Page 13: What Makes a School Catholic continued...

Accordingly, a Catholic school conveys a genuine freedom, even if it is paradoxical. The paradox of authentic freedom is that it rests on habit formation. Every good teacher knows what every good parent knows: children thrive in an environment of order and benevolent discipline. These conditions protect them from maladjustment and instill self-control. Furthermore, the cultivation of habits in general insures a productive, not an aimless or destructive, freedom. Freedom is not just choice; it is choice grounded in habits, learning, and skills. Once a person is skillful, he or she is able to exercise choices in ways that are truly rewarding. Without learning or habits, a child’s life is like a cork bobbing on the water’s surface, at the mercy of this or that wave or current. Such a life deprives a person of the self-mastery and intelligent choice defining an autonomous life.

Accordingly, Catholic education aims at nothing less than a genuine “liberal education,” from the Latin, liberare, which means to be set free. Catholic education liberates our human potentials so that they can be actualized and habituated in a truly human way. If so, we have a moral duty, a call of conscience, to bring to maturity our human potentials. Since grace perfects our nature, our human potentials cooperate, and do not conflict, with our Christian calling. This is a liberal education that comprehends the whole curriculum of a Catholic school.

By appreciating that Catholic education tries to make excellent our faith-informed human nature, we can specify the tasks of teaching: to habituate the child (and later the adult) in spiritual, intellectual, emotional, moral, and physical excellence. These aims cover the whole curriculum. Hence, a Catholic school is truly and fully Catholic not just because of religious instruction, but also because of the “school part.” Parents, educators, administrators, and students should celebrate that their school aspires to be Catholic in all its functions and programs, a school that is Catholic from the inside out.

Dr. Curtis Hancock is a full professor at Rockhurst University and holds the Joseph M. Freeman Chair of Philosophy. His most recent book is Recovering a Catholic Philosophy of Elementary Education.