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Sociologist Carol Ann MacGregor on Character Formation in Catholic High Schools

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To receive a free copy of the chapter of  The Content of Their Character that corresponds with this interview, please click here and sign up for our Weekly Digest.

 

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of this interview, which was conducted on December 20, 2018.

Angus McBeath: Today I’m with Dr. Carol Ann MacGregor, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Loyola University in New Orleans. Dr. Carol Ann MacGregor researched a sample of Catholic high schools across the United States. That involved intense interviews, visitations, conversations, observations of what she saw in American high schools—American Catholic high schools—in terms of moral formation of young people. I’m going to ask a few questions now, Carol Ann, if I might. You studied, through your research, schools across the United States. Do you recall if there were any surprises that you encountered in your research, in your studies, in your visits? Anything you found in these high schools that you hadn’t expected?

Carol Ann MacGregor: That’s a great question. I think the literature on Catholic education suggested that these were going to be places that were very good at doing this kind of formative work—sort of a faith-based, values-based education; small schools; really caring faculty. The existing research on the topic sort of suggested that the outcomes would be positive.

But I think one of the surprises that I found on the ground is how taken for granted it sort of was. I anticipated going into schools and seeing all of this very direct evidence of this happening, you know—sort of policies and procedures and meetings where people talked about it—but for many of these schools it was much more nuanced; it was sort of baked into their culture. They were having these very positive outcomes, but it wasn’t necessarily that easy to tie it to a specific policy or overt discussion people were having.

AM: So it was in the DNA of the school culture?

CAM: Yes, that’s definitely what it seemed like for many of the schools. Particularly schools who have been around for a long time and sort of had cultivated their approach over decades and generations.

AM: Can you illuminate for us what those positive moral outcomes that you saw being generated as a result of the work of the schools?

CAM: Sure. Well, most Catholic high schools in the United States are very focused on getting students into colleges, but one thing that really stood out when I interviewed students and asked them about, sort of, What do you think your teachers want for you after you graduate? their answer was always twofold: They want me to go to a good college, but more than that, they want me to be a good person. Or, My goal here is not just to be—to go get a good job, but to treat people well throughout the course of my life.

So there was a clear message to students—or students were taking away—that there was more to education and more to living a good life than just going to college and getting a job.

AM: Okay. Now would you say that you detected a sense of altruism in the students—that they not just wanted to be a good person, but they wanted to do good to others?

CAM: Yes, definitely. You could see that in both informal and formal ways. Sort of on the informal side, many people describe this school—and this would be administrators, teachers, and students—as “like a family,” and people were very caring and selfless towards their peers; they’ve got lots of good examples of that in the study. And then in more formal ways, many students in these schools were involved in serving their local community through various types of outreach, depending on the sort of city that they were located [in].

AM: Thank you. Many principals and teachers struggle with attempting to eliminate, reduce, the incidence of bullying in schools, and after school, as well, and online bullying and Facebook bullying and social media bullying and so on, because it’s so hard and detrimental for students. Did you detect in any of these Catholic schools a sense that there was a bullying problem? Or is that something they had dealt with, you think, successfully?

CAM: There was definitely a range, but we had a question in our interview protocol that asked about this, so we did hear about this from most of the folks we interviewed, and some schools were really thinking about this: not so much about the piece that happens on school grounds, that most schools had some pretty well-established policies about what was acceptable and what was not acceptable and strategies for monitoring it. It was the after-hours and the social media aspect of it where schools were thinking through how to do that.

So some schools had actually sort of extended their scope of surveillance, if you will, to anything that a student did. So there were some schools who would give in-school disciplinary actions, like a detention or suspension, for things that happened on social media outside of the school context because they felt that was against their code of character or code of ethics—you know, it’s named different things in different places. So I think it’s an issue for all educators, but for the most part, the Catholic school administrators I spoke to were dealing with it off-site, not on-site.

AM: OK, thank you for that clarification. Now you’ve noted in your chapter in the book The Content of Their Character—available through Amazon.com—you noted that Catholic school teachers and Catholic staff tended to believe that what they were offering students was superior to what was found in other types of schools. That is something you noted in your chapter in the book. Tell me about how that works.

CAM: Yeah, so many of the teachers that I spoke with felt very strongly that what they were doing was their vocation, that it wasn’t just a job—that if it was just a job they could go get a job in the local public school that would pay them more for doing similar kinds of work. But they thought that what they did every day was very special in terms of shaping young people’s views of the world and the trajectory of their lives in a lot of ways. And so when asked kind of, What’s the difference between public school and a Catholic school?…they always had some kind of sense that what they were doing there…was a lot of what happened at public school—but a little bit extra. So, great at college prep just like a top public school, but you know, also focusing on other aspects of education beyond just straightforward academic achievement.

AM: OK, thank you. From your view, what was the position of most of the schools you studied on moral authority on social issues?

CAM: This was really interesting. You know, knowing official church teaching on issues like same-sex marriage and abortion, I was curious about how the schools approached those issues. In many cases, I would say, the general approach was an acceptance of respectful dissent. So most educators felt like it was acceptable for a student to say or to hold a position that was different than official church teaching, but they viewed it as a teachable moment. If a student was going to hold one of those views or share a view that was different than official church teaching, they should do so in an educated and respectful way. So they should have evidence to support their claims, they should convey their position in a way that was respectful of other views, and they should make a really concerted effort to at least understand what the other position was, in addition to their own.

AM: And students didn’t feel any reluctance to voice a position that was different than church doctrine?

CAM: No, not at most of the schools that I went to. You know, there were a lot of students who were agnostic on the issues, of course, but in particular, in attitudes towards homosexuality, the students I spoke to were very tolerant and often gave me examples of times where, you know, they had spoken up in class or tried to create a club at their school, and in those instances they felt like they were met with conversation with their school teachers and administrators.

AM: Thank you. Did you note in the schools whether there were any teachers or principals dealing with issues around plagiarism and cheating? Was that discussed at all with you?

CAM: Yes, definitely. You know these schools were all really caught up in the race to get students into top colleges with scholarship money…. I think a thing that I heard from parents a lot is that they were making a financial sacrifice to send their child to Catholic high school for lots of reasons, but among them [was] the idea that going to a really great school like this might help them get scholarship money to go to one of the better colleges of the United States. So a really intense academic culture at most of these places, so there was a sort of policy and discussion of cheating. Every school that I went to just said, you know, It’s zero on the test, or, It’s zero on the assignment, and so it’s not that it never happened, but there were very clear understandings of the consequences when it did.

AM: Okay, so students knew where they stood clearly.

CAM: Yes, yes.

AM: Thank you. Now, many parents send their children to Catholic schools in the belief that there’s stricter discipline in Catholic schools perhaps than in the public schools—conjecture perhaps. Do you think that’s supportable—that view that I can get better discipline if I go to a Catholic school?

CAM: The students would often talk about, Well it’s just a little bit more structure; I have friends who go to public school, and you know it’s much more structured here, or, My friends at public school get away with all kinds of stuff that I can’t get away with. And so, you know, there were lots of things—I spoke a little of this before—where Catholic students were subject to discipline even for things that they did off campus. So if they were wearing their school’s uniform on a public bus and someone observed them engaging inappropriately, that was a very serious infraction. At one school there was a party on the weekend, and it got back to the school that there had been some underage drinking at this party, and the school suspended the student for that behavior even though it wasn’t on school grounds, it was at the party.

So there definitely is some truth to that idea that Catholic schools take discipline very seriously. On the flip side, I would say most schools told me that there were very few serious disciplinary incidents, so relatively few incidents of things like fighting or drugs—those were once-every-couple-of-years kind of situations in most schools. The predominant form of infraction was uniform violations, which is something that the students like to talk a lot about and had some strong opinions about, whether there should be such enforcement over the particulars of their uniform.

AM: Did you get a sense of how urgent the Catholic schools were that you studied about engaging students to become truly committed to civic engagement and truly committed to civic understanding, and civic participation, and citizenship awareness?

CAM: So it’s kind of a mixed situation…. In terms of volunteering, that part of civic engagement, all of the schools I visited were quite strong in this area. They varied a little bit on whether it was required or whether it was just a commonplace activity. But they were all very involved in having their students be very involved in their local communities. On citizenship and voting, a little bit less so, and what I heard from the schools was mostly, it was a little harder to get students who couldn’t vote really engaged in the process. So they used to see, or they often saw, some interest amongst seniors and among people taking AP Government, but for many students, it was more of an abstraction.

But you know, they did cover it in the curriculum. Often, they tried to bring it in in terms of student government—you know, sort of having kind of a local school election and trying to encourage that to really mirror the political process. But volunteering is the real star of civic engagement at the high school level.

AM: Thank you. In many schools, teachers and principals argue that No Child Left Behind legislation and Race to the Top legislation require them to focus almost exclusively on strengthening student achievement as measured by standardized test scores, and therefore they must sacrifice taking time to strengthen student moral formation. Do you see this dichotomy in the schools you study? Did you see this yin and yang? This struggle between, I’ve got to get our scores up, I have to get students into good colleges, and I don’t really have time to really focus—we really don’t have time to really focus—on moral formation? Do you think that struggle was present in the schools you studied or not?

CAM: A little bit, but I would say less so than in the public school context. So the schools definitely had a lot of freedom to choose their curriculum in a lot of respects, and so for most teachers and administrators, I definitely heard that they wanted to emphasize balance—that they felt like academics, extracurriculars, and sports, and the spiritual side of their school were equally valuable, and they wanted students to be engaged in all three of those things, not just the academic piece. One place that was kind of an exception to this, though, is many, many of the schools were part of the AP Advanced Placement curriculum, and…I spoke to teachers who were engaged in AP or IB, International Baccalaureate work. There the curriculum is much more prescribed, and you really do have to get through a lot of material. So there, you know, it wasn’t that the teachers or principals felt that the academics were more important than the other aspects, but they really did have a kind of set of things they needed to get to.

AM: Well, that’s true, I think, in so many schools. I was going to ask you whether you observed this, for example. So, in many schools and many, many school districts in many states, there is a real desire on the part of educators and the part of legislators, state legislators in particular, to reduce the numbers of students who are being suspended or expelled from schools,…and there’s some belief that there’s a disproportionate number of students of color suspended or expelled from schools. And so what’s being done instead of a suspension is not letting students off the hook, but engaging in restorative justice practices. Restorative justice practices mean that the student who offended meets with the student who was offended against with adult mentors and there is a restitution made on the part of the offender to make things better and right for the person who was offended against. And I wondered if you noted that restorative justice was a thing they’d do rather than suspensions.

CAM: Yeah, a few principals spoke of this as their approach. There weren’t—expulsion was incredibly rare at the schools that I visited. Most principals indicated that they only had one or two expulsions a year at max, so just really not a common occurrence. And most schools were doing some sort of in-school suspension, a few were doing restorative justice, but they all definitely seem to be aware of this issue that nobody wins when a student is just…at home, not really engaging with the community or the person that was harmed, and falling behind on their academic work.

AM: Thank you. So I wondered based on your observations of these schools, and those were intense observations, whether you have any thoughts on things you might have noted that I haven’t asked you about today.

CAM: That’s a great question too. One thing that I’ve been thinking a lot about as I consider what my own next project might be, and because I work at a Catholic university, is sort of, What is the lasting impact of going to a Catholic high school?… How does that experience look five, 10, 15, 20 years out? And how does a Catholic student who went to a Catholic high school and a Catholic college look different than someone who went to a Catholic high school and a public college? Or all those sorts of different things.

So I don’t know that I would have been able to—I definitely wouldn’t have been able to—observe just at that one moment in time. But I do think an important thing to think about for all of us interested in moral formation is sort of what happens years out…. How can we make sure that we’re not just looking at what happens during those critical years, but we look at how those critical years shape people’s lives?

AM: Thank you. I just wondered if you observed…differences in terms of preparation of teachers for Catholic schools than there would be for teachers for other kinds of schools.

CAM: Yeah, that’s a good question. I don’t think so, in the traditional sense. I mean, they have the same degrees from prestigious colleges and universities in education, the same credentials on paper—often, a little bit more likely to have gone to a Catholic college than a public college, but, you know, all great schools. So I don’t think [so] in terms of the formal preparation.

But informally, I think one thing that I noticed quite a bit is that Catholic schools hire back a lot of their own alumni, so when I was speaking with teachers, they’d often tell me, Oh, you know, I actually went here as a student. And there’s something to that in terms of the sort of institutional memory and continuity of the vision, and so it’s almost as though in terms of preparation, some teachers had a jump start because they were very intimately acquainted with their place of work well before they got there.

AM: Thank you. If people watching this interview or reading the transcript of this interview were interested in a full look at the work you did in observing the Catholic schools, that can be done by going to Amazon.com and purchasing The Content of Their Character….Carol Ann has certainly—she wrote the chapter on the Catholic schools in this book, which is available to educators. I want to thank you today for participating in this interview. I appreciate very much your insights, and I wish you well in your future endeavors.

CAM: Thanks very much.

On School Grounds: Transcript of Interview with Carol Ann MacGregor on Catholic High Schools

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To receive a free copy of the chapter of  The Content of Their Character that corresponds with this interview, please click here and sign up for our Weekly Digest.

—

This is a lightly edited transcript of an interview conducted on December 20, 2018 with sociologist Carol Ann MacGregor. Dr. MacGregor is Associate Professor of Sociology at Loyola University in New Orleans. She contributed the chapter on Catholic high schools to The Content of Their Character, a major research project launched by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture in order to better understand the moral formation of high school students. The interview was conducted by CultureFeed Expert Angus McBeath.

Angus McBeath: Today I’m with Dr. Carol Ann MacGregor, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Loyola University in New Orleans. Dr. Carol Ann MacGregor researched a sample of Catholic high schools across the United States. That involved intense interviews, visitations, conversations, observations of what she saw in American high schools—American Catholic high schools—in terms of moral formation of young people. I’m going to ask a few questions now, Carol Ann, if I might. You studied, through your research, schools across the United States. Do you recall if there were any surprises that you encountered in your research, in your studies, in your visits? Anything you found in these high schools that you hadn’t expected?

Carol Ann MacGregor: That’s a great question. I think the literature on Catholic education suggested that these were going to be places that were very good at doing this kind of formative work—sort of a faith-based, values-based education; small schools; really caring faculty. The existing research on the topic sort of suggested that the outcomes would be positive.

But I think one of the surprises that I found on the ground is how taken for granted it sort of was. I anticipated going into schools and seeing all of this very direct evidence of this happening, you know—sort of policies and procedures and meetings where people talked about it—but for many of these schools it was much more nuanced; it was sort of baked into their culture. They were having these very positive outcomes, but it wasn’t necessarily that easy to tie it to a specific policy or overt discussion people were having.

AM: So it was in the DNA of the school culture?

CAM: Yes, that’s definitely what it seemed like for many of the schools. Particularly schools who have been around for a long time and sort of had cultivated their approach over decades and generations.

AM: Can you illuminate for us what those positive moral outcomes that you saw being generated as a result of the work of the schools?

CAM: Sure. Well, most Catholic high schools in the United States are very focused on getting students into colleges, but one thing that really stood out when I interviewed students and asked them about, sort of, What do you think your teachers want for you after you graduate? their answer was always twofold: They want me to go to a good college, but more than that, they want me to be a good person. Or, My goal here is not just to be—to go get a good job, but to treat people well throughout the course of my life.

So there was a clear message to students—or students were taking away—that there was more to education and more to living a good life than just going to college and getting a job.

AM: Okay. Now would you say that you detected a sense of altruism in the students—that they not just wanted to be a good person, but they wanted to do good to others?

CAM: Yes, definitely. You could see that in both informal and formal ways. Sort of on the informal side, many people describe this school—and this would be administrators, teachers, and students—as “like a family,” and people were very caring and selfless towards their peers; they’ve got lots of good examples of that in the study. And then in more formal ways, many students in these schools were involved in serving their local community through various types of outreach, depending on the sort of city that they were located [in].

AM: Thank you. Many principals and teachers struggle with attempting to eliminate, reduce, the incidence of bullying in schools, and after school, as well, and online bullying and Facebook bullying and social media bullying and so on, because it’s so hard and detrimental for students. Did you detect in any of these Catholic schools a sense that there was a bullying problem? Or is that something they had dealt with, you think, successfully?

CAM: There was definitely a range, but we had a question in our interview protocol that asked about this, so we did hear about this from most of the folks we interviewed, and some schools were really thinking about this: not so much about the piece that happens on school grounds; that, most schools had some pretty well-established policies about what was acceptable and what was not acceptable and strategies for monitoring it. It was the after-hours and the social media aspect of it where schools were thinking through how to do that.

So some schools had actually sort of extended their scope of surveillance, if you will, to anything that a student did. So there were some schools who would give in-school disciplinary actions, like a detention or suspension, for things that happened on social media outside of the school context because they felt that was against their code of character or code of ethics—you know, it’s named different things in different places. So I think it’s an issue for all educators, but for the most part, the Catholic school administrators I spoke to were dealing with it off-site, not on-site.

AM: OK, thank you for that clarification. Now you’ve noted in your chapter in the book The Content of Their Character—available through Amazon.com—you noted that Catholic school teachers and Catholic staff tended to believe that what they were offering students was superior to what was found in other types of schools. That is something you noted in your chapter in the book. Tell me about how that works.

CAM: Yeah, so many of the teachers that I spoke with felt very strongly that what they were doing was their vocation, that it wasn’t just a job—that if it was just a job they could go get a job in the local public school that would pay them more for doing similar kinds of work. But they thought that what they did every day was very special in terms of shaping young people’s views of the world and the trajectory of their lives in a lot of ways. And so when asked kind of, What’s the difference between public school and a Catholic school?…they always had some kind of sense that what they were doing there…was a lot of what happened at public school—but a little bit extra. So, great at college prep just like a top public school, but you know, also focusing on other aspects of education beyond just straightforward academic achievement.

AM: OK, thank you. From your view, what was the position of most of the schools you studied on moral authority on social issues?

CAM: This was really interesting. You know, knowing official church teaching on issues like same-sex marriage and abortion, I was curious about how the schools approached those issues. In many cases, I would say, the general approach was an acceptance of respectful dissent. So most educators felt like it was acceptable for a student to say or to hold a position that was different than official church teaching, but they viewed it as a teachable moment. If a student was going to hold one of those views or share a view that was different than official church teaching, they should do so in an educated and respectful way. So they should have evidence to support their claims, they should convey their position in a way that was respectful of other views, and they should make a really concerted effort to at least understand what the other position was, in addition to their own.

AM: And students didn’t feel any reluctance to voice a position that was different than church doctrine?

CAM: No, not at most of the schools that I went to. You know, there were a lot of students who were agnostic on the issues, of course, but in particular, in attitudes towards homosexuality, the students I spoke to were very tolerant and often gave me examples of times where, you know, they had spoken up in class or tried to create a club at their school, and in those instances they felt like they were met with conversation with their school teachers and administrators.

AM: Thank you. Did you note in the schools whether there were any teachers or principals dealing with issues around plagiarism and cheating? Was that discussed at all with you?

CAM: Yes, definitely. You know these schools were all really caught up in the race to get students into top colleges with scholarship money…. I think a thing that I heard from parents a lot is that they were making a financial sacrifice to send their child to Catholic high school for lots of reasons, but among them [was] the idea that going to a really great school like this might help them get scholarship money to go to one of the better colleges of the United States. So a really intense academic culture at most of these places, so there was a sort of policy and discussion of cheating. Every school that I went to just said, you know, It’s zero on the test, or, It’s zero on the assignment, and so it’s not that it never happened, but there were very clear understandings of the consequences when it did.

AM: Okay, so students knew where they stood clearly.

CAM: Yes, yes.

AM: Thank you. Now, many parents send their children to Catholic schools in the belief that there’s stricter discipline in Catholic schools perhaps than in the public schools—conjecture perhaps. Do you think that’s supportable—that view that I can get better discipline if I go to a Catholic school?

CAM: The students would often talk about, Well it’s just a little bit more structure; I have friends who go to public school, and you know it’s much more structured here, or, My friends at public school get away with all kinds of stuff that I can’t get away with. And so, you know, there were lots of things—I spoke a little of this before—where Catholic students were subject to discipline even for things that they did off campus. So if they were wearing their school’s uniform on a public bus and someone observed them engaging inappropriately, that was a very serious infraction. At one school there was a party on the weekend, and it got back to the school that there had been some underage drinking at this party, and the school suspended the student for that behavior even though it wasn’t on school grounds, it was at the party.

So there definitely is some truth to that idea that Catholic schools take discipline very seriously. On the flip side, I would say most schools told me that there were very few serious disciplinary incidents, so relatively few incidents of things like fighting or drugs—those were once-every-couple-of-years kind of situations in most schools. The predominant form of infraction was uniform violations, which is something that the students like to talk a lot about and had some strong opinions about, whether there should be such enforcement over the particulars of their uniform.

AM: Did you get a sense of how urgent the Catholic schools were that you studied about engaging students to become truly committed to civic engagement and truly committed to civic understanding, and civic participation, and citizenship awareness?

CAM: So it’s kind of a mixed situation…. In terms of volunteering, that part of civic engagement, all of the schools I visited were quite strong in this area. They varied a little bit on whether it was required or whether it was just a commonplace activity. But they were all very involved in having their students be very involved in their local communities. On citizenship and voting, a little bit less so, and what I heard from the schools was mostly, it was a little harder to get students who couldn’t vote really engaged in the process. So they used to see, or they often saw, some interest amongst seniors and among people taking AP Government, but for many students, it was more of an abstraction.

But you know, they did cover it in the curriculum. Often, they tried to bring it in in terms of student government—you know, sort of having kind of a local school election and trying to encourage that to really mirror the political process. But volunteering is the real star of civic engagement at the high school level.

AM: Thank you. In many schools, teachers and principals argue that No Child Left Behind legislation and Race to the Top legislation require them to focus almost exclusively on strengthening student achievement as measured by standardized test scores, and therefore they must sacrifice taking time to strengthen student moral formation. Do you see this dichotomy in the schools you study? Did you see this yin and yang? This struggle between, I’ve got to get our scores up, I have to get students into good colleges, and I don’t really have time to really focus—we really don’t have time to really focus—on moral formation? Do you think that struggle was present in the schools you studied or not?

CAM: A little bit, but I would say less so than in the public school context. So the schools definitely had a lot of freedom to choose their curriculum in a lot of respects, and so for most teachers and administrators, I definitely heard that they wanted to emphasize balance—that they felt like academics, extracurriculars, and sports, and the spiritual side of their school were equally valuable, and they wanted students to be engaged in all three of those things, not just the academic piece. One place that was kind of an exception to this, though, is many, many of the schools were part of the AP Advanced Placement curriculum, and…I spoke to teachers who were engaged in AP or IB, International Baccalaureate work. There the curriculum is much more prescribed, and you really do have to get through a lot of material. So there, you know, it wasn’t that the teachers or principals felt that the academics were more important than the other aspects, but they really did have a kind of set of things they needed to get to.

AM: Well, that’s true, I think, in so many schools. I was going to ask you whether you observed this, for example. So, in many schools and many, many school districts in many states, there is a real desire on the part of educators and the part of legislators, state legislators in particular, to reduce the numbers of students who are being suspended or expelled from schools,…and there’s some belief that there’s a disproportionate number of students of color suspended or expelled from schools. And so what’s being done instead of a suspension is not letting students off the hook, but engaging in restorative justice practices. Restorative justice practices mean that the student who offended meets with the student who was offended against with adult mentors and there is a restitution made on the part of the offender to make things better and right for the person who was offended against. And I wondered if you noted that restorative justice was a thing they’d do rather than suspensions.

CAM: Yeah, a few principals spoke of this as their approach. There weren’t—expulsion was incredibly rare at the schools that I visited. Most principals indicated that they only had one or two expulsions a year at max, so just really not a common occurrence. And most schools were doing some sort of in-school suspension, a few were doing restorative justice, but they all definitely seem to be aware of this issue that nobody wins when a student is just…at home, not really engaging with the community or the person that was harmed, and falling behind on their academic work.

AM: Thank you. So I wondered based on your observations of these schools, and those were intense observations, whether you have any thoughts on things you might have noted that I haven’t asked you about today.

CAM: That’s a great question too. One thing that I’ve been thinking a lot about as I consider what my own next project might be, and because I work at a Catholic university, is sort of, What is the lasting impact of going to a Catholic high school?… How does that experience look five, 10, 15, 20 years out? And how does a Catholic student who went to a Catholic high school and a Catholic college look different than someone who went to a Catholic high school and a public college? Or all those sorts of different things.

So I don’t know that I would have been able to—I definitely wouldn’t have been able to—observe just at that one moment in time. But I do think an important thing to think about for all of us interested in moral formation is sort of what happens years out…. How can we make sure that we’re not just looking at what happens during those critical years, but we look at how those critical years shape people’s lives?

AM: Thank you. I just wondered if you observed…differences in terms of preparation of teachers for Catholic schools than there would be for teachers for other kinds of schools.

CAM: Yeah, that’s a good question. I don’t think so, in the traditional sense. I mean, they have the same degrees from prestigious colleges and universities in education, the same credentials on paper—often, a little bit more likely to have gone to a Catholic College than a public college, but, you know, all great schools. So I don’t think [so] in terms of the formal preparation.

But informally, I think one thing that I noticed quite a bit is that Catholic schools hire back a lot of their own alumni, so when I was speaking with teachers, they’d often tell me, Oh, you know, I actually went here as a student. And there’s something to that in terms of the sort of institutional memory and continuity of the vision, and so it’s almost as though in terms of preparation, some teachers had a jump start because they were very intimately acquainted with their place of work well before they got there.

AM: Thank you. If people watching this interview or reading the transcript of this interview were interested in a full look at the work you did in observing the Catholic schools, that can be done by going to Amazon.com and purchasing The Content of Their Character…. Carol Ann has certainly—she wrote the chapter on the Catholic schools in this book, which is available to educators. I want to thank you today for participating in this interview. I appreciate very much your insights, and I wish you well in your future endeavors.

CAM: Thanks very much.

Scholars on Schools: Interview with Carol Ann MacGregor on Catholic High Schools

by

To receive a free copy of the chapter of  The Content of Their Character that corresponds with this interview, please click here and sign up for our Weekly Digest.

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Several years ago, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at UVA launched a major research project in order to better understand the moral formation of high school students. Researchers went into ten different sectors of schools, from public schools (both urban and rural) to private schools (both religious and nonreligious) to homeschools and others. In this interview, sociologist Carol Ann MacGregor talks with veteran educator Angus McBeath about the two expectations that Catholic students perceive from their teachers. She also describes how teachers handle conflicts between student opinion and the church’s stance on social issues.

Mentoring program connects middle schoolers and kindergarteners

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Students at Fort Worth, Texas’ Our Lady of Victory Catholic School are more than classmates. They’re family.

A “Faith Family” project launched by principal Samantha Weakland last school year is drawing students together across grade levels, and it’s creating a stronger community by encouraging bonds that extend beyond the typical circle of family and friends.

Weakland told the Centre Daily Times she came up with the idea to group students—two from each of grade at the K-8 school—into Faith Families during a conversation with a family last year, and it’s working wonders to bolster Our Lady of Victory’s mission to educate the whole student.

Students remain with their Faith Families throughout their time at the school, with older students helping to mentor youngsters, she said.

“This builds community across all grade levels and further increases the family atmosphere. Students get to know each other beyond their grade, and interact and learn from them,” Weakland said. “Often times, younger students need a little more support or guidance; a middle school student from their Faith Family may be asked to talk to them. Hearing from an older student makes a big impact.”

The Faith Families meet once a month for team building, prayer services, service work, and athletic events, according to the news site.

Kristy Urgo, parent of an OLV kindergartener, is a big fan of the program.

“My son Ty loves being with the older kids,” she said. “They make him feel so special and treat him so well.”

Kindergarten teacher Jessica Hauser agreed that “having (older) students around the school that they know makes them feel more comfortable and happy (at school).”

“My children all love Faith Families,” Kelly Kurpeikis, mother of four OLV students, told the Centre Daily. “It is a wonderful thing to have a cross-section of ages working together and building relationships throughout their time at OLV.”

Those relationships, Weakland said, are critical to creating a connected community at OLV, and to help students to build strong character virtues they’ll need in life once they leave.

“A positive school climate is essential to the success of a school,” she said. “When all stakeholders feel connected and part of a family then great things can happen.

“At OLV, we want the students to know that they are unique and special and that they should work together to make our classes, our school, our community, and our world a better place,” Weakland said.

In his book The Death of Character, James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, points out that communities with a shared source of authority and strong rituals are fundamental for developing character.

“Mortality is always situated—historically situated within distinct communities, and culturally situated within particular structures of moral reasoning and practice,” Hunter wrote. “Character is similarly situated.”

“It develops in relation to moral convictions defined by specific moral, philosophical, or religious truths. Far from being free-floating abstractions, these traditions of moral reasoning are fixed in social habit and routine within social groups and communities,” he continued. “Grounded in this way, ethical ideals carry moral authority. Thus, it is the concrete circumstances situating moral understanding that finally animate character and make it resilient.”

Some religious schools have strong moral convictions, but weak rituals or fragmented communities. The Faith Family program provides a compelling example of a social habit that forms convictions and character by repeated practice—in both older and younger students.

The National Mentoring Resource Center offers insight on peer mentoring for educators interested in building the same kind of formative culture in play at OLV.

Catholic school poll: approval of character at local level

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A national survey on character in which a West Roxbury, Massachusetts, Catholic school participated found that respondents have far more confidence in the integrity of local leaders than national ones, a lesson that the school is using to teach its students about character, despite the polarized national political landscape.

Catholic Memorial School President Peter Folan recently penned an editorial for Wicked Local Roslindale to explain how the all-boys school is engaging students in character education by launching the Research Institute for Politics and Public Policy, and what they’re learning from the experience.

Folan wrote that Catholic Memorial started the Institute because “as educators and parents, we have an obligation to help children find perspective and engage in important dialogue about real-world problems.”

“Our goal,” he wrote, “was to provide our students with the skills needed to search for truth.”

That search began with Catholic Memorial students and faculty putting together a national survey about character that was distributed through a Suffolk University/USA Today poll. Some of the results were predictable, with most respondents (64%) reporting an unfavorable view of the U.S. Congress and current national discourse.

Other findings, however, were far more promising.

Folan wrote:

In the midst of the discord, a silver lining emerged, as the national data presented positive approval of the character and integrity of local elected officials (61 percent), local clergy (65 percent), and local police (82 percent). These statistics sparked great debate and dialogue in our mathematics, history, and theology classes.

The CM poll also highlighted an 85 percent approval rating of the character and integrity of members of one’s local community, while members of the national community garnered only 55 percent approval. Our students also discovered in their analysis a stark difference regarding views on police, who held an almost 82 percent approval rating locally compared to a recent Gallup Poll that found that just 57 percent of Americans have confidence in the police.

The data is significant because it confirms the foundation of Catholic Memorial’s educational mantra: that “having integrity and character matters,” according to Folan.

It also confirms that students, educators and other leaders “have an obligation to shape the future, and it starts on the local level,” he wrote.

“We must act locally to support the good work done within our communities,” Folan wrote. “There is no doubt that we must strive for constant improvement at both the local and national level. We must also never forget that the work we do in our individual spheres does make a difference. Progress happens one step at a time and starts within our local neighborhoods.”

Folan’s sentiment echoes research from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.

James Davison Hunter, a sociologist and Executive Director of the Institute, wrote in The Death of Character that “character outside of a lived community, the entanglements of complex social relationships, and their shared story, is impossible.”

Within Catholic Memorial’s small lived community, students are learning the importance of having integrity and other character virtues in their personal and community relationships by looking up to local leaders.

The school’s website describes how administrators work to actively form character in young men through challenging and rewarding academic projects, and how the lasting relationships students forge at the school helps them to “articulate and define their aspirations, their hopes, and their dreams.”

U.S. Ed Dept honors NJ school for helping students develop good character

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U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos recently recognized a New Jersey Catholic school as a National Blue Ribbon School, an honor credited in large part to an intentional focus on developing good character in students.

Sociologist James Davison Hunter writes in his most recent book, The Tragedy of Moral Education in America:

Moral education can work where the community, and schools and other institutions within it, share a moral culture that is integrated and mutually reinforcing: where the social networks of adult authority are strong, unified, and consistent in articulating moral ideals and their attending virtues; and where adults maintain a ‘caring watchfulness’ over all aspects of a young person’s maturation. These are environments where intellectual and moral virtues are not only naturally interwoven in a distinctive moral ethos, but embedded within the structure of communities.

It’s the type of environment that played a large role in St. Francis Cathedral School’s recent recognition as a 2017 National Blue Ribbon School—high performing institutions where students excel in academics and life.

“National Blue Ribbon Schools are active demonstrations of preparing every child for a bright future,” DeVos said.

St. Francis Cathedral students score in the top 15 percent of students in the country in English and math, subjects that are part of a comprehensive curriculum that also incorporates technology and focuses a lot on science and engineering.

But it’s a lot more than just a challenging curriculum that’s fueling the academic success.

My Central Jersey reports:

Faculty, led by Principal Barbara Stevens and Vice-Principal Judi Monteleone, plans strategically for the socio-emotional development of their students through a character development program entitled Character Counts and a Middle School Advisory Program. Both cultivate the values of respect, justice, and responsibility while encouraging students to develop qualities of leadership, teamwork, and character.

A strong Home and School Association (HSA) is an integral part of the school. Parent volunteers offer countless hours of their own time to assist with a variety of school activities. The entire school community is supported by their rector, Rev. Msgr. Robert J. Zamorski and parish family.

The school’s 90-year tradition of promoting good character by incorporating parents and other resources like the church is exactly the kind of shared moral culture and strong social networks Davison describes.

At St. Francis, the shared expectations for behavior, communication and accountability translated into recognition as one of the top 342 Blue Ribbon schools in the nation and positively impacted the lives of countless students.

The national award is encouraging, and it also serves as a challenge for public school leaders to build on similar partnerships with parents and the community to work together to instill good character and civic responsibility in all students.

©2017 Advanced Studies in Culture

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