Catholic Schools are Saving Western Civilization

In Thomas Cahill’s 1996 book How the Irish Saved Civilization, the author presented a compelling depiction of Irish monks who saved many of the great writings of western civilization in their modest scriptoriums:

[A]s the Roman Empire fell, as all through Europe, matted, unwashed barbarians descended on the Roman cities, looting artifacts and burning books, the Irish, who were just learning to read and write, took up the great labor of copying all of western literature—everything they could lay their hands on. These scribes then served as conduits through which the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian cultures were transmitted to the tribes of Europe, newly settled amid the rubble and ruined vineyards of the civilization they had overwhelmed. Without this Service of the Scribes, everything that happened subsequently would have been unthinkable. Without the Mission of the Irish Monks, who single-handedly re-founded European civilization throughout the continent in the bays and valleys of their exile, the world that came after them would have been an entirely different one—a world without books. And our own world would never have come to be.

Today, the barbarians at the gate are more likely to be the social justice warriors and politically correct police who “cancel” those who do not use the correct pronouns, remove classic books that do not represent “woke” ideals, and “disinvite” speakers and teachers who, in their opinion, are racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, or merely politically conservative.

The Vandalization of Education

More schools and libraries are banning class literature in favor of approved progressive reading for “woke” babies and appropriately activist children. (Such book-banning led Superintendent Thomas Carroll of the Boston Archdiocese to publicly invite those districts that were getting rid of their classic books to donate them to his school system.) History is being “cleansed” of statesmen, politicians, and entertainers who do not measure up to today’s social justice standards.

The result of this purging is the growth of an entire population of children who have never read classic literature, aren’t able to present a logical and literate argument, do not understand the ultimate underpinnings of natural law on society, and have no awareness of the trove of the great histories and philosophies of civilization. They are becoming more ignorant and even more proud of their ignorance as they seek to attain the hollow “holiness” of virtue signaling and the “pinnacles” of virtual ad hominem attacks.

Just as students who don’t know Moses can’t truly understand the Underground Railroad or the writings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (according to Camille Paglia), schools that don’t require mastery of traditional grammar or maintain that formal grammar is unjust are cruelly crippling their students as writers, readers, and lifetime learners.

Adding to the deleterious effects of this “woke” pandering is the burden that the pandemic has placed on students, especially those in central city public schools, who have not had in-person education for nearly one year. As of February 15, 2021, only 38% of all K-12 public schools were providing in-person education for five days of the week. Sixty-two percent of all public school students in the U.S. were either attending school remotely or via remote hybrid, defined as having in-person schooling only 2-3 days each week.

Catholic Schools and Their Benefits

Meanwhile, Catholic schools in all 50 states are now open for in-person learning five days a week. Furthermore, of nearly 2 million Catholic school students, 40% live in the inner city. Many children who most desperately need to be in school are in attendance daily at Catholic schools throughout most large cities of the U.S., including in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Boston. In contrast, sadly, a larger number of their public-school neighbors stay home.

The education provided by Catholic schools, because of their faith-based foundation in natural law and truth, and inspired by the various religious orders that operate them, is classic and traditional. There is no “woke” addition or fluidity to the two sexes, only male and female. Correct grammar is taught, with its proper use of pronouns. The curriculum is challenging, with nightly homework, and students rise to the expectations placed before them. Classic literature, such as Tom Sawyer, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Iliad and The Odyssey, and Shakespeare’s play and sonnets, are required reading for Catholic school students.

Yet even among students from central city areas, and with the more stringent Catholic school grading scale, Catholic school students had the highest graduation rate of any other type of school across the board (99.1%) and were more likely to study advanced STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) subjects.

Catholic school students carry those gains into college, where they have higher grade point averages and, again, higher graduation rates. This “Catholic School effect” is most markedly seen among minority students from central city areas. Overall, in study after study, extensive research on Catholic schools found that Catholic schools’ rigorous curriculum and high expectations lead to greater learning gains for all students.

Why Catholic Schools Succeed

Even as academically challenging as Catholic schools are, Kathleen Porter-Magee writes:

Catholic school success is not simply the product of rigorous curriculum, structure, and order. It’s also the result of a school culture animated by the belief that every child is made in the image and likeness of God and focused on drawing out of every pupil their own God-given potential.

Careful observers will also see that Catholic schools’ academic results are not actually the main goal; rather, they’re byproducts of schools that focus on forming young people not just with the skills that will make them financially successful, but also with the habits of virtue and values that will make them choose to do good and contribute to their communities.

Not only are girls who graduate from Catholic schools much less likely to become pregnant before marriage, and boys to be incarcerated. Research has also shown that “Catholic school graduates are more likely to be civically engaged, to vote, to volunteer, and to give to charitable causes than their public-school peers.”

In short, “The goal of Catholic schools is not to secure top marks in a school rating system but to form students who opt to serve, who choose right over wrong, and who contribute to their communities.”

Conclusion

As Sir Kenneth Clark points out in his epic tome Civilisation,  “For quite a long time—almost a hundred years—western Christianity survived by clinging to places like Skellig Michael, a pinnacle of rock eighteen miles from the Irish coast, rising seven hundred feet out of the sea,” one of many places where the Irish monks secured the remnants of great knowledge.

Today, only 10% of American children currently attend Catholic schools. Yet this tiny and powerful minority, well-educated and virtuous, may be the thread to which Western civilization clings in America to save it from the barbarism of progressive echo chambers. Oremus.