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Walch presents the dramatic story of a social institution that has adapted itself to constant change without abandoning its goals of preserving the faith of its children and preparing them for productive roles in American society.
In the past two decades in the United States, more than 1,600 Catholic elementary and secondary schools have closed, and more than 4,500 charter schools—public schools that are often privately operated and freed from certain regulations—have opened, many in urban areas. With a particular emphasis on Catholic school closures, Lost Classroom, Lost Community examines the implications of these dramatic shifts in the urban educational landscape. More than just educational institutions, Catholic schools promote the development of social capital—the social networks and mutual trust that form the foundation of safe and cohesive communities. Drawing on data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods and crime reports collected at the police beat or census tract level in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, Margaret F. Brinig and Nicole Stelle Garnett demonstrate that the loss of Catholic schools triggers disorder, crime, and an overall decline in community cohesiveness, and suggest that new charter schools fail to fill the gaps left behind. This book shows that the closing of Catholic schools harms the very communities they were created to bring together and serve, and it will have vital implications for both education and policing policy debates.
Knowledge of Catholic educational scholarship and research has been largely confined to specific national settings. Now is the time to bring together this scholarship. This is the first international handbook on Catholic educational scholarship and research. The unifying theme of the Handbook is ‘Catholic Education: challenges and responses’ in a number of international settings. In addition to analyzing the largest faith-based educational system worldwide, the book also critically examines contemporary issues such as church-state relations and the impact of secularization and globalization.
A seminal moment in the study of U.S. Catholic parish life came in the 1980s with the publication of a series of reports from the ground-breaking Notre Dame Study of Catholic Parish Life. These reports are now badly outdated, as Catholic dioceses grapple with new challenges that didn't exist in the 80s. Topics that were not considered then, like greater Catholic mobility, increased cultural diversity, and structural re-organization as well as the rise of lay leadership, have attained new significance. This timely book, based on more than a decade of research, provides an in-depth portrait and analysis of the current state of parish life and leadership. Unique in the scope of the research and the timeliness of its findings, the book critically examines the current state of parish life. The authors draw on data from national polls of Catholics, national surveys of parishes, and thousands of in-pew surveys which explore parishioners' needs, experiences, and satisfaction with parish life in the twenty-first century. The book provides a unique 360-degree view of parish life from the perspective of pastors, parish staff, parishioners, as well as the larger Catholic population.
This book reviews the benefits of Catholic education in Massachusetts, and offers recommendations to help these schools increase student enrollment. It includes nine chapters from a range of authors; a foreword by George Weigel, author of an international bestselling two-part biography of Pope St. John Paul II; and an introduction from former Ambassadors to the Holy See Raymond Flynn and Mary Ann Glendon. The book contends that Catholic schools in Massachusetts must focus on the characteristics that make them academically successful and distinguish them from traditional public schools, but must also seek new models and governance structures that will help them achieve financial sustainability. At the same time, barriers to public support of the schools should be eliminated. Catholic schools in Massachusetts deliver high test scores, high college attendance and graduation rates. The majority of elementary schools in the Archdiocese of Boston are in urban areas and disproportionately serve poor and minority families. Parents of all faiths and beliefs are also drawn to the unrelenting focus on achievement, classic liberal arts education, discipline and values that are part of a Catholic education. Despite these outstanding results, the number of Catholic schools in Boston has fallen from 225 in 1942 to 124 in 2020. Twenty have closed since 2015 and another 10 have shuttered during the pandemic, with a disproportionate impact on poor and working-class communities. Catholic educators are developing new models to address these challenges, and the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue was an important step toward invalidating so-called Blaine Amendments to the constitutions of Massachusetts and many other states that prohibit public money from flowing to religious schools. The book includes a proposal for a tax credit scholarship program for Massachusetts that would likely have been impermissible prior to Espinoza.
A semiautobiographical coming-of-age story, framed by the harrowing 1975 Circeo massacre Edoardo Albinati’s The Catholic School, the winner of Italy’s most prestigious award, The Strega Prize, is a powerful investigation of the heart and soul of contemporary Italy. Three well-off young men—former students at Rome’s prestigious all-boys Catholic high school San Leone Magno—brutally tortured, raped, and murdered two young women in 1975. The event, which came to be known as the Circeo massacre, shocked and captivated the country, exposing the violence and dark underbelly of the upper middle class at a moment when the traditional structures of family and religion were seen as under threat. It is this environment, the halls of San Leone Magno in the late 1960s and the 1970s, that Edoardo Albinati takes as his subject. His experience at the school, reflections on his adolescence, and thoughts on the forces that produced contemporary Italy are painstakingly and thoughtfully rendered, producing a remarkable blend of memoir, coming-of-age novel, and true-crime story. Along with indelible portraits of his teachers and fellow classmates—the charming Arbus, the literature teacher Cosmos, and his only Fascist friend, Max—Albinati also gives us his nuanced reflections on the legacy of abuse, the Italian bourgeoisie, and the relationship between sex, violence, and masculinity.
The last "Indian War" was fought against Native American children in the dormitories and classrooms of government boarding schools. Only by removing Indian children from their homes for extended periods of time, policymakers reasoned, could white "civilization" take root while childhood memories of "savagism" gradually faded to the point of extinction. In the words of one official: "Kill the Indian and save the man." Education for Extinction offers the first comprehensive account of this dispiriting effort. Much more than a study of federal Indian policy, this book vividly details the day-to-day experiences of Indian youth living in a "total institution" designed to reconstruct them both psychologically and culturally. The assault on identity came in many forms: the shearing off of braids, the assignment of new names, uniformed drill routines, humiliating punishments, relentless attacks on native religious beliefs, patriotic indoctrinations, suppression of tribal languages, Victorian gender rituals, football contests, and industrial training. Especially poignant is Adams's description of the ways in which students resisted or accommodated themselves to forced assimilation. Many converted to varying degrees, but others plotted escapes, committed arson, and devised ingenious strategies of passive resistance. Adams also argues that many of those who seemingly cooperated with the system were more than passive players in this drama, that the response of accommodation was not synonymous with cultural surrender. This is especially apparent in his analysis of students who returned to the reservation. He reveals the various ways in which graduates struggled to make sense of their lives and selectively drew upon their school experience in negotiating personal and tribal survival in a world increasingly dominated by white men. The discussion comes full circle when Adams reviews the government's gradual retreat from the assimilationist vision. Partly because of persistent student resistance, but also partly because of a complex and sometimes contradictory set of progressive, humanitarian, and racist motivations, policymakers did eventually come to view boarding schools less enthusiastically. Based upon extensive use of government archives, Indian and teacher autobiographies, and school newspapers, Adams's moving account is essential reading for scholars and general readers alike interested in Western history, Native American studies, American race relations, education history, and multiculturalism.
In a reconfigured farmhouse just a mile outside of the city limits of Detroit, a Jesuit priest and 25 men, women, and children gathered to celebrate Sunday mass on March 19, 1922. The Reverend John McNichols named the Catholic mission church Gesu, the Italian word for "Jesus." Gesu became one of Detroit's landmark parishes. Its history illustrates the Motor City's boom, bust, resilience, and resurgence. It was the home parish of four Detroit mayors, powerful members of Congress, auto industry titans, sports legends, artists, authors, and actors. At its peak in the mid-1960s, Gesu School enrolled 1,600 students. Because of Detroit's decline and its racial and economic struggles, Gesu is one of only four Catholic elementary schools that remain in the city. But as Detroit rebounds, Gesu School is growing again.
Using the evidence of Magisterial, European and American history, this book analyzes the historical standards the Catholic Church established for education and demonstrates exactly where and when the concept went off the rails in America. But most important, it demonstrates why it went off the rails. You will discover surprising facts concerning the American episcopal hierarchy, and even more surprising facts concerning their enemies. You will learn why school reform never succeeds, how and when the schools began to break down (it's not when you think), how the Catholic parochial schools inadvertently fueled the culture of death and you will thereby discover the reason we are where we are today. But best of all, you will see the way out of the morass. Because the analysis of the breakdown is thorough, the solution is much easier to envision. Designed to Fail describes three centuries of knock-down drag-out combat between the Catholic Faith and American culture, but it also shows how Catholics can triumph.
This book examines how Catholic educators grappled with public educational policies and reforms like standardization and accreditation, educational measurement and testing, and federal funding for schools during the early to mid-twentieth century. These issues elicited an array of reactions including resistance, cooperation, and co-optation. American Catholics had established one of the largest private educational organizations in the United States by the twentieth century. It rivaled only that of the public school system. At mid-century Catholic schools enrolled some 12 percent of the American school-age population and their enrollments grew in number through the 1960s. The Catholic Church’s lobbying arm, the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC), used its well-earned stature to push for federal funds for students attending their schools. The NCWC succeeded in securing funds with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 for students needing special education services and students living in poverty attending Catholic schools. This signified a major shift in American education policy. Despite this radical change, Catholic schools lost significant enrollment over the next several decades to public, private, and newly minted public charter schools. Catholic schools faced an increasingly competitive landscape in an ever-expanding school-choice environment that they helped create.