ARTICLES

NEWS

ROAMIN' CATHOLIC

Contents © 1999
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

Authentic Catholic Schools, Part 2

by Christopher Zehnder

Editor: This is part two of a series on 12 schools in California and Arizona set up independently of Catholic dioceses. The six schools written about last month were St. Jean Vianney in Tehachapi, St. Augustine in Ventura, Ville de Marie in Scottsdale (Arizona), Sierra Madre in San Marcos, San Jose in Anza, and Our Lady of the Desert in Yucca Valley.

St. Michael's Prep in Silverado

A school that cannot be classified as independent, but whose reputation for orthodoxy and good education commends it is Saint Michael's College Preparatory High School in Silverado.

Run by the Norbertine fathers of St. Michael's Abbey, the school, said Father Gabriel Stack, offers "a curriculum for young men that they can study in such a manner that they can go on to college."

Founded in 1961, St. Michael's, said Father Gabriel, "started as a minor seminary. Because of the change of circumstances of the late sixties, the founder received permission from the cardinal of the time [Cardinal McIntyre] to run a parallel program, a college prep program, and over time those two programs blended into one."

St. Michael's differs from other similar schools, said Father Gabriel, in that "it is an all boys school... it is exclusively a boarding school, so everyone resides there... it's the only school in the West which is sponsored and animated by an abbey of religious priests who also live here, all the time. Another quality would be its small size (there are 70 students in the school) such that on one is allowed to be anonymous."

For religion, students study Sacred Scripture, and texts published by Ignatius Press. In the senior year, students read a series of different articles and excerpts from a variety of sources. Like any college preparatory curriculum, St. Michael's curriculum requires two years of the same foreign language. Continued study in a foreign language is offered to interested students. This year the school offers Spanish and German. Latin is also taught, and advanced placment exams are taken in it.

Tuition this year at St. Michaels is $6,250. For more information write St. Michael's at 19292 El Toro Road, Silverado, CA 92676; or call (949) 858-0222.

Kolbe Academy in Napa

In 1981, Fran Crotty opened Kolbe because, he said, "we wanted to be able to control four criteria: curriculum, staffing, admissions policy and discipline policy. Any parent that hasn't got control of those, or at least a say in how they're determined, has a very poor school to send their children to."

Crotty said his criterion for selecting students is that "they come without any baggage-- "meaning problems from another school. "Really," he said, "it's criteria for the parents, that the parents understand what we're doing, why we're doing it, and how we're doing it.. that they're ready to support the policies of this school and that they will not interrupt the autonomy and administration of the school."

Kolbe Academy, said Crotty, follows "the principles of St. Ignatius... The purpose of [Ignatius' Spiritual] Exercises is to help the child to learn the vocation God has in mind for him, and we begin by saying that his vocation now is to be a student: that's his full and complete vocation, and working in that vein, he will naturally march into the vocation God has in mind for him... We go straight back to the philosophy of St. Ignatius and his ratio studiorum, [which] has been in use for 450 years. In 1950, the Jesuit Education Association in New York did the work of extrapolating that into the manual of administration for Jesuit high schools, and that's what I used to develop the program at Kolbe."

Kolbe's curriculum, said Crotty, stresses memorization, disputation, emulation or competition, and imitation. The curriculum emphasizes the spoken arts-- grammar and rhetoric. "Our main objective," said Krotty, "is to help the children to speak, to write, and to act. And drama is a big part of our program because in the Jesuit mode drama was the thing that they used to help the young men become truly human, truly Catholic--[to foster] the consent of all their faculties. A youngster who cannot explain what he has learned has learned nothing. So we concentrate on the written and spoken word and everything else comes after that...We have oral presentations on Friday, and the children are required to present the topic they choose or are assigned, and quite often are called upon to give an extemporaneous talk, of three or five minutes, depending on the age."

Starting in the fifth grade, Kolbe students take Greek and Latin until the eighth grade. At this level, says Crotty most students are in the "nuts and bolts" of Latin and Greek grammar, while the better students are given a little translation. In the high school students study four years of Spanish.

Kolbe's mathematics program, said Crotty, is individualized-- students work at the level that's best for them. In the seventh and eighth grades students study Euclid's Elements of Geometry to develop logical thinking. In history no textbooks are used; rather, students read original source texts from each historical period. The religion curriculum follows the same pattern, introducing students to Sacred Scripture, along with the works of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. In later years, said Crotty, students read papal encyclicals. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is used as a reference.

Kolbe Academy has drawn teachers from Thomas Aquinas College, the Franciscan University of Steubenville, and Ignatius Institute. Currently the school has seven faculty and 46 students.

Tuition is $175 per month for the lower school and $185 for the high school. Kolbe Academy, located at 1600 F Street in Napa, may be reached at (707) 256-4306.

The Kolbe curriculum has influenced two other California schools: Trinity Grammar and Prep in Napa and St. Maria Goretti Academy in Rocklin, outside Sacramento.

Trinity Grammar and Prep in Napa

Trinity was founded four years ago by parents, some of whom were sending their children to Kolbe. These parents approached Jack Kersting, who had taught at Kolbe for eight years and served on that school's board for four, to be headmaster. Kersting accepted. "I felt," he said "I had to move on for personal reasons" from Kolbe.

Kersting said that "the purpose of Catholic education is to form young people to become Christian adults, Catholic adults who can be instruments of Jesus Christ to reevangelize our world. That's what it is at this time in history." The academic disciplines, he said, are important, since "grace builds on nature; so the more the students have the natural virtues, the natural knowledge, and the more they improve their natural capacities to learn what they need to know in the natural world, [the more] they lay the foundation to know what really matters, and that is Jesus Christ, and to be able to serve him with the abilities they have."

Kersting said that there are many similarities between Trinity's curriculum and Kolbe's. The differences, he said, are "probably we use textbooks a little more at the high school level, than they do. We feel our high school students need more of a breadth of information, a sweep of history rather than just focusing on any one primary source. However, we do use great books, great literature. We do want our kids introduced to primary sources."

Trinity offers grades one through twelve. In the first six grades, said Kersting, they emphasize the "four Rs: reading, writing, arithmetic and religion. "There may not be," he said, "much difference between our program and a good traditional Catholic program, [though] we introduce the trivium and the quadrivium. We want our students to be able to think and speak."

In both the high school and grammar school, students read what Kersting calls "great and good works" of literature. The high school, he said, has "a pretty demanding literature program. For instance, the students are reading War and Peace, this year. We read the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid." All students, freshman, sophomore, junior and senior, together, read these works. Can they all handle it? "You make adjustments," said Kersting, "and as a teacher you realize that this is very demanding for some of your students, and you have to make it as accessible as you can to them."

Like Kolbe, Trinity begins Latin studies in the fifth grade. Greek is studied in the seventh and eighth grades. In high school there is an honors classics program for "best Greek and Latin students." All high school students study Spanish.

Trinity uses the Faith and Life series for religion classes in the primary grades. In the high school, the Catechism of the Catholic Church serves as a framework for the four years of high school religion, though other works are also used. "By the time they've finished our high school," said Kersting, "they've read the catechism and studied it."

Trinity employs ten full-time and four part-time teachers. Kersting said that they are "getting most of their teachers from the colleges we want to send our students"-- colleges such as Thomas Aquinas, Ignatius Institute, Christendom, the University of Dallas, and Franciscan University of Steubenville.

Tuition for the school is $2,500 for first child, with tuition reductions for subsequent children. Trinity is located at 2055 Redwood Road in Napa. It may be reached at (707) 258-9030.

St. Maria Goretti Academy in Rocklin

St. Maria Goretti was founded in 1993 by parents who wanted, according to headmaster John Brennan, "to put control of the Catholic elements of the education back in the hands of the parents. It was a real concern that certain sex education programs were introduced into the [Sacramento] diocese without parental consent. Also, there was a desire to see a more orthodox treatment of their religion classes, so the kids would be taught Catholicism and not a host of other different religions."

Brennan, a 1987 graduate of Thomas Aquinas College, said the purpose of St. Maria Goretti Academy is "to form young Christian gentlemen and ladies in our society and to impart to them the treasures of a classical education that hearkens back to the perennial wisdom of the Church and the perennial philosophy of the Church as regards the nature of truth. It's to give them an ability to think for themselves with a Catholic standard, to have all their actions, their words and deeds reflect a truly Catholic character formation. The academy strives to foster academic excellence, but more truly, to foster the truly Catholic character."

The academy, said Brennan, "adopted the core curriculum of Kolbe Academy, with some minor modifications." Like Kolbe, St. Maria Goretti stresses memorization, and an age-appropriate exposure to the trivium and quadrivium and the classics of literature. Latin is taught in the seventh and eighth grades, as is Euclid's Elements of Geometry. In Religion, the Faith and Life series is used in conjunction with the Baltimore Catechism.

Though originally including grades one through twelve, Brennan said that last year the academy's board decided "to close down the high school till such time as we could do real justice to a high school program in terms of numbers and staff." Currently, the school has eighteen students, with three full-time teachers.

Father John Rizzo of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (the Vatican-approved society which exclusively offers the Mass and sacraments according to the "Tridentine" rite) serves as the spiritual director of the school. Father Rizzo offers Mass twice a month for the academy's students and hears their confessions. Last year Father Rizzo confirmed several of the students.

Tuition at St. Maria Goretti is $2,400 a year for the first student, with tuition reductions for subsequent family members. The school is located at 5210 S. Grove Street in Rocklin. The telephone number is (916) 624-2811.

Wood Rose Academy

The name of Wood Rose Academy, said principal Elizabeth Johnson, was given to the school by one of its cofounders "who has a very great devotion to Our Lady. The 'Rose' symbolizes Mary, and the 'Wood' is the wood of the cross." In harmony with its name, the "whole idea of the school," said Johnson, "is to draw the virtues from everything we have around us."

The kindergarten through eighth grade school seeks to teach the virtues more effectively through what Johnson calls a "classical literature curriculum." Through classical literature, which, said Johnson, is "full of virtues," the students "work on virtues, such as endurance, friendship, order, respect, etc."

Religion classes, too, are ordered to the end of virtue. "We try to teach our children," said Johnson, "not only religion, but [how] to put into practice the virtues, and to have a unity of life. We bring Christ into everything we teach them, not with a clear-cut, clerical mentality, but with the mentality of a true Christian, a true Catholic": that our life is not compartmentalized. We have our Faith, it's part of our everyday life. And through the development of their intellect, we try to make [the students] understand why it is we have these virtues, why they are necessary, and how to put them into practice."

As well as classical literature, students study the language arts of reading, writing, and penmanship. All students, every year, study Spanish. Students also study art and drama.

"We try to expose them to the arts," said Johnson. "We try to find what play is playing locally... and we will expose our kids to the arts... all aspects of the arts." Wood Rose does not neglect other aspects of a traditional curriculum, such as mathematics and history. In religion, students study their Faith through Ignatius Press' Faith and Life series.

Wood Rose hopes in the future to expand into high school but, said Johnson (echoing a concern common to all small schools) "in order to do that, we need to fund-raise."

Wood Rose Academy is located at 3037 Bonifacio Street, Concord, California. The school's phone number is (925) 825-4644.

Thomas Aquinas Academy in Modesto

St. Thomas Aquinas Academy is not a school but a five-year-old national program specifically designed for homeschoolers. About 60 families in California and other states avail themselves of a K through 12 curriculum described as "Catholic and Classical." Does that mean its core is the trivium -- grammar, logic and rhetoric -- and the quadrivium -- geometry, astronomy, arithmetic and music? Yes, replied Deborah Yonan, one of the four founders of the academy who researched the classical liberal arts curriculum at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula.

They also researched homeschooling families. One of the founders, Carol Black (no longer with the school), did market research. "We researched a lot of homeschoolers," said Yonan, a mother of three children whom she homeschools with the academy program. said.

The curriculum is classical in another sense, beginning with a year's study of the classical Greek era. In subsequent years, families study the history of Rome, the Old World and the New World. Yonan said that while books can cost up to $200 for a year's worth of study, all the children in the family, regardless of their grade, can use them for their studies that year.

Texts used for religious instruction include the Baltimore Catechism (St. Joseph edition), the Faith and Life series (Catholics United for the Faith), and "A Shorter Version of the Summa" (Ignatius Press). The older children tackle excerpts from Great Books such as the "Confessions" of St. Augustine.

Students study Latin in fifth and sixth grades, then Greek in seventh and eighth, then still more Latin in high school. Having stomached all that grammar, students in 11th and 12th grade find studying a modern language, such as French or Spanish, a piece of cake.

And if they don't, counselors are available to help, such as Yonan's husband Ben, who has studied philosophy at San Francisco State University and California State University, Stanislaus. The academy's other founding father, Tom Louis, has a degree in behavioral science, also guides homeschooling parents and their prides through the blackboard jungle.

(Other homeschooling umbrella groups are led by Kolbe Academy--see above--and Laura Berquist's Mother of Divine Grace Independent Study Prorgram, P.O. Box 1440, Ojai, CA 93024; ph. 805-646-5818.)

Parents can contact Thomas Aquinas Academy via phone, mail or email. The school also provides standardized testing, and awards the student a diploma upon successful completion of eighth and 12th grades. Some students take the SAT college entrance examinations. One St. Thomas Aquinas Academy graduate is currently studying at Thomas Aquinas College.

Cost is $150 for the first student, $125 for each additional student in the family. St. Thomas Aquinas Academy, 1509 Chapala Way, Modesto, CA 95355. Phone: 209-522-3477; staa.yonan@juno.com (email); www.staacademy.qpg.com (website)

TOP