A truly Catholic education ethos

One of the privileges in my job as director of the Jesuit Institute has been to work with people who are, or aspire to be, principals in Catholic schools.

I have worked with the Catholic Institute of Education to support rural principals who succeed in delivering first-class education in the third-world circumstances of some of our towns and villages; and I have just started, for the second year running, working with the Catholic Schools Office in Gauteng to help form deputy principals and heads of department who might one day be leading our Catholic schools, both private and public.

It is a privilege because these are people who demonstrate, day in and day out, their willingness to “go the extra mile” for the young people in their care.

It is also a privilege to support one of the best ways in which the Catholic community has made and continues to make an extraordinary contribution to South African society. And it is even more of a privilege because these women and men are not all Catholic.

Most readers will be used to — perhaps resigned to — the fact that only a minority of learners in Catholic schools are baptised Catholics. Although it varies from school to school, the average across all Catholic schools is only 30%.

But perhaps you had thought (or hoped) that at least the principals and most of the teachers were themselves Catholic. Well, this is not the case, and from my experience this is nothing to apologise for.

I have had the honour of working with Anglicans, Pentecostals, Dutch Reformed and even Muslims who hold leadership positions in Catholic schools in South Africa. I always stress that we are not trying to create “Catholic leaders in schools”; we are trying to create “leaders in Catholic schools”. And I have to say that some of the best of them are not themselves Catholics.

I hope I can explain why. Catholic education is characterised by a commitment to educating the whole child, as outlined by the Vatican II document on education and subsequent teachings of popes and our own bishops. To be a leader in a Catholic school you need to be not just in tune with that vision, but actually be willing to invest the time, energy and intellectual commitment that is needed to demonstrate that.

Education does not divide into neat parcels of curriculum, and the job does not end at the school gates or at 3pm. The child’s physical, cultural, moral and spiritual well-being are just as important as their academic achievements.

One principal, who had transferred from a government school, gave me a clear example of the difference: she had spent her Christmas holidays committing to memory the names and faces of every child in her new school because she knew that this was the standard that would be expected from her as a leader in a Catholic school.

There are those involved in education who did indeed have baptismal water poured on their heads by a Catholic priest, but who are not committed to this vision. And equally there are many who are not baptised Catholics but who have shown that they can and do deliver this vision of Catholic education.

Those of us who are involved in different ways in forming and supporting the teachers and leaders in our Catholic schools must also share that vision and be able to help those “on the front line” to deliver it even when faced, as is often the case, with distracted students, hostile parents, detached clergy and an unpredictable department of education. We certainly do not help them by wagging fingers about who is inside or outside some sort of holy club.

So how do we accommodate within this vision the case of an unmarried teacher becoming pregnant? In South Africa we rightly worry about how we can protect our teenage girls from early pregnancy and what we teach them. The initial temptation therefore — as a diocese in America has recently done — is to fire the woman: “She broke the rules, so she must pay”.

But does this support the whole-person vision we have of the learner? It certainly sends out a clear message of moral disapproval, even to the level of public humiliation.

But it also sends other messages, intentionally or unintentionally. If you are going to break a rule, make sure it is not a sexual one. If you have sex, make sure you avoid pregnancy. If you get pregnant, make sure you don’t get found out. If you are a girl, expect to be treated more harshly than a boy (after all, we never hear of male teachers being fired for having sex with their girlfriends). If you are in trouble, don’t look for compassion from your Catholic school.

In my experience, Catholic schools in South Africa should be commended for not immediately going for the knee-jerk reaction and instead for viewing such issues within a wider vision. Catholic schools are successful because of their ethos and they need to be able to enact it. However, the question we have to look at is what do we mean by ethos?

Is it a set of rules that include or exclude people from a club; rules that we hope the next generation will internalise and pass on?

Or is it a way of treating human beings, of seeking the image of God in each person, and providing a counter witness to an education model that sees only numbers or grades or budgets or output?

I am inspired that so many excellent leaders in our schools — Catholic and non-Catholic — are already committed to such vision; and that so many aspiring leaders—Catholic and non-Catholic—are invested in furthering such a vision.