What is Catholic education for? Principals explore questions at the crux of Catholic schools

“The purpose of Catholic education is to pass on the best in culture, so as to draw out what is best in students, in order to prepare students for the world in which they live.”

Speaking in a video against a backdrop of bookshelves, Michael Naughton shares this vision in a new course developed for Catholic educational leaders. Helping Catholic principals and teachers understand and live the truth of their mission is key to the success of Catholic education in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, its leaders say.

The course “Mission, Culture and Emerging Questions in Catholic Education” was developed by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ Office for the Mission of Catholic Education and the University of St. Thomas’ Center for Catholic Studies. The course was written by Naughton, who directs the Center for Catholic Studies, and Emily Dahdah, the OMCE’s director of Educational Quality and Excellence.

The course emerged from the archdiocese’s Roadmap for Excellence in Catholic Education, a strategic initiative that launched in 2019 to strengthen Catholic education in the archdiocese. Part of the Roadmap’s work is to improve schools’ principal retention rates, as an annual average of 15 to 20 of the 90 schools in the archdiocese experienced principal turnover in recent years, Dahdah said. “Mission, Culture and Emerging Questions in Catholic Education” is part of the response to that need, with the hope that better understanding one’s vocation brings stability to their work.

The course includes three focus areas: Excellence in Catholic Education, Catholic Culture and Cultural Competency, and The Call to Open Wide Our Hearts: Catholic Schools Confront Racism. The first part is key in helping Catholic leaders and educators understand their work in light of the purpose of Catholic education, said Dahdah, who holds a doctorate in organizational leadership from the University of Minnesota.

“Historically, the archdiocese has relied on (state) principal licensure and teacher licensure as setting the standard of professional quality, of professional preparation,” Dahdah told The Catholic Spirit March 17. But with state licensure as the main standard, that means Catholic schools would look to the state, not the Church, for defining the purpose of education, she said.

“What we’re really looking at is, what does a Catholic school leader need to do? Of course, there’s a lot of overlap in what a public school teacher or a public school principal does, but there’s also substantively unique things that a Catholic school teacher needs to do,” Dahdah said.

Some of those differences are practical, but many are philosophical and rooted in the understanding of God, the human person and the purpose of life. Catholic education, she said, sees the student as having body and soul, the world as both material and spiritual, and “the good life” as one of acquiring virtue and hoping for eternity with God.

That view of education has never been completely fulfilled with the philosophy undergirding U.S. public education, which is why Catholic education long has been part of the Church’s presence in America, even when public school curricula were rooted in Christian tenets, Dahdah said. But, as public schools have become increasingly secular, the philosophical difference between Catholic and public education has widened, she said.

“The direction of public ed, summarized broadly, is educating to the visible, material world, and the visible material world exclusively, so much so that you can’t even bring in the reality of the supernatural world,” Dahdah said. “Whereas Catholics would say we believe that the material world and the spiritual world are intimately intertwined. We’re made body and soul. And to educate a child fully is education on both levels of the spirit and the body, both the mind and the soul together. When you only do one, you actually teach the child, in a sense, that this is the only thing that’s important.”

The Church, she said, “has always seen education in a unique way as preparing souls for God — to be good men and women who love the Lord, and from that primacy of that relationship, that’s what makes it possible to live at peace with one another, to be good citizens, to be good mothers, to be good fathers.”

That vision also informs the Church’s view of parents’ role in education: as the primary educators, with whom Catholic schools are cooperating.

“Our job as Catholic educators is very transparent to parents, or should be very transparent to parents,” she said. “As society becomes more split, if you see that played out in public education, that makes it harder for parents to perhaps know what’s being taught or feel like it reflects their values.”

The “Mission, Culture and Emerging Questions in Catholic Education” course begins not with a lesson in what Catholic education is or how it’s different than non-Catholic education, but rather with a reflection on what it means to be a Catholic educator and how that’s rooted in the idea not just of work, but being called by God to a particular vocation.

“At the heart of this call to work, as educators, is an invitation of self-gift,” Naughton says in the course’s first lesson. “This work that we’re doing in Catholic education is so important that the Lord is inviting a deeper transformation of that — ?but it’s not found in our work. It’s found in this deepest sense of receptivity. It’s found in silence, in prayer, in adoration, in the sacraments, in the deep living of the Lord’s Day.”

Naughton draws from his doctorate in theology, masters of business administration and nearly 40 years of experience in Catholic education, first in Catholic high schools and then at the university level. He explains that one’s work is not only a personal call, but a communal call, and Catholic educators “need to have a shared purpose, and not just about today, but through time,” especially the Church’s 2,000-year tradition, through developing and deepening a Catholic worldview. That includes resisting the pervasive temptation to divide or compartmentalize one’s professional life from one’s religious life, he said.

In the course, Dahdah and Naughton identify and explain Catholic education’s four principles of excellence: academic achievement and integration, spiritual life, virtue formation and apostolic discernment.

“Mission, Culture and Emerging Questions in Catholic Education” is divided into 20 lessons, each with videos and reading material, and three opportunities for in-person or online discussion. Currently, two cohorts with a total of 40 principals are participating in the course. It is OCME’s expectation that all Catholic school principals will complete the course within the next two years and that they’ll then lead their school’s teachers through the course, too.

Mary Ziebell, principal of St. Maximilian Kolbe Catholic School in Delano, is currently taking the course. She admits that when she learned of it, her first reaction was the annoyance of “something else to do.” But her mind changed when she started the coursework.

“It really made me stop and think about what I personally in my life am doing, and what we’re doing at the school,” she said. “It’s a great refocus. I think we can get caught up in a lot of things when we say ‘excellence’ and ‘growth’ and all those great words and great things to do. But it has to come from the beginning. It has to come from ‘why are we doing this?’ … If we do that, then our kids can really accept the gift that God’s given them, and then they will excel in whatever they choose to do. It’s a great way of looking at the mission and where we’re going.”

She’s grateful that the simplicity of the video format allows her to revisit videos now and in the future, and she’s excited to share the content with St. Maximilian staff, she said.

The course is the first part of a three-year archdiocesan plan for professional development for school leaders, Dahdah said, and it complements the work of the Institute for Catholic School Leadership at The St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul, which “equips educational leaders to nurture a vibrant Catholic culture, cultivate spiritual and academic excellence, and apply executive management skills to grow and improve their schools,” according to its website. Launched in 2019, the institute offers a graduate-level certificate program in Catholic school leadership, and plans to offer workshops, conferences and other opportunities for continuing education for school leaders.

Current and aspiring Catholic school principals in the archdiocese are encouraged to complete the certificate program, Dahdah said.

She expects to be able to measure the impact of these initiatives through the OMCE’s Catholic School Study, a recently revamped process Catholic schools participate in every five years to reflect on their work in light of their mission. If she sees schools implementing the vision presented in the course, then she’ll consider it a success, she said.

“The Church has such profound riches, and that when those riches and treasures of our tradition and culture are handed on to the child, that’s what draws out the best in the child,” Dahdah said. “It’s critically important that we all are continuing to cultivate, both our minds and our hearts, as to what is our tradition? What are these jewels, these riches that we have? How are we passing along to the children within our care? That’s part of this effort of the course — to promote that knowledge, that reflection, and that intentionality as mainstream education increasingly neglects what we see as essential questions. So, (its) bringing back into focus those essential things that our children must have to be happy, to reach their potential.”