Catholic curriculum: re-framing the conversation

Abstract

This article provides a summary account of the book, A Mission to the Heart of Young People: Catholic Curriculum, published in Australia in 2012. To preserve the true mission and religious integrity of Catholic schools in the face of secularism and ‘national economic requirements’, it is argued that Catholic schools must possess a distinctive cultural heart which is an authentic Catholic curriculum. This curriculum must assist young people to engage constructively with the wisdom and faith of the Catholic community in a way that is meaningful to them. The principles and practices required to construct such a curriculum are outlined.

Keywords:

• Catholic curriculum
• re-frame
• conversation
• meaning-making
• worldview
• faith
• culture
• anthropology
• heart
• leadership

Acknowledgements

I thank the two anonymous reviewers of this journal for their helpful advice on the first draft of this article.

Notes

1. Subsequent documents utilise The Catholic School extensively, taking on its strengths, and also certain of its limitations, such as its lack of subtantive reference to the Church's magisterial documents on mission and evangelisation.

2. Missiology is an area of study which is directed to the Church's mission. It is cross-disciplinary, drawing on theology, scripture and the social sciences.

3. This progress of this change from early modernity onwards is traced in Chapter 10 ‘The worldview of Modernity’ in D'Orsa and D'Orsa (2012, 131–46).

4. For example, Nietzsche, Lyotard, Derrida, and Foucault. See discussion in J. D'Orsa and T. D'Orsa Catholic Curriculum: A Mission to the Heart of Young People, 147–166.

5. For example, Habermas, Taylor, and Thornhill. See discussion in J. D'Orsa and T. D'Orsa Catholic Curriculum: A Mission to the Heart of Young People, 167–183.

6. The theme of ‘subtraction story’ is a major theme in Charles Taylor's A Secular Age (2007).

7. Reports on Australian studies include Hughes (2007), Mason, Singleton, and Webber (2007), Flynn and Mok (2002); US studies include Hoge et al. (2001), Smith and Denton (2005); and UK studies include Hay (2007), and Francis, Robbins, and Astley (2005).

8. This approach was used in the Sense of the Sacred Project which was initially developed by the Catholic Education Office, Sydney in 1996 and widely used in Australian secondary schools.

9. Howard Gardner takes this question up insightfully in 5 Minds for the Future (2008).

10. In many ways, the present study, in accessing the resources available in sociology, history and philosophy of science, social philosophy, philosophy, education, missiology, theology and cultural anthropology, and bringing them to bear of the problem of a Catholic curriculum, reflects this confidence.