New book: Reclaiming the Piazza

From the website of the St. Andrew's Foundation for Catholic Teacher Education 

We are delighted to announce the publication of 'Reclaiming the Piazza: Catholic Education as a Cultural Project' (Gracewing). Authored by Ronnie Convery, Leonardo Franchi, Raymond McCluskey and with an Afterword by Bob Davis, this volume takes a fresh look at the aims and purposes of Catholic education in a plural society. After a Foreword by Archbishop Philip Tartaglia of Glasgow, Chapter One explores some contemporary challenges to Catholic education. Chapter Two discusses education as process of cultural renewal. Chapter Three looks at the relationship between education and the media. Chapter Four sets the topic within the context of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Italy's innovative 'cultural project'. Chapter Five proposes some ways in which Catholic schools can be understood as a 'cultural project'. The Afterword by Bob Davis explores issues arising for Catholicism's encounter with modernity. There are two appendices: the complete text of the Educating to Intercultural Dialogue in Catholic Schools: Living in Harmong for a Civilisation of Love (Congregation for Catholic Education, 2013) and an address by Pope Francis to the Congregation for Catholic Education (2014).

The authors are all members of the St. Andrew's Foundation for Catholic Teacher Education at the University of Glasgow. The book will launched on September 19 2014 at a conference on the New Evangelisation in Vatican City. 

Metrics in education

The march of metrics in education continues to propagate unnecessary confusion, justifiable anger and unwarranted pride. When too much importance is placed on such crude measurements of ‘quality’, there can be little doubt that genuine educational quality suffers. In recent weeks, the National Student Survey (UK) has published its latest set of data on student perceptions of courses in UK universities. It is astonishing to see how much value is afforded to this rather unsophisticated tool. Thankfully there are few teaching academics who place much value on it and it is increasingly seen as little more than another system to be ‘gamed’. More’s the pity!

Personal Enrichment through Reading

This is the time of year when school teachers inevitably turn their thoughts to the academic year ahead. Awaiting them is the cycle of lesson planning, reports, assessment work, school shows and meetings with parents. Obviously, much of this has to be planned well in advance. Alongside this necessary planning cycle, there must be some scope for a ‘personal enrichment cycle’: this is a modest but well-ordered ambition to support our teaching with some solid reading material consisting of both fiction and non-fiction texts. The literary classics can be complemented by some modern fiction – and let us not forget the need to become increasingly familiar with the history and philosophy of education and culture. This need not be onerous undertaking – a quarter of an hour per day would be sufficient. Try it and see what happens!

Communication, rhetoric and education

At a recent conference on Creative Strategies for Promoting Cultural Change (Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome), I was struck by the many links between what are regarded as effective communication strategies and good teaching methods. Indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that teaching is the art of communication par excellence.

Good teaching takes places when a knowledgeable person communicates something about this knowledge to others in a coherent, systematic and lucid way. It is not the throwing of facts at a wall of students but involves the proper use of rhetoric.

The ancients knew much about rhetoric. It forms part of the classical trivium alongside grammar and dialectic. We urgently need to reclaim the art of rhetoric from those who regard it as mere manipulation of words or the soulless repetition of empty promises. On the contrary, rhetoric is about the nobility of learning, a means to ensure that traditions and cultural inheritances are preserved as living realities in the soul of a people. The teacher aware of rhetoric will grow in stature and enhance the dignity of the profession.

Faith, culture and ‘holy days’

It is the weekend of Easter. For many in the West these few days have become another ‘holiday weekend, a time to relax the body and mind—which, of course, is necessary—with apparently little thought of the deep significance of the events which Christians celebrate. This is another reminder of a chasm in contemporary culture: the loss of the connection between the feasts of the Christian calendar and the life of the traditionally Christian nations.

In educational terms, this seems to be another indicator of an increasingly illiberal individualism which tears people away from what is held in common towards overly-personalised constructions of values. Such an approach bears ‘fruit’ in the idolisation of choice—which is not a bad thing per se—but runs the risk of placing the individual against the community and hence reducing morality to a menu of choices.

Authentic liberal education should foster the ‘unity’ in the ‘unity-in-diversity’ which is one of the marks of a good society. Of course this leads inevitably to debates on what constitutes the bedrock of the sought-after unity. As we munch away contentedly at our Easter eggs and traditional Easter cakes, this question should not be far from our mind.

Happy Easter.

Very strong words from Pope Francis on education

In a speech (11 April) to a Delegation of the International Catholic Office of Children, Pope Francis gave one of the strongest critiques of some aspects of modern education that we have heard from any Pope in living memory:

I would like to express my rejection of all types of educational experiments with children. One cannot experiment with children and young people. They are not laboratory guinea-pigs. The horrors of educational manipulation that we experienced in the great genocidal dictatorships of the 20th century have not disappeared; they keep their currency under different clothing that, with the pretension of modernity, force children and young people to walk on the dictatorial path of the “single thought.” A great educator said to me just over a week ago:“ Sometimes one doesn’t know if with these projects – he was referring to concrete projects of education – you send a child to school or to a camp of re-education.

It would be good to ponder these words and ask the question: to which forms of education was he referring? Many teachers recognise the ideological pressures on them to conform to (and indeed promote in the classroom) the ‘new orthodoxy’ with regard to climate change, reproductive rights and reform of marriage laws. Similar pressure comes from those who see education in stark neo-liberal terms as a market-place where pupils are trained in the  skills necessary for a modern economy.

Those who thought that the papal interest in the ‘educational emergency’ had disappeared with Pope Benedict’s resignation better think again. Pope Francis has shown once again that he is 'in continuity' with Pope Benedict and the wider Catholic tradition: indeed, Pope Francis's use of language—and we can be sure that these were carefully chosen words—suggests that he wishes this debate to remain at the heart of the Catholic Church’s engagement with modern society.

Read the full speech here, courtesy of www.zenit.org: http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/pope-s-discourse-to-the-delegation-of-the-international-catholic-office-of-children