Schools Should Not Be Factories

In the eight years of my pastorate here, we have had 360 weddings, and many more are on schedule. This gives us an extended parish family, for couples go from here all over the world as well as enriching our local parish, and many of their parents and relatives make a point of visiting when they come to the city. A chief joy is baptizing the children born of these marriages, as well as welcoming couples who come from distances to celebrate their anniversaries.

In filling our marriage forms, I have been surprised by the number of young people who, having graduated with distinction from many of our nation's oldest and most famous universities, cannot write. This is literally so, to indulge the pun. In our computer age, cursive writing is taught less. I have a dear friend who at the age of 105 writes beautiful script, but I also have many friends in their early 20's who scribble their names with the equivalent of the X, which was the legal mark of former generations who had not the privilege of schooling.  I admit that, at the same time, the average third grader is likely to be more computer savvy than I am. But I do think it a pity that the art of putting hand to paper is being lost, as it both preserves the letters, which are the record of culture, and gives time to think before engraving the thought.

Pope Benedict XVI is certainly one of the most literate popes of history, and thinks so clearly that he is easy to understand. This makes fuzzy thinkers a bit nervous. Last week, at Charles University in Prague, he graciously said some indicting things about how educators fail to think. He reminded the audience that their university had been established in 1347 by a pope, Clement VI, and that the Church has always insisted that objective truth rather than subjective opinion is the guarantor of academic freedom. Schools that stress technical knowledge over the cultivation of virtue isolate reason from truth. The attitude that "everything is relative" and that there are no constant moral norms for living, turns philosophy into ideology and threatens free thought. "Fidelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom."

I was struck by the way the Pope was summarizing the great vision of Cardinal Newman's "Idea of a University." Facts are not enough. Education must show how the various articles of knowledge taught relate in an organic and unified understanding of life itself. Schools should not be factories churning out useful information. Man without a soul seeks only what he thinks is "useful."  Man who understands that he is in the image of God, seeks beauty, truth, and goodness. This is worth pondering as our own local schools begin a new year.

                                                                                                     Fr. George W. Rutler