EDUCATION PAGE

Examining Catholic education today
by Anabel Donald
IUST over a month ago I joined the staff of the .CATHOLIC I ItRAID and was given responsibility for Education and the Arts. At first I watched them anxiously, like a mother with a new-horn baby. in case they stopped breathing when I wasn't looking. But now it's time I plunged in and told you what plans we have for our Education coverage for the next few months, because it partly depends on you.
In the years since Vatican II, Catholic religious education has probably changed more radically and more quickly than since the days of the Apostles. We know that; and some people, particularly parents, feel threatened by the strangeness of new attitudes and approaches to their children's teaching.
This is not confined to Catholic parents, of course; all teaching has been changing radically.
What I hope to do is to provide a systematic coverage of exactly what is going on in Catholic education and in areas of general education of particular interest to Catholics.
This includes both theory and practice; often a theory which seems alien and difficult to understand is both effective and familiar if you see it in practice.
This will be partly a matter of information—what is going on in Catholic Education week by week; conferences, experiments, items of information from individual teachers or groups doing good work. If you're doing something exciting or topical,.write and let us know about it.
I don't promise it'll go in; we may be swamped with information, and I hope we will be. But let us know.
Since I started working on the Herald people have said to me "I wish your paper could tell us more of what is actually going on." So do I; but we're not psychic, and if you want to sec a topic included and discussed you will have to tell me.
The topics we are covering in the near future include: Colleges of Education; inservice training of Catholic priests; sex education; school building; religious syllabuses; the effects of going comprehensive; education for peace and international awareness: religious education in primary and secondary schools; the role of University Chaplaincies; the religious instruc tion of Catholics in nonCatholic schools.
The areas we will cover are so different that the way of approaching them will not always be the same. Over areas like teaching methods in primary schools there will be articles by people who are themselves involved in such teaching with success.
Where there are widely differing points of view, with regard to co-education for instance, we will print both sides of the argument in the same issue.
And in some cases, as in next week's discussion of Colleges of Education, I will collect information from several different people; students now in college. probationer teachers, lecturers.
If you have any suggestions, let us know. This could be an exciting and valuable enterprise and I will do all I can to make sure it is.
But the whole purpose is to provide a forum for the expression and exchange of ideas. experience and information. So don't hoard yours. Remember Matthew 25:14.