...St Philomena's, Carshalton. Last night, I was due there for a radio show: Heart Gives Unto Heart Radio, a new internet-based Catholic radio station, is making some programmes and will start to air next month. As I walked there from Sutton, I realised that the main gates (very grand ones - the school buildings are centred on a fine Queen Anne Mansion and its lovely grounds) would be shut. So I turned down Shorts Road and reminisced about using this back entrance very often as a Sixth-former, hurrying out to buy sweets and snacks...and the first gate I came across was also locked, so for a moment I worried that, as of old, I might have to clamber in over a wall (we used a route right down at the end of the lacrosse field...remember?). But there is a new entrance further down, so I entered as a grown-up. Posh new Hall where the old Margaret Clitheroe Dining Room used to be. Felt odd sitting there doing a radio show.
We talked about Catholic education, Catholic schools popular and over-subscribed...but are the children practising the Faith?...how to teach the Faith...the importance of beautiful liturgy...how to encourage young people to go to Mass...
A major issue is that of children of other faiths or none, who seek to attend Catholic schools. There are so many Catholic families who seek places it seems unjust to exclude some in order to offer places to children of other faiths. And what happens when parents get annoyed that their offspring are being taught Catholic doctrine and morals to which they object? That is a bit like insisting on your chuld being given a place at a dancing-school and then objecting when she is taught to dance!
The school grounds, which are beautiful, looked ghostly in the dark and I remembered all those school legends about the Grey Lady, and the footman who fell down the stairs in the 1780s or thereabouts, in the days of Sir John Fellowes...
And the chapel, and the Quad, and that slithery Marble Passage where we weren't allowed to run...
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3 comments:
In my Son's Catholic School, the teacher asked the children in his class of 30, how many went to Church. 8 put their hands up....Says it all really.
The test is what happens in 6th form. By that time, paper aeroplanes in class are passe, and children who won't be children for much longer, start to identify with the adult values of the school.
Sometimes this means that mass, once seen as an imposition, is now seen as a valued part of the culture. Other times, the identification extends to preparing for university, but not to the school's religious values.
As far as entry criteria are concerned, it is usual for faith schools under local authority supervision to reserve a small quota for children taken from the school's immediate neighbourhood, without a faith test. In my area both the RC and the Anglican secondary schools have become acadamies, free of any local authority involvement, and appear now to give full priority to those who can demonstrate church involvement.
As far as parents complaining about faith content in the curriculum of faith schools is concerned, there are surely no legitimate grounds for this. Both of my children have attended CofE schools, and personally I have never known it to be an issue.
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