I had the pleasure the other night of attending my youngest brother’s senior prizegiving evening. I was there primarily because my parents were away overseas and were obviously trying to alleviate their guilt by sending me in their place. 
But I actually quite enjoyed myself – not least because my brother came away with quite a few awards, and I got to play the proud big brother.
It was also interesting for me because both my younger brothers attended the same the high school as me – namely, Rosmini College – here on the sunny side of Auckland. And while it has been…ahem…a while since I attended there as student, many things have remained the same.
For example, the principal, Tom Gerrard, was there was I was, and has in fact been there since 1975, officially making him the longest serving secondary school principal in the country! As I listened to his Principal’s Address at the prizegiving, I could have been sitting back at my very own senior prizegiving as the message was almost identical. Boys need discipline, the difference between governance and management, the importance of being well-rounded, strong work ethic – I could probably quote it from memory by now! Good solid stuff mind you! 
However, at the same time, many other things about the school have changed…dramatically. For starters, they have drama as a subject now. Also, they have much nicer and more functional facilities (including a new gym) than when I was there, and there seems to be an actual focus on more than just academics and sport, with art and music really taking an almost equal footing!
Why am I bringing this up on Being Frank? Well, I find it interesting to discuss with other Catholics what their plans are for their kids – those that have been born as well as hypothetical ones. Specifically, I’m becoming more interested in what people have planned for their children’s education. My wife and I are planning to pretty much mimic our own educational path I think – namely Catholic primary and secondary schooling. However, we have friends who are planning to send their kids to state schools, and others who are planning to homeschool. So there’s a mix in there.
But, here’s the thing: when I question about rationale, some of those I have spoken to who are keen on sending their kids to state schools claim that this is to protect them from exposure to poor liturgy and weak Catholic formation in the schools. If I understand the theory correctly, they believe that having their kids in state schools where no religion is taught is better than having them taught unorthodox subject matter in our integrated schools.
I find the theory interesting, and plausible on the face of it. However, I do think that the primary formation one receives in The Faith comes from your parents – I definitely the gift of Faith from them, not my school. I also think that we all should take a leaf out of the book of the (now aging) rebels in the Church after Vatican II. You won’t hear me say that too often! You all should know the type I’m referring to – the ones for whom the catch-call was “if you disagree with the Church, don’t leave – stay and change from the inside.” Doesn’t such a strategy suit what we should do as we become Catholic parents? Rather than simply lamenting the state of Catholic education in this country, shouldn’t we be actively involved in our Catholic schools so as to be able to pro actively “assist” with making changes where they are necessary?
I think so. And my return to Rosmini the other night only spurs me on. For if my alma mater can change to allow for music and art to be up there with academics and sport, then anything is possible! 
James;
Home schooling has great appeal.
There isnt ‘Catholic faith’ taught at our schools anymore it is something called ‘Special character’ What is that?
The problem with Catholic secondary schools is that there is peer pressure to not (for example) go to Mass regularly.The advantage is that even though crap is taught you can at least complain when a teacher raises anti catholic teaching. Can you do this at a state school?
Parents need to know that their childrn arent going to get a ‘Cathoic education’ and do the work themselves.
But if they can introduce drama and Music then perhaps a decent Catholic based RE programme isnt impossible. Dont make your decision yet as these things depend so much on who is in charge.
St Peters is said to have a better curriculum but struggle getting ‘Catholics’ to teach it?
Question: Does anyone know whether I, as a taxpayer, am contributing in any way to the ‘faith’ schools here in New Zealand?
KA
KA
In so far as many private schools are integrated with the state schools – State control curricula, pay teachers salaries, a support payment is made by the state. In return, the private scools observe the state curricula, ensure school buildings are up to stae specification, and get the usual ERO check-ups.
The private schools have sone discretion as to what additional subjects are taught. As far as Catholic schools go, they generally have a religion period, along with prayers at the start of the school day, and during it. It is all very transparent. (The catholic schools do not train Opus Dei albino assassin monks, for example)
The reason was that the state system , if the private system failed financially, the state would be unable to provide education for those children/students who could not continue at the private school, simply because of the logistics. Not all private schools are integrated, but I belive that most Catholic schools are. Also, the private schools do actually provide the majoe portion of their own operating costs, as far as I am aware.
So no, you are subsidising education from your taxes to public as well as private schools. But you are not paying for “religious indoctrination”
Good post, James the Least. I agree with this:
Same as you, I know good Catholics who choose either to send their kids to state schools or to home school them, and I can understand and respect their decisions. It’s the parents’ job to decide what is best for their children. However, I’m more and more thinking we need to roll up our sleeves and get involved (no need for the quotes on the word “assist” – let’s not beat around the bush: we need to assist our schools in doing their job of bringing up committed Catholics; we need to roll up our sleeves and get in there. Sit down with principals and Directors of Religious Studies, with Religious Education teachers and chaplains and teachers of other school subjects and let them know we expect them to be Catholic in teaching and practice, and that we will be there, in the school helping them out in the ways that we can) in our Catholic schools – and when I have kids I’ll send them to my local Catholic school.
That will have difficulties for sure – but no-one said the Christian life would be easy.
- Samuel
Dei Verbum #1
I disagree with you. I’m sure that there are other people on this site that know faithful Catholic RE teachers in our schools who are indeed proclaiming Christ and teaching the Catholic faith. It’s a bit of an insult to them to make a sweeping statement like you did above. I hear this sort of thing all the time and it’s negative and defeatist – not to mention untrue. We can be realistic about the weaknesses of the Catholic school system – that there are indeed some (or many) RE teachers giving a poor or even scandalous witness and “teaching crap” – without resorting to broad comments like “There isnt ‘Catholic faith’ taught at our schools anymore”.
Even if a school had the most faithful teachers, management and curriculum possible, the parents of its students would still be the primary educators for their children. They’d still have to do the work themselves, they’d just be well supported by that school.
The solution isn’t so much changing the programme – I’m told that on the balance of things it’s not actually that bad; it’s improving the quality of the Christian witness of teachers and administration.
This is getting there – we need more committed, faithful, saintly Catholic teachers. Teaching is a vocation – whatever your state in life, consider if teaching might be your call.
- Samuel
Kiwiatheist:
Religious Education teachers are some of the best-paid missionaries in New Zealand: the best of them spend their days standing in front of classrooms of young New Zealanders and making disciples, aiming “to help [students] to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, so that believing they might have life in his name, and to educate and instruct them in this life and thus build up the Body of Christ” … and their salaries are paid by taxpayers like you.
- Samuel
MoW;
on the one hand you criticise on the other you agree.
Yes the partents ar the first educators but the current catholic school environment undermines family influence. the only good witness is from faithfil imigrant families.
Why?, because our Bishops have lowered the bar to such an extent that a child has to only have known a Catholic to be accepted! The Bishops have abrogated real Catholic education and teaching for the chance to sow ’seeds’.
What does that mean to an RE teacher? Probably more than half havent heard of God let alone have any grasp of catholic teaching for them to build on. The others generally come from disaffected even anti-catholic and broken backgrounds, so they teach to the lowest common denominaor and this bores the few faithful ones and fails to challenge any!
Regular Mass attendance should at least be a requirement for ongoing attendance and be the norm rather than the exception.
To any RE teachers out there, sorry for the negativity, please continue and do not lose heart, you are our only hope.
God Bless real catholic teachers
howdy doody cobbers
great post jimmy
i suppose i see one thing as very important, and then things following from that
the first thing is that any parent who has woken up to this ‘choice’, of going catholic or state or home, for faith-formation reasons, most likely will know and understand very well that they are the first educators of their children (cf. vat ii).
so that point about parents being the primary educators is a given! – in this situation. in this whole discussion it is a mute point, in my opinion, because if one is sending one’s children to a state school or home-schooling because one is worried about bad formation at a catholic school, it will normally be specifically so that the parents can undertake the faith-formation of their children at home, – that is their responsibility and right. they already know their responsibility, and that is driving this decision to go state or home, rather than catholic.
this choice to send catholic children to a state school or to homeschool, is normally because the parents don’t want bad the faith-formation received at a catholic school to interfere with what they are giving at home. that is where the problem normally arises. the parents are teaching the faith at home, and little johny comes home from school and says “mrs jones said that Mary wasn’t a virgin…”, or, “mr thomspson said Jesus was just a man”, or, “miss cavanagh said that communion is just bread…” (you can add in many other scenarios here)
that’s normally where the decision to ‘go state’ or ‘go home’ comes from, in my experience
and when parents, who have started teaching their children the faith from an early age, hear that the catholic school down the road, is teaching rubbish, then it becomes a very realistic, and ethical decision, as part of their responsibility as primary educators, to consider whether sending their children there is good-parenting.
it is because they are primary educators of their children, that they should take it seriously! and consider what is being taught to their children at the catholic school – because in these times nothing is secure or safe, or a given
but that does not make it a rule
it’s up to each parent, according to each situation, each school, knowing each child…
however, talking about rolling up the sleeves and getting stuck in is interesting talk, because there are many parents that i know, who have tried to do this within the current climate at their local school, and have found it very difficult; it can be almost impossible, – such is the political, religious, and ideological climate
eg, i know some parents who had their teenagers going to carmel college on auckland’s northshore, and the girls were being taught how to contracept by the re teacher. at another school i know of the girls were being encouraged to abort (if they were impregnated) by the re teacher…in both cases when the parents tried to do something about it, they were treated very badly, with no good results
remember, a parent’s first responsibility is to the faith-community of his or her immediate family (children), not to the local school, or parish, in trying to improve that
however, most of the catholic schools suffer from ‘wishy-washyness’ rather than direct contradiction of the faith, so it can be a case of trying to help out, and keeping a close eye on things from home
but in saying all that – i don’t think our education system is very good anywhere, catholic, state, other…
none of them are educating our young people properly
we need some good philosophy in our schools! and proper art…
peace all
great post james
Thanks for the clarification guys, it’s much the same here as it is in the UK.
Would you (as a committed bunch of Catholics) be comfortable subsidising proclaimed Atheist schools?
It’s a genuine question. I wonder if you feel the same way I do when the boot is on the other foot?
KA
Interesting question KA, but I think you need to clarify it a bit more: what does “proclaimed atheist” mean? An independent school needs a “special character” to be integrated and qualify for government funding. For a Catholic school that’s obviously the Catholic religion, for an Anglican school it’s Anglicanism, for a Steiner school it’s the Steiner philosophy and so on. So I guess in theory there could be an “atheist school”: but the question is this – what would be the special character of that school? Could someone who wanted to set up such a school and apply to be integrated draw up a document laying out the specifics of its special character? What would they be? How would they teach their special character? (If they were to, say, teach philosophy – as many Christian schools do by the way – they’d give equal time to Christian philosophers, or non-Christian philosophers whose thought supported Christian thinking, wouldn’t they? – or the school wouldn’t actually be rational – it’s not rational to give one side of an argument. That’s brainwashing, not rational.) The government checks schools regularly to be sure they are in fact sticking to their commitment to provide their special character; so ERO come in to a Catholic school and go over the Religious Education program, extra-curricular activities and so on – what text or doctrine or authority would they check the practice of an “atheist school” against?
Would I be comfortable about my tax dollars paying the wages of teachers at a school which gave kids tools to seek truth (that’s what an “atheist school” would do, eh?), and to rationally think about what the Christian religion teaches? Yes, of course. Would I be comfortable with those same dollars going to a school that taught only the doctrine that “there is no God”? Nope: for the same reason I wouldn’t be comfortable with an integrated Destiny Church school – I wouldn’t be comfortable with kids being brainwashed.
- Samuel
Would you (as a committed bunch of Catholics) be comfortable subsidising proclaimed Atheist schools?
The Catholic Church believes in freedom of belief and freedom of conscience and in subsidiarity as a principle of educational organisation, so the answer would be yes, we’d be in favour of the same subsidies for education in Atheist or Anglican or Muslim or Jewish schools.
God Bless
kiwiathiest,
I do currently subsidise athiest schools, in that I pay the same taxes you do and those taxes go to state schools – schools which have to have a stated neutrality on religion. So, I do fund them.
I don’t see what subsidiarity has to do with anything though.
I think that the whole idea of subsidising other schools has very little to do with being “a committed bunch of Catholics”, and a lot more to do with being “a committed bunch of New Zealand citizen who pay taxes”. If we didn’t have to pay taxes, and all schools were private, then there would be absolutely no obligation for Catholics to subsidise schools of other religions. And I wouldn’t do so. But I wouldn’t expect non-Catholics to fund our schools either.
The fact is that we do have an integrated system, so we’ve got to work with that.
dave morgan,
Having had sisters attend Carmel, I’ve heard my share of horror stories there. Of course, as DV pointed out, things often change with the leadership of the school, so I can’t really comment on how things are there now.
But I would like to comment on the point you make of parents “trying to do something about it and being treated very badly.” Here’s the thing – if you have something dodgy being taught like that, having one or two sets of parents approaching the school is not, in my opinion, the way to make an impact. Just like one or two people marching on Parliament doesn’t make any difference.
Instead, I believe you need to have a committed network of passionate, involved parents who are concerned for what their children are being taught at the school. Then, when word gets out that Ms Dodgy-Teacher is proclaiming some rubbish or something not in line with what the Church teaches, it isn’t one or two parents talking with the principal, it’s one or two hundred! Imagine the difference.
I’ve raised this before when discussing the Van Holland report: one person writing a report can be easily dismissed or discounted; one hundred Catholics writing to their bishop individually expressing concern at something will make more of an impact.
I’m not saying this is the way it should be, I’m just saying this is the way it is. And if our good Catholic parents aren’t putting their kids into the Catholic schools, who will stand up and challenge as part of a large group when something is not right?
See, I’m just not as worried about that. If I came home when I was a kid and said to my dad that Miss Cavanagh said that Holy Communion is just bread, my dad would have quite quickly, succinctly and directly pointed out that Miss Cavanagh is wrong, and that this is why she is wrong, and why am I listening to such tripe when I know it is wrong!
In other words, there was a simple hierarchy of teaching authority in my life when it came to matters of Faith, and the reality was that my dad far outranked my R.E. teachers.
Which is interesting, because in all other subjects, my dad was outranked. i.e. I wasn’t going to take his advice on maths with calculus, but on matters of faith, he and Mum knew what was what and I took their word over my teachers any day.
So I want my kids to be exposed to the “dodgy liturgy and teaching” at our schools, so they can come home and challenge me to teach them properly…and then go to bed while I call my Catholic Parents Network into action to get down to the principal’s office en masse the next morning to sort this problem out!
KA
Would you (as a committed bunch of Catholics) be comfortable subsidising proclaimed Atheist schools?
We do: its called the state system.
The Catholic tradition of subsidiarity argues that where a smaller and lower society can provide education then it is right and proper for it to be allowed to do so.
The Second Vatican Council’s official Declaration on Christian Education (1965) spelt out the importance of subsidiarity in providing for pluralism and for the native rights of the human person :
God Bless
To clarify on the government funding side: I understand Catholic schools that are integrated are funded on the basis of their “special character”. Other special character schools include kura mana maori and other cultural-based education systems.
I would not choose to send my (hypothetical) children to a kura mana maori because it is a culture I do not identify with as my traditional family foundation. But I don’t object to my taxes going to their support as I understand they have an important place in our society, in helping us have a diverse and healthy national community that upholds the goodness of different cultures.
In the same way, even if there was an opportunity to define atheism as the “special character” of a school (atheism as separate from religious neutrality found in state schools), I would not have a problem with my taxes going towards it: it is the parents’ decision to educate their children in whichever school best represents their family background. Obviously this would not suit me
The comment that most resonates with me, as a Catholic, from this discussion is that at least if you send your kids to a Catholic school you have the opportunity to robustly protest your children being taught something that is out of line with Catholic teaching – which you cannot do if you choose state education.
Dei Verbum
eleus,
Well said! That’s a great point!
I also think that things like having major celebrations in the school celebrated with Mass, having a school prayer, having RE as a compulsory part of the curriculum (regardless of quality), rewarding those who exhibit Christian principles…all these are benefits of Catholic schools.
howdy cobbers, and cobberettes, !
another week comes to an end in good ol’ sunny nz !
actually coincidentally, i recently stumbled upon this article and interview with fr joseph fessio regarding home-schooling. just somethiing to add to this little discussion.
for those who may not be aware, fr fessio come with significant credentials; he is founder of ignatius press, and adoremus, is a well known priest, theologican, and speaker in the usa, and around the world. he is especially well known for his friendship with pope benedict: – he was one of his doctoral thesis students when ratzinger was still lecturing. they (ratzinger’s former students) meet up every year with the pope to discuss different theological questions.
i have a set of cd talks given by fr fessio on the liturgy, in which he recounts a small story about a personal meetting he had with the pope just after his election to the chair of peter. fr fession went up to the holy father at castel gandolfo and said (paraphrazed) “holy father, those things which you have written about do to with the liturgy in your books, especially ’spirit of the liturgy’, will we begin to see them implimented?” the holy looked at him and smiled, and said, “be patient…”
anyway, here is an interesting interview with fr fessio on the value of homeschooling
Fr. Joseph Fessio on Homeschooling – Interviewed February 20, 2008
also, here is a little reflection on homeschooling by father john a. hardon, s.j
i’m no big advocate of homeschooling, but i thought these would add something to the discussion
peace cowboys
Ozy M 17
my facts are from my family experience.
as you move up Catholic education there is an exponential drop off in catholic practice amongst young people. The exceptions are imigrant and strong catholic familys
I am not saying the teachers havent heard of God I a saying the pupils havent. RE is dumbed down to the lowest denominator.
As a non catholic Good on you for teaching RE but are you qualified to do so? Do you practice the Churchs teaching? So many of our Cathoilc teachers actually arent catholic and pupils see through the hypocrisy
and it isnt Catholic faith it is PC BS!
The schools define their own Special Character and that is the problem