Harness the Power of Catholic faith

Amid the bleak realities of South Africa’s education, Catholic schools have the power to shine a light, argues EVONA REBELO.

There has been much discussion about the relevance of Catholic schools in this day and age.

While most are aware of the significant historical contribution Church schools have made to the intellectual and social capital of our country, there is growing uncertainty about their role today.

Materialist ideologies have reduced humans to cogs in a mechanistic world, devoid of spiritual meaning. Economic rationalists assert that the primary aim of schools is to graduate good citizens who will enhance the economy through appropriate work skills.

The Catholic school can go a long way to countering these dehumanising trends.

Christian Brother Louis de Thomasis, in his thought-provoking book Dynamics of Catholic Education, reminds us that although the Catholic school is not the Church, it shares in its evangelising mission and can promote the renewal of the Church, “becoming the exemplar of a spiritual dynamic that is so needed in our new globalised world”.

Catholic schools need to provide “a liberating intellectual education and an experience of human and religious development for its students”.

The Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education in 2014 noted that “the young people we are educating today will become the leaders of the 2050s”.

But, it asked: “What will religion’s contribution be to educating younger generations to peace, development, fraternity in the universal human community? How will we…educate them to gratitude, to a sense of awe, to asking themselves questions, to develop a sense of justice and consistency? How will we educate them to prayer?”

Catholic schools are challenged to develop a better understanding of a Catholic perspective of human nature—a Catholic anthropology.

Do teachers and parents really know the story of Catholic beliefs about the human person?

Catholic anthropology draws its inspiration from the life and teachings of Jesus. His dream for the realisation of an “abundance of life” (Jn 10:10) epitomises the core of a Catholic anthropology — life lived fully to one’s potential as a relational being.

Hopefully teachers don’t just teach subject matter without reflecting on the assumptions made in the curriculum about human nature.

Do our life skills sessions on self-esteem and sexuality express what it means to be created in the image and likeness of God? Are our behaviour modification programmes formative and restorative? Is community development and social justice taken seriously? Do science lessons inculcate a sense of wonder for the mystery and beauty of God’s creation?

Educating youth is tough work, and it’s getting tougher every year. In independent and public schools, the demands are exhausting. But we in Catholic education have at our disposal a real treasure—our special religious character. It allows us to promote a Catholic anthropology.

Ultimately we want our children to be literate, numerate, critical thinkers who will find purpose in whichever economic enterprise they commit themselves to. But more than that, we want them to be attentive to relationships of justice with their fellow human beings and the earth. We want them to serve the common good and actively seek to make a difference to their world.

We hear a great deal about the crisis in education. Despite receiving the largest tranche of the national budget, we are not seeing the fruits that we had hoped for. South African children perform dismally in international numeracy and literacy tests.

Around 60% of our learners drop out before matric, thus contributing to the staggering youth unemployment rate of 63%. While the legacy of Bantu education has a lot to do with this, there are a multitude of other factors at play.

There are about 26000 schools in South Africa today, of which only 348 are Catholic. The vast majority of these Catholic schools are public schools on private property, which means they are state-funded. These schools are confronted by the same socio-economic constraints as the schools belonging to the state. And yet Catholic schools consistently achieve better results than regular state schools.

Jonathan Jansen and Molly Blank, in How To Fix South Africa’s Schools, share ten strategies that they documented in their research in 19 successful schools across the country.

These strategies comprise the core of what we believe quality Catholic education espouses: a clear vision of the transformative power of education, committed leadership and passionate educators.

We need to improve school facilities. We need school policies to be implemented. We need on-going monitoring and evaluation of our staff and academic results. But most importantly, we need to form people who will promote a Gospel vision.

We need to work hard at recruiting and selecting suitable leaders for our schools but we also need to provide them with ongoing training and formation opportunities.

The Department of Education will offer curriculum, assessment and management programmes but who will form our people in the art of servant leadership?

The authentic Catholic school, through religious education, liturgical and social justice programmes, is able to engage teachers and learners on a journey of becoming “fully human” — an exploration of our distinctive Catholic anthropology which brings us to the realisation that we are indeed the Imago Dei — the image of God.

Evona Rebelo is the director of the Catholic Schools Office in the Western Cape.