Challenges for Catholic schools in contemporary Uruguay

Abstract

This article reviews and updates a previous work published in 2007 as a chapter in the International Handbook of Catholic Education (Aristimuño, A. 2007. “Challenges for Catholic Schools in Uruguay.” In International Handbook of Catholic Education: Challenges for School Systems in the 21st Century. Part One, edited by Gerald Grace and S. J. Joseph O’Keefe, 149–163, Dordrecht: Springer). Its purpose is to review and analyze the transformations Catholic education has experienced since then in the small and secularised country of Uruguay, and by doing so, to identify its main contemporary challenges.

It incorporates new literature and findings related to Catholic education globally (Grace, G. 2016. Faith, Mission and Challenge in Catholic Education. The Selected Works of Gerald Grace. London: Routledge; Lydon, J. 2009. “Transmission of the Charism: A Major Challenge for Catholic Education.” International Studies in Catholic Education 1 (1): 42–58), to new ways of religion that are growing in Latin America (Da Costa, N. 2017. “Creencias y descreencias desde las experiencias cotidianas. Una mirada desde Uruguay.” Estudos de Religiao 31 (3): 1–21; Morello, G. et al. 2017. “Lived Religion in Latin America and Europe. The Roman-Catholic Experience in Everyday Life.” Quaderni del Csal-4, Centro Studi per l’America Latina, IX (17). Trieste: Edizione Universita di Trieste), new empirical research about the current situation of Catholic education in the country (Census AUDEC, 2016 and 2017), and the voice of several new Catholic education leaders who run influential educational organisations in the country.

These new sources and findings show that in spite of some demanding social and global changes, what sustains and inspires the work of the protagonists at the heart of Catholic education in Uruguay continues to be its ‘spiritual capital’, defined as ‘resources of faith and values derived from commitment to a religious tradition’ (Grace, G. 2002. Catholic Schools: Mission, Markets and Morality. London: Routledge Falmer, p. 236).

Keywords:

• Catholic education
• Catholic schools
• Uruguay

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Adriana Aristimuño is a pioneering researcher of Catholic education in Uruguay having contributed a chapter to the International Handbook of Catholic Education (2007) and now up-dated for research in this article.

Notes

1 Uruguay experienced a very early process of secularisation during the first years of the XX century. It meant that religion was eliminated from every public space, the State was officially separated from the Church, and that public education did not offer any form of religious education.

2 Religiosity understood as the expression of religious beliefs, by individuals or by groups of individuals.

3 The most recent of them was published in 2017: Educación católica. Una propuesta con valor para un país en transformación. Montevideo: AUDEC.

4 Criticisms have pointed to a weak leadership, that has not been able to create a united group; they also have said the organisation was not able to conduct Catholic education to a renovation of its pedagogy, and that lay educational institutions have been faster and more efficient in interpreting the educational needs of contemporary families.

5 These schools serve medium class families, and are located in urban contexts, with a highly demanding public that requires new services every year: ICT education, foreign languages, sports, etc. These schools sometimes do not have the financial situation to face these demands. More powerful schools in financial terms, are better equipped in doing so.

6 Some of them: Liceo Providencia, Centro Los Pinos, Don Bosco in the capital city of Montevideo, and Liceo Francisco in the city of Paysandú, distant 600 km from Montevideo.

7 The Sophia Foundation is supported by private donors, no Congregation funds it.

8 Some of the charisms are Sagrada Familia, Salesians, and several others are episcopal schools.

9 For a research interview with the Archbishop of Montevideo, see the Appendix.