Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Influence And Training

Fordham University 1958
......the schools of the Jesuits can not be appreciated, without drawing attention to the important part which the confessional and the ethics of the Order, occupy in the internal police and moral training of these institutions. 
It should be remembered that these schools are avowedly catholic— that their teachers are an influential Order of the Catholic Church devoted to the maintenance and propagation of the Faith as held by that Church, and that the acknowledgment of sins, conjoined with sincere contrition, and a firm purpose of amendment, to an authorized priest, is obligatory upon all, old and young, 
who are in communion with that Church. When parents send their children to these schools, they know, or can know, that they will be subjected to the influence and training which the Catholic Church recognizes as favorable to its purposes. 
The superiority of the schools of the Jesuits, considered as schools, and apart from their ecclesiastical relations, is to be found in the fact that the director and all the subordinate teachers are selected for their several positions, after a long and careful training, under able and experienced masters, in a system of organization, instruction, and discipline, devised and matured after years of trial by many minds, and embodied in books composed by masters in the several studies. 
No thoughtful educator can study the educational policy of the Jesuits without gathering lessons of great value in determining his views as to the best methods of conducting the education of the young.
Link (here)  to  the original article in The American Journal of Education published in 1859

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The photo in this post is misidentified as Santa Clara University. Actually it is Fordham University. The photo takes in the University Church and Bishop's Hall, part of the Queen's Court complex. By the looks of the people in the photo, my guess would be that they are attending some sort of special event. There are far too many religious and young women about for it to have been a regular class day back in the 1950's when Fordham College was not co-educational. During the summers in the 1950's Fordham often hosted Catholic Action conventions that brought young people and their mentors from throughout the region.

Joseph Fromm said...

Thank you for your interesting observation and for correctly identifying the location.

JMJ

Joe