Public and Parochial Schools

Child, behold that Man of Sin, the POPE, worthy of thy utmost hatred.

--The New England Primer

What the 18th century U.S. schoolboy beheld was a tiaraed bogeyman, whose heart appeared to mask Malice, Murder and Treachery. The caricature went undisputed. In the Protestant schools of the time, Roman Catholics were barred from teaching jobs. As Irish and German immigrants swelled the U.S. Catholic population, their bishops (in 1884) announced an urgent edict. Every parish priest must organize a parochial school; Catholic parents must send their children to such schools whenever possible.

The ticklish consequences are analyzed by the Rev. Neil G. McCluskey, education editor of America, in a quietly reasoned new book, Catholic Viewpoint on Education (Hanover House; $3.50). In the past 60 years, Catholic parochial schools have more than quintupled their enrollment, become the nation's fastest-growing educational system. Last year they enrolled 4,900,000 students, about 14% of all U.S. schoolchildren (and as many as 60% in strongly Catholic communities). The future is clear: roughly 30% of all U.S. babies are born to Roman Catholic families. But parochial schools get no direct tax support: the First Amendment, as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court, forbids it. Catholic parents (as well as Protestant and Jewish parents who send their children to church schools) are taxed for public schools, while their own schools grow short of money, teachers, classrooms. What should Americans do?

Moral Intelligence. For Catholics, switching to public schools is no answer, writes Jesuit McCluskey. U.S. public schools--partly, he says, because Catholics tried so hard to "de-Protestantize" them--have become secular institutions in which even the Bible is a prohibited document. To protect the rights of dissenters, the public schools no longer recognize extramundane authority; their ethos is a this-world "democratic humanism" that looks solely to society for its standards. "The public school," says McCluskey, "is less competent today to assume responsibility for moral and spiritual training than ever before."

In any case, it cannot provide the collective training in supernatural awareness that Catholics and patrons of other church schools insist upon for their children. Not that the parochial school is an "all-week Sunday school." It covers the same academic ground as the public school, teaches religion formally for only brief periods (about 30 minutes daily in Catholic elementary schools). But the parochial school does exist primarily for one reason: "To develop the morally intelligent person." And so "the primacy of the spiritual" suffuses all subjects ("Faith is never departmental: all things fall within its purview"). "Christian or Christ-centered culture is the supreme integrating principle."

To the charge that parochial schools are "undemocratic" because they divide Catholics from the mainstream of U.S. life, Author McCluskey has an interesting answer. He believes that parochial schools are often more of a social melting pot than public schools: they have no problem of de facto neighborhood segregation by race or income. Moreover, some Catholic educators even consider them "embarrassingly" patriotic; they usually outdo public schools when it comes to fervent flag waving. (Paradoxically, they may also produce "broader" attitudes by teaching the long, global history of the church.) And is the inculcation of religion a detriment to the nation? Catholics hardly think so.

What McCluskey hopes to show is another kind of detriment: the national interest may be injured if growing parochial schools get no aid at all. Example: last year's National Defense Education Act set up sorely needed programs for testing and guidance in the public schools; but parochial schools were eliminated. How does this affect Rhode Island, where 31% of all schoolchildren attend parochial schools? Or Chicago (34%), Philadelphia (39%), Pittsburgh (42%)?

Moral Obligation. By Father McCluskey's account, the church does not expect or even much want "basic institutional support" (for buildings or salaries). But "incidental expenses" (buses, textbooks, health services) are another matter. McCluskey argues that such services, especially transportation, can be granted to parochial schools without violating church-state separation. A state education department need only hand over supervision of buses (a noneducational headache anyway) to the highway department. Many communities are debating this problem. Example: last week Maine set up a special session of the state legislature to consider public transportation for parochial schoolchildren.

What about Catholic aid to public schools? Not long ago, New York State Commissioner of Education James E. Allen Jr. said: "I suspect that parochial parents, who pay not only twice, but sometimes three or four times to support schools, may be a factor in school-budget defeats." Well aware of this possibility, Father McCluskey cites the fact that Catholic bishops last year urged a "yes" vote in school-bond elections across the nation. Catholics have "a serious obligation to concern themselves with the well-being of the public schools"--and not just because 50% of Catholic children attend public schools. As Americans, Catholics have "the civic obligation of moral and material support of the public schools."

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