Catholic schools have faced a number of hurdles in recent decades, including the sharp decline of vocations among religious sisters who have worked in schools (as much as 90 percent in the last four ...decades), rising tuition prices for families, the sexual abuse crisis, and questions about institutional commitment to maintaining schools in light of these challenges. These changes affect all students and families, but have special significance for those of lower socioeconomic status, who historically used Catholic schools as an engine of upward mobility.For this policy dialogue, the editors of HEQ asked Paul Grendler and Carol Ann MacGregor to reflect on the benefits, challenges, and turning points of Catholic-sponsored education from the sixteenth century to the present. Grendler is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Toronto, the former president of the Renaissance Society of America and the American Catholic Historical Association, and a recipient of the Galileo Galilei Prize. The author of eleven books, he has published widely on education in the Renaissance. His recent work concentrates on Jesuit universities and Jesuit schools, especially in Italy. MacGregor is Associate Professor of Sociology and current Vice Provost at Loyola University New Orleans. She has also been named an Associate Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. Her publications, which have appeared in American Catholic Studies and American Sociological Review (among others), focus on Catholic education policy and practice, and religion and public life.HEQ Policy Dialogues are, by design, intended to promote an informal, free exchange of ideas between scholars. At the end of the exchange, we offer a list of references to readers who wish to follow up on sources relevant to the discussion.
► We examine the relationship between religiosity and civic engagement using Portraits of American Life Study national survey data. ► Religiosity positively related to multiple civic outcomes. ► ...Relationship between religiosity and civic engagement is often explained by religious social networks, not beliefs or affiliation. ► Religious networks have stronger impact on civic engagement than general social networks. ► Having social networks from a religious congregation is associated with increased civic participation, though the specific mechanism at work is unknown.
A substantial literature has found that religiosity is positively related to individuals’ civic engagement and informal helping behavior. Concurrently, social networks as sources of information and encouragement have been suggested as the mechanism underlying phenomena including successful job searches, improved health and greater subjective well-being. In this paper we use data from the Portraits of American Life Study (PALS) to examine whether religiously based social networks explain the well-established relationship between religion and civic engagement. We test potential mechanisms including beliefs, affiliation, and social networks, and we find that having a strong network of religious friends explains the effect of church attendance for several civic and neighborly outcomes. We suggest this phenomenon may exist in other, non-religious, spheres that also produce strong friendship networks.
This study examines the stability of religious preference among people who claim no religious preference in national surveys (i.e., religious nones). Using data from the Faith Matters Study, General ...Social Survey, and American National Election Study, we show that about 30 percent of religious nones in the first wave of the survey claim an affiliation with a religious group a year later. The percentage of religious nones remained stable in the two waves because a similar number of respondents moved in the opposite direction. Using various measures of religiosity, we show that most of these unstable nones report no significant change in religious belief or practice. We call them liminal nones as they stand halfway in and halfway out of a religious identity. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings on the controversies surrounding the rise of religious nones in recent years.
Changes in the education system following Hurricane Katrina have received considerable attention from scholars in recent years. However, the role of Catholic schools is often overlooked in such ...discussions of school reform, which most often concentrate on the dramatic changes in the public school sector. This oversight is significant given that some segments of Catholic schools are devoted to serving populations similar to those targeted by emerging charter schools. At the national level, Catholic schools have struggled with declining enrollments and waves of school closures since the mid-1960s. This article aims to consider how well these national trends map onto the case of New Orleans. The authors discuss both how Catholic schools in New Orleans responded to Katrina and how they have changed in the midst of ongoing educational reforms in the city. They suggest that in spite of the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Katrina on the city as a whole, the storm and ensuing changes in the provision of public education have had, with a few notable exceptions, little independent influence on the organization of Catholic schools in the city. Rather, Catholic schools in the city are faced with many of the same challenges being faced by Catholic schools across the United States.
Studies of children and childhood are increasingly common but little is known about children and religion and specifically about the mechanisms by which religious socialization happens. This paper ...takes a dynamic approach to the study of religion and childhood and considers how children via their role as audience might help reflect and shape adult culture and religiosity. Through the lens of cultural sociology, the paper examines 19th century Sunday school books as cultural products and seeks to answer two fundamental questions: what can the content and form of materials produced for use by children tell us about “adult” religion and culture? and what does religion tell us about childhood as a social category? Content analysis of a sample of 100 Sunday school books published in the 19th century provides evidence that adults engage in boundary work to separate adults from children and the religious from the secular. Religion is presented in a child-specific format. This suggests both that adult religion is malleable and domain specific and that childhood is both a distinct stage in the life course and a social category.
Catholic and charter schools share some similarities, including a strong college-preparatory focus, small class sizes, strict discipline, and high requirements for parental involvement. Yet, these 2 ...school types are also distinguished by differences in their secular and religious missions. Using data from over 200 interviews in 14 Catholic and charter schools across the United States, we examine how educational leaders in each of these school types approach character education. Our results highlight that differences in approach to goals and outcomes when it comes to creating a good person, and differences in associated day-to-day practice, are less about Catholic or charter status and more about the level of experience of educational leaders and the level of formality that characterizes the character education system. We classify schools into 4 categories: holistic, systems driven, rewards driven, and rules driven. Educational leaders with many years of experience working in schools with more informal character education systems are most likely to put a greater emphasis on a holistic approach that emphasizes not just academic performance but altruism and responsibility to others.
At their peak in the mid-20th century Catholic schools in the United States enrolled twelve percent of the school-aged population. In 2010, they educated roughly five percent of school aged children. ...In the mid-1960s, there were over 13,000 Catholic schools in the United States. In 2010, they numbered fewer than 7,000, and projections suggest a sustained pattern of decline. This dissertation aims to document this dramatic change in the American educational landscape and offer explanations for the decline of this particular form of religious organization. Using extensive data from The Official Catholic Directory, the United States Census, and other secondary data sources, as well as archival documents and local newspaper accounts, I consider how demographic, organizational, and religious change have led to such dramatic declines in this key component of the private school sector in the United States. I argue that Catholic education in the United States has undergone a period of profound change that includes the breakdown of traditional organizational forms and patterns of behavior, the dislodging of belief systems, and the dismantling of governance structures dominant in earlier periods. I suggest that given previous literature that argues Catholic schools benefit urban minority students and students whose parents have low education, these changes have potentially important consequences for educational inequality in America.
Purpose – Previous studies have found that, for those born after 1960, individuals raised with no religious affiliation were less likely than any other religious group to complete a college degree. ...This finding is surprising in light of the increasing educational attainment of the American public, as well as the finding that declining religious belief is often presumed to accompany higher education. In this chapter, we explore the changing relationship between religious nonaffiliation and educational attainment for Americans over the past three decades.Methodology – In order to disentangle the mechanisms behind this relationship, we consider the heterogeneity of nonaffiliates and examine educational attainment for three types of religious “nones.” Using the General Social Survey (1972–2008), we look for cohort differences in attaining a bachelor's degree among persistent nones, disaffiliates, and adult affiliates.Findings – While being raised in no religious tradition was once predictive of higher odds of completing a college degree, the positive relationship between being raised a religious none and college completion has reversed itself in the past 30 years. Instead, for individuals born after 1960, being raised in no religious tradition is actually associated with lower odds of completing a 4-year college degree relative to adults who were raised in any religious tradition and continue to claim a religious identity in adulthood. This effect is particularly pronounced for adults who maintain no religious identity throughout the life course.Social implications – We propose some explanations for this finding, with a particular emphasis on the potential significance of religious social networks in adolescence.
The first school to open in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina was St. Andrew the Apostle (Casserly, 2006). As with the first public schools to re-open in the city, St. Andrew the Apostle is ...located in the West Bank community of Algiers, which was significantly less impacted by the storm and levee breaches that decimated other parts of the city (Mirón, 2008).
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