Notre Dame alumni contribute to the revival of classical education in the Catholic tradition in New York City

 

In his Address to the Bishops of the Ecclesiastical Regions of Chicago, Indianapolis and Milwaukee on their “Ad Limina” Visit in 1998, Blessed John Paul II said, “Catholic education aims not only to communicate facts but also to transmit a coherent, comprehensive vision of life, in the conviction that the truths contained in that vision liberate students in the most profound meaning of human freedom.”

The Pope continued, citing his encyclical Veritatis Splendor, “The contemporary world urgently needs the service of educational institutions which uphold and teach that truth is ‘that fundamental value without which freedom, justice and human dignity are extinguished.’”

This estimable vision of Catholic education has been a major source of criticism of the Common Core State Standards, which 44 states, the District of Columbia and 100 Catholic dioceses and archdioceses have adopted. Lately parents of schoolchildren, among others, have raised a strong resistance to these standards. Many, especially those with a particular concern for Catholic education in K-12 schools, have criticized the standards for multiple reasons.

Such criticism includes a letter, signed by 132 Catholic professors and sent to each Catholic bishop in the United States by Gerard V. Bradley, Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame. The letter reads, in part, “Promoters of Common Core say that it is designed to make America’s children ‘college and career ready.’ We instead judge Common Core to be a recipe for standardized workforce preparation. Common Core shortchanges the central goals of all sound education and surely those of Catholic education: to grow in the virtues necessary to know, love, and serve the Lord, to mature into a responsible, flourishing adult, and to contribute as a citizen to the process of responsible democratic self-government.”

Sandra Stotsky, Professor Emerita of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, developed one of the country’s strongest sets of academic standards for K-12 students as Senior Associate Commissioner in the Massachusetts Department of Education from 1999-2003. A well-known critic of the Common Core’s language arts standards, Stotsky explained to the Rover: “Any school literature curriculum that is based on Common Core’s skill-like standards and seeks to address the tests based on them will likely be empty of those works that have contributed to the ethical and intellectual values underlying a representative form of government.”

Stotsky continued, explaining the foreseeable consequences of widespread implementation of such standards: “We face the bleak prospect of the disappearance of a form of government that requires citizens capable of rational and independent thought. Common Core reflects the profound bias of its supporters that most students today are not capable of being educated to carry out the activities needed for self-government—Abraham Lincoln’s lofty goal in his determination to win the Civil War.”

Anthony Esolen, Professor of English at Providence College, has written extensively on the topic of education and specifically the shortcomings of the Common Core standards with respect to literature. He commented to the Rover: “The Common Core Curriculum is a misnomer: there is no core, nor is there any heart. The aims are strictly utilitarian, and incompetently so at that, as one can tell from its inept and blundering verbiage, and the extraordinary samples of inflated, pompous, clumsy, and dreary writing which they themselves hold forth as models of success.”

In the midst of such discontent with the widespread implementation of these controversial and misguided standards, parents are left searching for alternative educational models. This has spurred a general revival of classical modes of education for K-12 children, with the seeds of new classical schools being planted across the country. One such is the Neumann Classical School in New York City, slated to open in the fall of 2015, which will be a co-educational, classical curriculum, private school in the Catholic tradition serving grades Kindergarten to 6.

Named after St. John Neumann, who, as Bishop of Philadelphia, founded the first Catholic diocesan school system in the United States, the School seeks to promote the formation of the entire person through development of the virtues in harmony with the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. The School website elucidates the aim of classical education: “Classical education teaches students both to earn a living, to be good citizens and to grow as faithful sons and daughters of God. It is useful, but, as it values knowledge for its own sake, is not utilitarian … It imparts knowledge, inculcates sound thinking, forms intellectual virtue, sharpens discernment, and helps one grapple with the meaning of life. It upholds truth and beauty, helping students distinguish between good and bad, better and worse.”

The School emphasizes the need for a strong faculty and the value of forming a community of faith in which members flourish and grow in all aspects of their being. Academic excellence is not neglected at the expense of these values; rather, as the School website states, “Students at classical curriculum schools tend to test higher than students from other schools. They are also more likely to do well both in college and the workplace.”

Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, is a member of the Advisory Board for the Neumann School. He summed up his enthusiasm for and commitment to the project for the Rover: “The motto of the Neumann Classical School is ‘Knowledge, Virtue, Piety.’ Because I believe in these values and their integration in education, I support the School. It aims to empower students to think critically and express their ideas and convictions lucidly. It is committed to supporting them in the moral and spiritual development. As a scholar and a Catholic, I’m eager to assist in that project.”

Monica McDaniel serves on the Board of Directors for the Neumann School. A 2004 graduate of Notre Dame, she received her Master’s in Theology through the Echo program from the university in 2006 before attending Fordham Law School. In describing for the Rover the factors that led to the creation of the Neumann School, she said, “Many young Catholic parents in our area are switching to homeschooling due to their dissatisfaction with the alternatives and their desire to go back to tried and true educational methods, especially since the arrival of Common Core curriculum. My husband and I see advantages to homeschooling but worry that we personally lack the organizational skills and resources to do it properly. We also think there is a lot to be gained by keeping some separation between the role of parent and school teacher and by having our children grow up within a larger school community.

“Aside from my interest in my own children’s education, I look at the founding of Neumann as a tremendous opportunity to contribute to the New Evangelization our recent Popes have been calling for. You can get depressed by witnessing the shuttering of so many Catholic schools that once served as the introduction for new generations to know and love Jesus Christ. Or you can see the opportunities for new growth, to build on what has come before and continue the mission of the religious teaching orders in a new landscape.”

In creating the Neumann School, the founders, “hope to establish the school and the parish that hosts it as a hub for Catholic families who are serious about rebuilding a strong Catholic culture. Moreover, we hope to attract families from a range of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds and put the lie to the idea that a rigorous ‘classical education’ is exclusively for affluent white kids,” McDaniel explained.

McDaniel cited her respect for the religious and intellectual formation of some of her peers at Notre Dame who received classical educations as a motivation for providing such an education to her own children. She recognized the difference between the education she had received compared to those of other “students who entered college with a deeper knowledge of literature, philosophical training, and ability to offer reasoned defenses of Catholic doctrine.” Working at Catholic parishes in South Bend through the Echo program also strengthened her “commitment to developing effective methods of catechesis and helping restore Catholic schools and parishes.”

Joel and Madeleine Pidel, graduates of Notre Dame, are also involved in the foundation of the Neumann School. Joel, who obtained his B.Arch in 2005 and works as an architect in New York City, explained to the Rover that his conviction in the value of a Catholic education led him to attend Notre Dame.

Growing up in a devout Catholic community, Pidel recalled a conversation with his brother (a Jesuit priest now continuing doctoral studies at Notre Dame) that greatly influenced his path. “In the midst of the application and decision process, my brother insisted that the only true education was a Catholic education. This is to say that if the Catholic faith is the true faith, it follows that a Catholic education is the only one that is properly holistic, uniting faith and reason in the formation and development of the entire human person (and thus society) as oriented towards supernatural beatitude. His words continue to ring true, and his own life has born indefatigable witness to this truth.”

In deliberating about where to raise a family and seek an education for their children, the Pidels were not considering classical primary education, due to its cost and scarcity in New York City. Once the Neumann School was proposed, however, the Pidels were eager to participate and contribute their professional skills to the project. Madeleine was involved in the charter school movement in New York City for five years and was familiar with the process of organization and growth for a young school.

Joel summed up their support and enthusiasm for the School in this way: “While neither of us were educated in the strictly classical method, we had been exposed to much of the classical oeuvre in our own respective educations, and were acquainted with both classical schools and individuals who had attended them, Catholic or otherwise. We had always been deeply impressed by both these schools and individuals, and were excited at the opportunity to be involved not only for the sake of our children and to be a part of the new evangelization in Catholic formation, but for our own continual formation and education.

“As mimetic, dependent rational animals, our positive growth in intellectual, moral, and spiritual virtue is deeply influenced by our exposure to and experience of the best— the true, good and beautiful—that has been thought and expressed throughout human history.”

Through a classical curriculum and a dedication to the pursuit of truth and virtue in accordance with the teaching of the Catholic Church, the Neumann School hopes to provide a fruitful education that, in the words of Blessed John Paul II, “aims not only to communicate facts but also to transmit a coherent, comprehensive vision of life.” The revival of classical primary education as witnessed in the Neumann School provides an essential and valuable alternative path in light of recent movements, exemplified by the Common Core standards, to reduce education to nothing more than the production of exemplary members of the modern workforce.

The Neumann School is not alone. The classical model of education never fully died but was simply drowned out by the modern educational model in the last few decades. The revival of classical schools, particularly in the Catholic tradition, can be traced back at least to the founding of the Trivium School in Massachusetts in 1979. In the Archdiocese of Washington, St. Jerome Academy, which created and adopted a classical curriculum five years ago to prevent the school’s closure, has provided a model for many newly formed Catholic schools.

An announcement of the first annual conference of Catholic Classical Schools that was held in July 2013 estimated that 40 to 60 schools have now adopted the Classical Catholic liberal arts educational model. This revival is gaining steam, as more and more parents are going classical in pursuit of a sound education for their children.

Esolen captured the heart of the matter eloquently in correspondence with the Rover, when he said, “If grace perfects nature, that means we should cherish nature, lest grace should have nothing but a rotten stump to work on. Everybody else is casting great literature overboard, in favor of popular garbage, political propaganda, the ephemeral twitters of our newspapers, smut, and pseudo-academic fluff—Great Thoughts to Smother a Soul By. Why should we follow them? There’s a reason why ‘classical’ models of education held sway for more than two thousand years. They worked. They were in accord with both the nature of children and the structure of knowledge. Let everybody else have square wheels if they want.”

 

To learn more about the Neumann Classical School or support its mission, access the website at http://neumannschool.org/ or contact Monica McDaniel at mcdaniel.monica@gmail.com.

Tim Bradley is a sophomore majoring in economics and theology with minors in constitutional studies and philosophy. Contact him at tbradle5@nd.edu.