, but its history indicates the social, psychological and political stresses attendant on educational change in a minority community.     

Pluralizing Catholic Identity

One strand in the scholarship of Catholic school identity perceives that it has deteriorated since Vatican II (1962–1965) and therefore needs restoration. Unfortunately, this perception is based on an assumption that there is a singular Catholic identity. This article demonstrates a basis in theology, social theory, and educational thought to describe multiple Catholic identities, and then analyzes the work of two prominent Catholic educational theorists—Timothy Cook and Richard Rymarz—whose work follows a conception of Catholic identity in the singular. Finally, it considers the practical merits of acknowledging, coordinating, and promoting many kinds of Catholic identity in a school.     

Dual identities: organizational negotiation in STEM-focused Catholic schools

In the last decade, STEM-focused schools have opened their doors nationally in the hope of meeting students’ contemporary educational needs. Despite the growth of these STEM-focused institutions, minimal research exists that follows how schools make a transition toward a STEM focus and what organizational structures are most conducive to a successful transition. The adoption of a STEM focus has clear implications for a school’s organizational identity. For Catholic schools, the negotiation of a new STEM focus is especially complex, as Catholic schools have been shown to generally possess a distinct religious and cultural organizational identity. The adoption of a second, STEM-focused identity raises questions about whether and how these identities can coexist. Framed by perspectives on organizational identity and existing conceptualizations of the cultural and religious hallmarks of Catholic schools, this study utilizes a multiple-case study design to explore the organizational transition of four Catholic K-8 institutions to Catholic STEM-focused schools. These cases demonstrate the particular challenges of negotiating multiple organizational identities. While variation existed in how the four schools accommodated these identities, the most promising environments for successful transition drew upon an aggregative model of identity negotiation, that is, when schools attended to both identities, but ensured that the original Catholic identity of the school remained foundational to all decisions. The least successful identity negotiations occurred when there was a lack of common understanding about what comprised a STEM-focused school, leading to minimal buy-in from stakeholders or when a school sought to make the transition for recruitment or marketing rather than mission-driven reasons. Discussion of the more successful identity aggregation provides a framework for schools within and beyond the religious sector that desire to adopt an additional STEM-focused identity.     

Education and the social order: re‐visioning the legacy of Brian Simon

The movement for the higher education of women in Ireland in the nineteenth century has traditionally been viewed as a Protestant initiative. Scholarship suggests that the Irish campaign developed along the same lines as the English movement, gaining from and growing out of the English advances. Leading Protestant schools for girls have been viewed as the driving force behind the concessions afforded Irish women. This paper challenges this assumption, suggesting that contemporaneous developments in Ireland were driven not by neighbouring reforms but by denominational tensions. The role played by the Catholic teaching orders during the nineteenth century cannot be overlooked. Although initially conservative in their approach to educational provision for girls, the Catholic teaching orders – the Dominican, Loreto and Ursuline orders in particular – were key players and stakeholders in women’s higher education in the latter half of the nineteenth century. This paper explores the objectives of the pioneers of Protestant and Catholic female education, examining the relative influence of the Church of Ireland and the Catholic Church. It explores the possibility that the movement for the higher education of Irish women found its impetus not in gender equality, but in denominational rivalry.     

Catholic religion teachers in Chile: an approach to identity building with regard to existing mission-profession tension

Religion classes are found throughout the entire school system in Chile. These are mostly conducted by Catholic teachers who form their own professional identity from internal demands (imposed by the Catholic Church) and external demands (imposed by the school culture, social media, students and their families). This paper presents a reference framework for the professional teacher identity and analyses the linguistic structures and persuasion strategies present in three documents that directly question this group of teachers, building an identity profile of them. Discursive mechanisms are identified which legitimise identity traits. The way in which said productions influence the thoughts and actions of their readership is also analysed. A documentary study design is used based on critical documentary analysis. The investigation shows breaks in the discourse and an existing tension between the mission and the profession, underlining that the Catholic religion teacher is first and foremost an evangeliser. The performance capacity of this discourse on the listeners is discussed along with the effect of the almost complete absence of references to teaching professionalism and the possible influence on the development and results of the subject.     

Student-teachers’ perspectives on the purposes and characteristics of faith-based schools: an Australian view

At a time when the faith-based identity of schools is facing serious challenges, the researchers undertook a longitudinal study of the relevant opinions, beliefs and values of student-teachers at a Catholic university campus in Australia. The focus of the current paper is on the responses of first-year students to a survey regarding their choice of secondary school, the purposes of schooling and the characteristics of Catholic schools. Relevant context are addressed including global education trends, the values and characteristics of Catholic education and relevant aspects of Australian schooling and youth culture. Regardless of religious affiliation, self-reported religiosity or type of school attended, providing a ‘safe and caring school environment’ emerged as the most important purpose of schooling and as a key reason for choice of school, while faith-based purposes and reasons received particularly low ratings. ‘Caring community’ was regarded as by far the most important characteristic of the Catholic school, followed by engagement in social justice programmes. The findings are briefly compared with parallel findings for teachers in Queensland Catholic schools.     

2. RACE RELATIONS IN COLLEGE

Controversy surrounding a Catholic philosophy of education and the Catholic “identity” of institutions of higher learning reveals the vitality and the genuine liberality of contemporary Catholic higher education. Rather than being symptoms of political correctness or of a lost capacity to celebrate Catholic or any other particularity, these controversies reveal the openness and authenticity of Catholic higher education. They show the willingness of many leaders in Catholic higher education to let go of ecclesiastical sectarianism, of absolute claims inconsistent with God's universal love and availability, and of classicism, and to embrace a reverent religious pluralism, a historical perspective, and the sheer exhilaration of intellectual discourse which aims to be universal. Such openness is no more risky than the more narrow and triumphal perspectives it replaces, and is well worth the risks.     

英国1829年"天主教解放法"论析

完整意义上的1829年天主教解放法案包括两个部分的内容：其一是原则上赋予天主教徒以公民权,其二则是针对天主教徒公民权所作的若干限制性规定或“保障”条款。尽管这些“保障”条款未必实有其效,但其作为整个法案之一部分却并非可有可无。如果说,法案的前一部分内容回应了解决天主教徒公民权问题之紧迫性与必要性,那么,后一部分内容则反映出天主教解放问题之深刻的历史复杂性。事实上,天主教解放问题不只是一个与天主教徒宗教政治命运息息相关的问题,也是一个攸关英国宪法的新教性质、英国国教会的存在及其特权、英格兰民族由来已久的反天主教传统以及新教徒尤其是国教徒的宗教认同及其宗教情感归属等等的重大问题。天主教解放问题所具有的这种复杂性,使得法案设计者们必须尽量权衡各种利害关系,兼顾来自不同方面的多种诉求。惟其如此,我们只有将法案两部分内容视为相互关联的整体,方能同情性地理解法案设计者们的历史处境及其复杂心态。     

Reclaiming a Lost Leader: Mary Perkins Ryan,Visionary in Modern Catholic Education

Mary Perkins Ryan remains one of the least recognized of the twentieth-century figures in the modern renewal of Catholic education in the United States. The reasons are many but none satisfactory. Ryan was an intellectual without a scholarly credential. She was an educator without an affiliation to an academic institution. She was a leading voice for professional standards in church religious education without ever serving in either a parish or diocesan role. Ryan worked alongside the giants of twentieth-century Catholic educational history—Gerard Sloyan, Johannes Hofinger, Gabriel Moran, Berard Marthaler, Maria Harris, Gloria Durka, and Thomas Groome. Their shadow cast long and may be the reason why despite her leadership in the American liturgical movement and her visionary stance on adult religious education, Ryan still remains on the margins of Catholic educational history. The purpose of this article is to illustrate how Ryan's intellectual corpus, which includes twenty-four authored works and two decades of editorial direction at The Living Light and Professional Approaches for Christian Educators (PACE), justifies her place alongside the more established figures of her time. It is to reclaim a leadership role for Ryan as a visionary in the modern renewal of Catholic education and in so doing to move her contributions from the margins to the main text of that history.     

Schooling for Faith,Citizenship and Social Mobility: Catholic Secondary Education in New Zealand, 1924–1944

The increased demand for secondary schooling, which took place in New Zealand in the years after 1924, had important consequences for the Catholic educational mission. No longer was it sufficient to provide a comprehensive elementary system of education that transmitted a ‘simple faith to a simple people’, and a secondary schooling for the educational advancement and social mobility of the select few. Justified on the basis of the need to protect the faith of the growing number of pupils going on to secondary school, the expanded educational mission was also grounded in a new Catholic identity as ‘moral’ patriotic citizens committed to Catholic family values and successful participation in New Zealand society. Catholic secondary schools offered a utilitarian secondary education, which focussed on success in state‐mandated examinations, to the children of parents ambitious for their social and economic success in the world. Nevertheless, there were tensions in a Catholic educational mission that worked for the social and educational advancement of Catholic pupils while aiming for their ultimate salvation and the protection Catholic religious and cultural values.     

A Very Scottish Affair: Catholic education and the State

This paper draws on key features of Scottish religious and political history as the backdrop to understanding the very particular place occupied by Catholic education in Scotland. This place, it is suggested, is quite different from that of religiously denominated schooling in other parts of the United Kingdom and is subject to a more comprehensive and sustained critique from politicians, academics and the media. Some of the criticisms levelled partake in general philosophical criticisms of publicly funded denominational schooling but are refracted through the lens of Scottish cultural history. The paper outlines three key issues worthy of reflection—divisiveness, church rights to approval of teachers and identity within the polity. It goes on to suggest that much of the opposition to the continued existence of such schools has philosophically and empirically weak foundations but that for Catholic schooling to continue to make a meaningful contribution to the polity it must remain ethically and culturally distinctive, while developing a self-critical sense and a willingness to be involved in the wider public conversation.     

Faith and the Nation: Education and Religious Identity in the Republic of Ireland

Through an examination of selected documents, this article explores the role which the Irish state attributed to education in promoting the Christian, specifically Catholic, identity of its young citizens. The essay also examines the evidence of a desire to distance the state from a direct role in reinforcing the religious dimensions of cultural identity and of an endeavour to reconcile respect for the nation's Christian heritage with respect for other versions of human self-understanding.     

The Politics of Catholic Education in Zambia: 1964-2001

In colonial Zambia, the school served as a key means of Christian conversion and Church growth. During this period, the provision of education was almost the total preserve of the missionaries. Even by the time of Zambia's Independence in 1964, sixty-six per cent of the primary schools were operated by missionaries and about thirty per cent were run by Catholics. After Zambia gained its national Independence, this changed. As in other African countries, the state desired to control the educational system, which in Zambia's case it achieved not by a direct take-over but through legislation. As a result of the 1966 Education Act, the system became so centralized and bureaucratic while restrictions were so numerous that the autonomy of Church-run institutions became very restricted. At first, Catholic authorities continued to work within the system by even retaining their primary schools, but after about six years during which government tended to marginalize the Catholic agents more and more, like many Protestant groups before them, they handed over their primary schools to central government in 1973. At the same time, however, they continued to open and operate a number of secondary schools and two teachers' colleges. Nonetheless, even here, regulations created difficulties for promoting and maintaining an acceptable post-Vatican II Catholic and Christian ethos because, in accord with the Education Act, they no longer controlled intake of students, employment of staff, or direction of the curriculum. Frequently, Catholic institutions had a preponderance of non-Catholic students and sometimes of non-Catholic staff. With attempts by government to impose what it termed "scientific socialism" in the late 1970s and early 1980s, sometimes by appointment of staff who had been to Soviet bloc countries and were trained in political education, even the maintenance of a religious ethos was threatened. This continued until a change in government came in 1991. One of the first actions of the new Movement for Multiparty Democracy government was to revise the regulations affecting Church-run schools to enable them to become more autonomous and to encourage them to extend their commitment even by taking back some of the primary schools that had been given over in 1973. It thus introduced a new Education Act in 1993 which allowed Church-sponsored institutions significantly greater freedom in terms of financing, student enrolment, appointment of staff, and curriculum development. This article traces the history of Catholic institutions in Zambia between 1964 and 1991, illustrating some of the difficulties which they encountered while operating in accord with their ideals, especially the promotion of justice which became more explicit and central to Catholic education after Vatican II. It argues that the Catholic Church cooperated closely with government in a state-controlled system in the years immediately after Independence, especially in its attempts to provide an educated labor force which was so much a priority for Zambia at that time. It also supported the government's efforts to create an egalitarian society through the educational system even if it may have produced a more relevant curriculum for school drop-outs if it had greater autonomy. Catholic secondary schools never numbered more than thirty, in a country that currently has 256, and with the rise of basic schools have become even less significant statistically. Yet, Catholic institutions' academic programs merited repeated acclaim from government, while they became much sought after by parents and students, both Catholic and non-Catholic. Even when government grants from the 1980s onward became less and less adequate, Catholic institutions maintained high academic and infrastructural standards. They had books and equipment which were frequently the envy of government institutions. What they have perhaps lost in terms of proportionate quantity, they greatly gained in quality. Even within a tightly government-regulated system they made a distinctive contribution. While the Church did not entirely endorse much of the Marxist approach of the early educational reform movement, it was in accord with the ideal of equity which the movement propounded. However, when government leaned too heavily on what it termed "Scientific Socialism" in the late 1970s, the Catholic and other Church authorities resisted not because of its egalitarian direction but because of its suspected atheism. When attempts were made to replace religious education with political education and when the government introduced atheistic literature into their schools, Church authorities made frequent protests with only moderate success. Nonetheless, religious education remained a core subject in the basic curriculum while political education continued to feature. In more recent times since the change of government in 1991, the ideal of equity has become more difficult for the government to pursue because of its debt servicing and Structural Adjustment Program. Fewer funds are available for social services like health and education and so the government had to adopt a policy of cost-sharing which has made education less available to the poor. At the same time, the society is becoming more clearly divided between haves and have-nots while the educational system itself is becoming more clearly a preserve of those who have means. The Catholic Church is thus confronted more than before with a choice because of the autonomy which has been granted through the 1993 Education Act. It can remain closely integrated within the system which is not only of poor quality but, because of the government's policy of cost-sharing, tends to exclude larger and larger numbers of the poor. Alternatively, it can step out and present a model of school that continues to maintain the highest academic standards but which at the same time ensures that an acceptable Catholic, though ecumenical, ethos is recreated where the promotion of justice is pivotal. Thus, not only those who have means, but the poorest of the poor, will be accorded a fair opportunity to benefit from the educational system which has been at the heart of the Catholic endeavour in Zambia, certainly since 1964 but probably from the outset.     

'First and foremost the church Offers Its educational service to the poor': Class,inequality and Catholic schooling in contemporary contexts

This article is based upon the assumption that a comprehensive construct of sociological enquiry in education must include engagement with specific faith-based educational systems in various settings. The analysis presented here attempts to advance that process of engagement by examining, both theoretically and empirically, the role of contemporary Catholic schooling and its relations with class, inequality and social reproduction from an international perspective. The article outlines some critical perspectives on traditional Catholic culture and education using concepts drawn from the work of Gramsci and of Bourdieu. The transformative potential of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) is then discussed, followed by a consideration of contemporary empirical studies of Catholic schooling. Throughout the analysis, Gramsci's concept of an ideological 'war of position' is applied to the internal relations of the Catholic Church and of Catholic education internationally. The need for further research into the power relations of the Catholic Church is indicated.     

The geographies of collective identity in the Chilean student movement

Abstract

This article is about collective identity, learning processes and political agency in the Chilean student movement. The geographies of collective identity are constituted through engaging with emotions interwoven with the political learning process by making mistakes that enabled student activists’ agency to undergo transformation between 2006 and 2011. Space articulates an identity politics as the bio-politics of existence through which life itself becomes a political action and animates a radical imaginary of politics as being-in-common. This meaning of politics is interwoven with the production of territorial assemblies in 2011 through which the Chilean student movement reasserted the space–time of the political demand for free education in spatial rather than temporal terms by reimagining a collective vision with others. This represents the main legacy of the movement and becomes a condition of possibility for envisioning free education as an alternative project that seeks to contest neoliberal common sense.     

谈《圣教杂志》的抗日救国宣传

《圣教杂志》是近代中国天主教的喉舌,也是国内外的天主教人士相互进行沟通和交流的平台,直接影响了中国天主教的发展。《圣教杂志》虽是天主教会的机关报,但关心国家命运和社会问题却是贯穿该刊始终的主线。尤其在抗战时期,《圣教杂志》以笔为剑,驳斥日本侵华谬论,揭露其野心和伎俩,痛斥日军暴行,提出爱国的教理依据,号召教民英勇抗日,宣传中国抗战必胜、日本必败,引导国内外天主教教友为抗战救国服务,充分发挥了舆论功能。     

Scaling the Heights of Heaven: Sister M. Rosalia Walsh and the Use of Story in the Adaptive Way

The work of Sister M. Rosalia Walsh and the Mission Helpers of the Sacred Heart gave impetus to the reemergence of the use of story in catechetical materials designed and published in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. Focused on catechetical needs of Catholic children who did not attend Catholic schools, The Mission Helpers' Adaptive Way method also systematically addressed the training of the catechists who would teach them. This article examines Sister M. Rosalia Walsh's contributions against the historical backdrop of the catechetical renewal movement that began in Europe in the late nineteenth century and made its way to the United States in the early decades of the twentieth century. It is in this transitional period that a wider use of story returns to Roman Catholic religious education following a centuries-long hiatus. Sister M. Rosalia Walsh was a pioneer in catechist training, bringing to light once again the power of the use of story in the Christian formation of children.     

A social semiotic analysis of the discursive construction of teacher identity in the ‘book of rules and customs’ of the Australian Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

Up until the 1960s, Catholic schools throughout most of the English‐speaking world were dominated by members of religious teaching orders, including female religious. For over a century following their establishment in 1866, one of the most prominent female religious teaching orders in Australia was that of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. The first part of this paper contextualises the emergence of this particular religious order in terms of the development of Catholic education internationally and in Australia, and the associated ‘religious formation’ of nuns as teachers. Part two is centered on the most significant text used to guide the ‘religious formation’ of members of this order both as religious and as teachers, namely, that of their ‘rules and customs’. Drawing on an analytic approach based on a theory of social semiotics, it analyses both the sets of practices and the textual mechanisms through which the identity of members of the order as teachers was constructed.     

从西僧到西儒--从《天主实录》看早期耶稣会士在华身份的困境

耶稣会士罗明坚撰写的《新编西竺国天主实录》新近影印出版,使学能够有机会与后期刻本《天主圣教实录》进行比较研究。早期来华耶稣会传教士传教策略的重大改变、以及早期耶稣会士从“西僧”到“西儒”身份转变的适错过程,均在不同版本比较中反映出来。     

Policy Perceptions of Headteachers and Governors in Catholic Schooling

The initial focus of this research centred on a study of the extent to which government legislation and action since 1965 has threatened or eroded the Catholic Church's influence over its schools within the maintained sector [1]. However, it became clear that this focus was based on the assumption that the Catholic Church in England and Wales had a clear set of educational principles which were not only distinct from those of the state but involved different policy outcomes. Moreover, during the course of the study, evidence emerged which indicated that the Church had not given as much attention to the principles underlying its educational policy as it had to the maintenance and numerical expansion of the schools themselves. It was also realised that the nature of Catholic education cannot be determined solely by examining the Church's official documents. Whilst official Church pronouncements indicate what Catholic education ought to be, they may not correspond to a reality of what a particular Catholic community has made of Catholic education. Therefore, this paper examines some of the beliefs and attitudes of a sample of Catholics involved in Catholic schooling.