| The Goal "..since education consists essentially in preparing man for what he must be and for what he must do here below, in order to attain the sublime goal for which he was created, it is clear that there can be no true education which is not wholly directed to man's last end, and that in the present order of Providence, since God has revealed Himself to us in the Person of His only-begotten Son, Who alone is "the Way, the Truth and the Life," there can be no ideally perfect education which is not a Christian education." Pius XI, Divini Illud Magistri, 1929. The Goal of Education Must be the Acquisition of Wisdom "It is obvious that men and women whose minds are dominated by numbers, natural sciences and technology, are not truly civilized. They are ignorant of the main part of what we are meant to know, that is, our nature and the Lord God. They are in danger of becoming technical or scientific robots. Without changing, they cannot help to construct a human and Christian civilization. And so, whatever be the type of curricula, the dominating subject will never be scientific or technological. What will determine the orientation and the spirit of the school, what will put each subject in its place, will be Christian wisdom." "The natural sciences by themselves pose only chemical and biological questions. By themselves, they do not pose the supreme questions of liberty, society, love, sin, grace, these vital questions that any literary work of value poses. We want our children to use their minds, their heads, that is, we want them to have knowledge about the world and about life, to recognize good from evil, true good and true evil, the noble and the vile. And this they will learn by frequenting great authors, who knew what there is in man. The human must prevail over the material. Literature must prevail over the natural sciences." -- Fr. Calmel www.edocere.org |
| The Sequence Based on our philosophy of education, we at SFA plan our course of study in the sequence of the Trivium as outlined by Dorothy Sayers in her essay, The Lost Tools of Learning, and on the Catholic model as found in the original Christian Schools of the Middle Ages. Historical study of educational methods of the past, shows the "academy" to begin with the study of Latin. St. John Baptiste de la Salle started schools for the poor in which he insisted on beginning with reading and writing in the vernacular. This was largely due to the fact that these students had not been tutored in the home and had not yet learned to read and write in their native tongue. The upper classes hired tutors, or themselves taught their children to read and write in the vernacular before sending them to the academy or college at an age approximating 11 years. More on The Sequence of Instruction -- The Trivium Continued |
| Observation first, Thought second, and both before Expression In teaching the art of Reading as well as that of Composition, the principle of order should, in a great measure, determine the value of the methods to be employed. In the acquisition of knowledge, the child instinctively follows the order of nature. That order is first, observation; second, thought; and third, expression. It becomes the duty of the teacher, consequently, to lead the child to observe accurately, to think clearly, and to express his thoughts correctly. And text-books are useful only in so far as they supply the teacher with the material and the system best calculated to accomplish such results. from the Preface to De la Salle Third Reader |
| Natural Science Must Lead Children to Wonder at the Divine Order "Through very attentive observation of nature and life, we shall not be so interested in scientific laws as in teaching the children to admire the work of the Creator, and to learn to use it intelligently and religiously." "Science as such is limited to what can be found out sensibly, with the senses. As such, science does not know that beings are creatures. Science textbooks do not know either that beings are creatures. But the teacher is not substantialized science; he is a man knowing deeper questions than scientific ones. He knows that beings are creatures, through his philosophic reason and his supernatural Faith. Science cannot give truths, but it cannot contradict them either, because it cannot positively demonstrate the contrary of what is true. Science has only to accept these certainties." -- Fr. Calmal "Knowledge begins in wonder and ends in wisdom." |
| The Method "Religion must not be taught to youth only during certain hours, but the entire system of education must be permeated with the sense of Christian piety. If this is lacking, if this holy spirit does not penetrate and inflame the souls of teacher and pupil, small benefit will be derived from any other sort of education; instead damage will be done. Almost every sort of training has its dangers, and only with difficulty will these be averted from growing youth, especially if divine controls are lacking which restrain their minds and wills." |
| Integration of Curriculum Pope Pius XII was advocating a harmonious development of the intellect through a synthetic integration of all the branches of our curriculum: "Those who are aware of the problems of the schools know that there is nothing more harmful than a mass of ideas accumulated in a confused and disorderly way —ideas which neither meet nor integrate, and which, rather, often clash and cancel one another out. Frequently the teaching and study of scientific matters is completely divorced from the total training of the intellect." |
| Formation vs. Information "We have been victims since Descartes of an exaggerated emphasis on "methods." The student has been viewed with a mechanistic perspective. Teaching is synonymous with trying to cram information into the student as if he was a passive machine instead of a living mind. St. Thomas is quite opposed to this caricature of true teaching. He explains that the procedures of teaching will be most effective when patterned after those of independent search. A good teacher will make the difference between learning by discovery and learning by instruction as narrow as possible. In other words he will assist his students in their learning so that their experience will seem to them a discovery. Some great teachers really have this gift. Their classes are so good that you‘re constantly finding out new things and getting excited about them. The challenge and the enthusiasm of learning are kept alive by the evident love that these men have for their subject. The teachers cannot but communicate to their students who come out of the classroom with a desire to learn more." "We see that we are far removed from the modern conception of teaching where the teacher exclusively relies on artificial means (workbooks and other devices) and slowly loses sight of his true function: to stimulate the living mind of the student, to guide the development of his intellect. The emphasis on "measuring" education with grades obtained through tests is partly a result of this false philosophy. Knowledge, according to St. Thomas, is a quality of the living mind and not a quantity of memorized information." ST. THOMAS ON TEACHING By Fr. Herve de la Tour |
| The Material The Content of our Curriculum - "The Subjects" "We take a stand for Thomistic philosophy, and before the senior year, a stand for English literature, as well as modern and ancient languages, the languages being studied for their culture more than for their usefulness." Latin Must Have a Place in the Curriculum "Our humanization is not accomplished only horizontally, through the knowledge of contemporary cultures and the study of modern languages. Our humanization is accomplished also in depth, by being rooted in our tradition. We shall not be cultivated if we remain ignorant of our fathers. The authors of the past attract us in that their works bear a message that is still and always valid and worthwhile. They are authors of the eternal, and so, in a certain way, authors of the present." "It is not a question of short-sighted utilitarianism, of short-sighted practical usefulness. It is a question of humanization in the best meaning of the word." The Study of History Must Form the Judgment. "The cities of the world, the homelands and civilizations, are never neutral. Whether they like it or not, they are under the influence of the City of God, or of the City of Satan. Of the City of God as Jesus made it forever, holy, immaculate, invincible, destined to be configured to Him by the Cross and by love, destined to carry the Cross as long as her pilgrimage lasts, but also assured of the infallible victory by the Cross; or of the City of Satan, her implacable enemy, with its false doctrines and its great prestige, which has set itself against the City of God, but whose attempts always end in failures." -- Fr. Calmal www.edocere.org |
| We know only too well this sorry spectacle. In a classroom a bustling teacher is busy pouring knowledge into the heads of his charges. To succeed in his task he must keep his pupils immobile and attentive even by force, making generous use of rewards and punishments in order to keep his condemned listeners in the proper frame of mind. But rewards and punishments, to speak frankly, are the desk of the soul, this is, a means of enslaving a child's spirit, and better suited to provoke than to prevent deformities. Actually, rewards and punishments are employed to compel children to conform to the laws of the world rather than those of God. ....Instead of acting in this way, an adult should show himself to a child as a loving and enlightened guide assisting him along the way leading to the kingdom of heaven. ...One day a child will surely ask himself if the prizes won at school were not rather obstacles on the way to eternal life... In some ways schools resemble governmental bureaucracies.... Their immediate interest is in a promotion, just as a student is anxious to pass on to a higher grade at the end of a school year. The employee who losses sight of his lofty goal is like a degraded child or a tricked slave. His intrinsic dignity as a man has been reduced to the level of a machine... Maria Montessori, The Discovery of the Child |