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LASALLIAN MINISTRY: CHALLENGES FOR THE FUTURE
Br. Robert R. Bimonte, FSC
Scripture, like life, is filled with questions. And each of them is a marvelous source of prayer and reflection if we take the time to apply them to ourselves; to imagine that Jesus is asking those very same questions of us today:
"Who do people say that I am?"
"Who do you say that I am?"
"What do you seek?"
"Simon, do you love me?"
One of my favorite questions for reflection in all of Scripture comes from the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Jesus comes up behind them. He startles them, and he asks: "What are you talking about along the way?"
As Catholic school teachers, let's play with that question in two ways. First, what are we educators — all educators — talking about; and then, what are we Catholic educators talking about along the way.
Just about a year ago, the cover story in Newsweek magazine was a study of Education in the United States, and it was entitled: "A Dunce Cap for America." It focused on two books, which have just recently come out in paperback. One, by E.D. Hirsch, concerned a study he did with over 2,000 tenth to twelfth grade students. What he found was quite disturbing:
- 10% of these students thought that Peter Ustinov led the Russian Revolution.
- 50% didn't know who did.
- 75% never heard of the Reconstruction Period.
- 75% never heard of Walt Whitman or Henry David Thoreau.
- 2/3 didn't know when the Civil War took place.
- 1/3 thought Columbus sailed to the New World in 1750.
And Hirsch looked at these results and said: "God, these are scary figures!" — so he wrote a book called: "Cultural Literacy: What Every American Ought to Know."
Another educator, Alan Bloom, laments his findings that students have not learned to think — and his book is entitled: "The Closing of the American Mind." He calls colleges and universities to once again offer a classical curriculum.
What are we talking about along the way?
John Goodlad, in "A Place Called School," thinks the whole structure needs to be redone. He laments the lack of emotion in education today. He says, "There is no laughter, no enthusiasm, no negative or positive in the flat, somber atmosphere of our classrooms today."
Robert Coles says: "We have ceased to teach values. Moral reflection has been supplanted by technological education. We have been replacing moral values with psychology, and it has been a disaster — an absolute disaster."
I could go on and on. There always seems to be an abundance of bad news, particularly in the field of education. But we, Catholic educators, are not about bad news. We are the people of the good news, and indeed, the only good news in education seems to be coming from the Catholic Schools.
In 1982, the Coleman Report said that the best education was taking place in Catholic secondary schools.
In 1987, Mr. Coleman did another study, and guess what?
He found the same result:
"Catholic school students have better skills, and the benefits of Catholic school attendance are especially strong for those from disadvantaged backgrounds."
He says: "Stability and community are the key qualities in education, and Catholic schools have them."
I truly believe that at this moment in Salvation History, the Catholic School System is vital for the Church as it moves into the 21st Century. But we all know that the system is only as strong as the people who make up that system.
- It all depends on the teacher.
- That's the bottom line on all the research.
Coleman says that the reason schools fail is because "No one seems to care about the children."
What are we looking for in teachers in the Catholic school? (In those schools we want to call "Lasallian"). We're looking for teachers who view relationship as the basis for education. We have to relate to the young people in our classrooms as people: teacher-to-student, person-to-person. That's essential — that "social capital" that Coleman speaks about.
You know, the federal government is naturally concerned about the quality of education in this country, and they, too, did a study of American schools. The results were published in a document called "A Nation at Risk." I think the title says it all. It was not a very pretty picture and the public schools are still reeling from it.
Well, the National Education Association responded to that report with three recommendations. They said: If you want to improve the quality of education in this country:
1. Raise teachers' salaries.
2. Give more homework.
3. Lengthen the school year.
Now, I know teacher's salary is always a touchy issue, and I know you're underpaid, but I think you'll agree with me that none of those recommendations could inherently change the quality of education. Now, if the Campbell's Soup Company came out with those recommendations, I could understand, but these are educators saying that this will improve the quality of education. It won't change it at all!
A Lasallian educator realizes that it's relationship:
- teacher-to-student
- teacher-to-teacher
- teacher-to-parents
- eacher-to-administrator.
You know, that's really nothing new. St. John Baptist de La Salle said the same thing 300 years ago. He told his teachers that if they wanted to be successful with their students, they had to first form a relationship with them. Then, St. La Salle says , "then, out of love for you, will they learn."
Both Coleman and Goodlad lamented that what we're missing in schools is that we have to teach our students the great qualities of love, healing and caring. And how do I teach that? By modeling it in my relationships with students, other teachers, parents and administration. Yes, I am my brother's and sister's keeper.
I have to care about the elderly. I have to care about world hunger.
We have to educate against sexism, racism and violence.
But to truly educate is to be a person with some passion: enthusiasm, zest, or as St. John Baptist de La Salle called it, zeal.
Think about it. Who were the really good teachers in your own life? Wasn't it the ones who had passion about their subject? Wasn't it the teacher who loved Shakespeare and got excited about studying Hamlet that made you love Shakespeare?
Do you know how many teachers the average student has by the time he or she graduates college? One hundred. Do you know how many they remember? Three.
Only three out of a hundred stand out in their minds as people who reached out and grabbed their interest and made learning significant. The rest were beige! Do you want to be remembered as outstanding or do you want to be a blur of beige?
If you ever have a chance, I suggest you read a book called "Two Dancers in the Desert." It's a biography of Charles de Foucauld. There's a chapter that deals with his life as a student, and later he reflects on the experience and writes to a friend:
"In Paris, when I was going to college, it was very fashionable to be an atheist or a skeptic about God. You were "in" with the group if you began to question whether or not there was a God. I went to a Catholic school. My teachers were very good people. They were very good teachers. But they were bad for me at that time in my life because they lacked passion. They were so neutral about everything!"
Good people, good teachers: but we may be bad for them at this particular moment in salvation history if we're so neutral about everything.
We have to have passion for causes or issues. Call it commitment or dedication, whatever it is, as far as I'm concerned, it's what makes our schools unique. It's at the heart of this "ethos" we call "Lasallian Schools."
And I think it's essential that you teachers be identified as people with passion who will light a few fires in your classroom.
To be a good teacher, (to be an effective Lasallian educator) we have to instill in our students a sense of amazement and wonder. We have to give our students time and opportunity for silent reflection: time to think! We're so busy pushing it all in.
That's why teachers and administrators burn out. They don't get time to think and reflect. It's so important for you to cultivate your own sense of awe and wonder if you want to be an effective teacher.
I think Thomas Merton said it best. He wrote: "I prayed to God that I might at times have wisdom, but instead He gave me wonder! O God, did He give me wonder!"
One of my favorite poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
"All the Earth is crammed with heaven and every bush is afire with God, but only those who see take off their shoes. The rest of us go on plucking blackberries unaware."
I think all to often, most of us spend our days "plucking blackberries unaware."
That's the challenge for us as Lasallian educators: to help our students see that earth is indeed crammed with heaven and truly, every bush is afire with God: if only we take the time to see it, to enjoy the wonder of it all.
A good teacher should bring about a re-claiming and a re-naming of the holy. We've stripped our religion of its mystery and we have to reclaim it. We have to find the face of God in our time. We must find new symbols and new images of God, of what is holy. You must help your students to name what is holy for them, but you must first know what is holy to you.
If we don't express what is holy to us, and don't help our students discover what is holy for them: we may be bad for them. We may be good people and good teachers, but we may be bad for them at this point in salvation history if we're neutral about everything.
We have a tremendous responsibility at this moment in time, and we can't run away from it. Rudolph Schnackenberg says, "You cannot escape your time. We are always summoned by the events of history to perform the tasks that God assigns for our time."
The thing we must be very careful of is that we're not educating our students for a Church and a world that no longer exists. We are heading for the 3rd Christian millennium — the 21st Century — and we have a grave responsibility to prepare our students for that new world. If we don't, what a terrible injustice we'll do to them. You cannot escape your time!
We're on the threshold of the 3rd Christian millennium, and it's a new world and a new Church, and they're already in the making. And we have to educate students who are so imbued with Gospel values that they will take an active part in the shaping of that new world and that new Church. We cannot just wait around for it to happen to us. WE must educate for a new Church and a new world now!
Technology has given us a glimpse of what the new world will look like, but what will the new Church look like?
"It will be a prophetic Church," says Carol Stuhlmueller,
- It will be a church of the poor.
- It will be a Church that has left aside its triumphalism.
- t will be a suffering Church.
- t will be a Church with lay leadership.
- It will be a Church guided by justice.
- It will cease to be a caretaker Church."
If you're educating for a caretaker Church, you're in the wrong century. You've missed the boat. In the old Church: if they were hungry, we fed them; if they were homeless, we found them a place to sleep; if they were orphaned, we built orphanages. That was a charitable, caretaker Church. It was necessary. It was laudable. But the Church of the Third Christian millennium will force educators to ask: Why are they hungry? What is the system that keeps them hungry? Why are they homeless? What is the system that perpetuates this kind of thing?
We must ask the questions of justice and not of charity! And that's a whole different Church.
You know, when I first started teaching, it was a self-contained classroom, and I had to teach Social Studies. When we got to the lesson on labor unions, I'd draw a circle on the board and say, "That's capitalism." Then I'd draw a little slice of the pie and say, "That's what the workman gets. How can he get a little more of the pie for himself?" And then I'd launch into my brilliant lesson about labor unions.
Today, in conscience, I could not teach that lesson the same way. In order to be true to the Gospel in our time, the question I would have to ask instead would be: On the sweat of whose backs are we earning the profits? And then I touch the system. Then I ask the questions of justice, and that's systemic change, and that's dangerous. But do you see the difference? The two questions tell you the times.
Dom Hedler Camera said: "There have always been prophets in the Church. Some live their lives very quietly and we don't even know they're around. But every once in a while — in the saga of human history — there comes a time, a juncture, when the truth of Jesus Christ — when the violence of prophets saying hard things, when the revolutionary spirit of the Gospel erupts: and that time is now!" Our time. Now.
Cardinal Sin, of the Philippines, said: "I prayed to God that I would know my time." And he tells that wonderful story that while he was standing at the window praying he heard a knock on the door. It was the Apostolic Nuncio who had been calling Rome every day to keep them posted of the trouble that was brewing. And he said to Cardinal Sin: "Rome says, ‘Lay low.’ ‘Don't make waves!’'"
And Cardinal Sin turned to the Apostolic Nuncio and uttered those beautiful words: "Get out! I have prayed to God to know my time and the time is now. The revolution is now! And if I miss my time, I will have to answer to God for it!"
And with that, he went to the radio station and said to the people: "Go to the streets. The time is now. Sing and pray in a non-violent way. The revolution is now." And the Church of the Philippines that day wrote a new chapter in Church and World History! to know the time!
If we don't express the time for our students, we may be bad for them. WE may be good people and good teachers, but we may be bad for them at this particular moment in salvation history.
To know our time; to identify it and name it; or we'll be caught with the question of Jesus: "What were you talking about along the way?"
If we don't have a response, or if our response is pure trivia or gossip, we may be faced with a terrible crisis, as William McNamara so eloquently states it:
If our schools, churches and religious communities throughout our country are not at least half-full with earthy mystics — people who know God by experience and not merely by book:
- then Christianity will have failed.
If our students do not become holy, saintly people:
- then Christianity will have failed.
If most of our college graduates are not people of prayer:
- then Christianity will have failed.
If Christians, as a group, are not as a rule more human, compassionate and loving people:
- then Christianity will have failed.
If proving the existence of God is still the central issue in our religion classes:
- then Christianity will have failed.
If the external management of the Church is so demanding that its shepherds become administrators instead of pastors — more concerned with public relations than mystical relations:
- then Christianity will have failed.
We, Catholic educators, have to take a long, hard look at our world, and like the Israelites of old, cry out: "How can we sing the Lord's song in this strange land?" When students today are getting their models from Wall Street with its corruption, from Pennsylvania Avenue with its corruptions, from a television that has become the new pulpit: How are we going to give a gospel message in this strange land?
And yet, Flannery O'Connor said it very nicely. She wrote: "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd."
We will stand out like sore thumbs, and the schools of our Church will educate people who will make a commitment to Jesus Christ and to the Church of the Third Christian millennium, and to a world that's trying to humanize technology.
What a time to live!
Leonardo Boff says, "It's a time of privilege." It's exciting! It's life and death issues. It's time for passion and fire, and it's time for the laity. It's your time.
The two on the road to Emmaus recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread. They got so excited and enthused that they ran back saying: "Were not our hearts burning within us?"
You, too, must have your hearts burning within you as you assume a more active role in the running of the schools we call Lasallian. You must be the people of faith and zeal who will lead those young people entrusted to you into the Church of the future. You must know your time, and when you do, you cannot help but respond to it!
Br. Robert R. Bimonte, FSC
Keynote Address
Lasallian Educators' Conference, District of New York
October 4, 1988
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