Today's education for today

WHAT ANIMATES many older Catholics quite so much to express their anxiety for the future of the Faith as their perception of the education which children are receiving? Schools, teachers, the curriculum and school books all come in at times for heavy criticism, verging at times on uncompromising hostility. One's own experiences of school and memories of the Church of childhood provide the base line from which to launch the Exocets of opposition.
Can it be that the Church and Catholic schools are operating in a world so far removed from that of 50 or more years ago that radical change is inevitable? Is what is being done today not the best that can possibly be done, judged by the criteria set by the world of the late 1990s? When church schools are compared with others academically, the proportion of successful church schools far outweighs that of their secular counterparts.
Academic success is important, of course. But so is handing on the Faith. Mgr Kevin Nichols, in a masterly analysis of the reasons for change in school and Church (page 8), draws on a range of factors which explain why the school of his own childhood would not be recognised, nor appropriate, for children today.
The school of Mgr Nichols' youth did a good and effective job. The schools of today do a good, though different, job. Tomorrow's adult Catholics will no doubt look back on them with appreciation and worry about their children's education.