The future of catholic schools (Main Forum)

by Enda, Eastwood, Australia, Thursday, February 23, 2012, 14:45 (483 days ago)

I do not know what the future of Catholic schools will be. A potted history of their past might give a few clues.

Catholic schools in Australia from the 1870s succeeded because the bishops had a virtually unpaid and obedient workforce of nuns and brothers. Catholics were poor and poorly educated. They were mostly of Irish descent and tribal loyalty and class cohesion were more important to them than their own freedom to choose. The bishops took advantage of this and were able to apply pressure to parents to send their children to Catholic schools even if the schools were inadequate.

After WWII Catholic parents were upwardly socially mobile and Catholic schools were at their strongest. Scholarships, sporting results, upward social mobility and the old tribal loyalty attracted parents to send their children to the sisters and the brothers. They felt they were getting value.

Many of the schools during this time were at best inadequate especially in the country. Many were violent. Violence towards children was part of Irish culture (see the novels and other prose of John McGahern for example). It was also sometimes a result of inadequate teachers trying to get or maintain control. Many teachers especially in secondary schools were untrained.
One issue was that schools had very small staffs. For example my school had 240 boys from year three to leaving certificate, year eleven. The whole school staff was made up of five brothers. When in primary school we managed three really good teachers out of the five it was a good school. But if you had three inadequate teachers, especially if one of these was the principal the students were in trouble. We were.

By the early 1960s the schools were in trouble. There was a claim then, “A place for every Catholic child in a Catholic school.” It was never more than bravado. From the beginning of state education there were always about a third of Catholic kids attending state schools. The baby boom meant that there were classes of ninety and one hundred children. The joke ran, “Pissed? He was as full as a catholic school.”

After 1968 vocations to the brothers’ and sisters’ orders collapsed and many of the up and coming talented ones let their orders or moved away from school teaching. The Wyndham Scheme and other changes in education meant that a significant group who stayed in schools were less effective.

Changes in the Church meant a lot of these declined to teach religion any more.

There were always tensions in Catholic education even when we looked our most tribal. The Christian Brothers for example had a rule that no Church official could inspect their schools except in religious education. This rule had its origins in Ireland where bishops and priests wanted to control everything. They had their counterparts in Australia and the brothers were having none of it. It the mid 1960s a brother was employed by the Sydney Catholic Education Office as an inspector and some of the brothers let it be known that while he was representing the CEO he was not welcome in their schools.

State Aid saved the schools. But the old model was finished.

Most of the reasons the schools survived from 1870 had gone or were going. The unpaid and obedient workforce of nuns and brothers vanished. Catholics became middle class and better educated. We had long since shed any Irish nationalism. As Italians and others moved in we lost our tribal cohesion. The Labor Split, Humanae Vitae, and other social changes meant that putting up with being told what to do came a long second to having freedom to choose. The bishops had lost their advantage; they could no longer apply pressure to parents.

Part of the freedom to choose included where you sent your children to school.

I still hear adults say of the violence they experienced in Catholic schools, “It did me no harm.” I don’t believe them. It did me considerable harm. If some men stuck to the old “Never hurt me” line their wives were not as accommodating.

For a long time Catholic parents had wanted value. Now they looked further afield. If the schools were to survive they had to adapt. And they did. They became much better organised. The violence disappeared. The teachers were all adequately trained. The schools became innovative.

From 1870 until about 1968 Catholic schools were a seller’s market. The Church had power over its members and they could say, “Take it or leave it. Of course if you don’t take it you will risk your immortal souls and those of your children.”

Now it is a buyers’ market.