The Future of Catholic Education
A Response

David Tuohy,SJ

Issue 361, vol.91, Spring 2002

It is this analysis which Fr. Tuohy characterised as “an unfair judgement on much of the counter-cultural witness and formation that has taken, and still takes place in schools”. Moreover, the focus of the 2001 document is the grand picture of the end vision - with not much attention to the means of achieving this.

As regards the Handbook, he agrees that it does deal with both legal issues and ethos issues - but he cannot agree that its balance favours ethos issues at that level of practical discourse which might be expected to surround the implementation of such ideals. For instance, he finds an appendix on promoting women in leadership - but can find nothing on promoting Christian reflection in staff development (...And many staff members labour under an imbalance between the level of their religious literacy, and their general education and professional expertise as teachers).

Fr. Tuohy thinks it unfortunate that a CORI document should fail to promote the “both-and” approach to (1) an ethos of personal development (2) the grand vision of societal transformation - and should opt instead for an “either-or” rhetoric. Of course, the CORI perspective has been the effort to develop an infrastructure for new directions; while Fr. Tuohy’s horizon of work has been with schools seeking to develop a product before they can make use of the infrastructure. He observes that teachers and principals see their work at a local and personal level, rather than in the great movement of ideas; and he believes that trusteeship, properly conceived, should keep them connected with the latter - but not at the price of disconnecting them from the former.

David Tuohy, S.J., lectures in the Department of Education, National University of Ireland, Galway