Why Jesuit Schools Need a New Ratio Studiorum

Ever since the decline of the Ratio Studiorum as the guiding document for Jesuit schools, the Society of Jesus has struggled to maintain a Catholic vision of education amid the continual movement to assimilate the structure and goals of the schools to the wider culture. Many attempts have been made in the twentieth century to define and shape the nature of Jesuit education, with limited effectiveness. Now, the curriculum of Jesuit schools is scarcely different from their secular counterparts, with its overall structure and goals reflective of postmodern, technological society. The Catholic faith has become compartmentalized in the theology classes, retreats, liturgy, and service programs. The knowledge that the students learn has no integrating principle, and so is very fragmented, just like the disciplines that they study. In response to this problem, this paper proposes to create a new Ratio Studiorum, reorganizing the entire curriculum around a Catholic worldview. Such a curriculum would not only stem the slide toward secularism in the Jesuit schools but could also provide the impetus for a Catholic cultural renewal that transforms society from within.

Keywords:
Ratio Studiorum; Catholic curriculum; secularization; fragmentation; integration

Introduction

What is the current state of Jesuit schools? For the last fifty years Jesuit schools in the United States have enjoyed great successes. Many of them now have campuses comparable to small colleges, and programs, both academic and co-curricular, that are far more numerous than ever before. Jesuit schools hold up their test score averages and college acceptance rates as signs of their academic excellence. Their athletic programs rack up state championships each year. Along with this, many of the schools boast of the vibrancy of their retreat and service programs, some even claiming that their schools are, ‘more Jesuit than they have ever been.’ Moreover, the schools, in general, have been quick to stay at the forefront of educational trends, from the adoption of technology in the classroom and one-to-one programs, to STEM and diversity and inclusion offices. Yet in all of this, many Jesuits, teachers, and parents have lingering questions about whether the end product of the education really achieves what the Grad at Grad claims is the goal of Jesuit education: graduates who are authentically religious, loving, committed to justice, open to growth, and intellectually competent. Other than this last pillar, the Jesuit schools have very little, if any, concrete evidence to show that they are achieving these goals. So, are Jesuit schools stronger than ever, or are they failing in their mission? Certainly, accreditation reports have been written on the schools, and recommendations have been made based on the governing documents of Jesuit education, and yet no Jesuit school has ever lost its accreditation. No report has ever been able to draw upon anything more than anecdotal evidence for its evaluation of the spiritual health of the schools.^[1] So, how can one judge the current state of Jesuit schools?

One possible method is comparative historical analysis. By comparing Jesuit schools of today with that of their older brothers in the sixteenth century, one can at least come to a conclusion on their state relative to their predecessors. To narrow the focus of this comparison, this paper will focus only on the curriculum of the Jesuit schools.

This paper offers two main arguments. Firstly, it argues that the curriculum of Jesuit schools today has become largely secularized, which is a major departure from the integrated, intellectual-spiritual-moral synthesis outlined in the Ratio Studiorum. I call this fact the ‘Jesuit curriculum problem.’ Secondly, this paper argues that we should respond to this problem by creating a new curriculum thoroughly shaped by a Catholic worldview. This is a call to create a new Ratio Studiorum for our time, inspired by what the first two generations of Jesuits achieved in their time.

From the Ratio Studiorum to the Jesuit Curriculum Problem

From the time the first Jesuit college opened in Messina in 1548, the Society of Jesus has sought to define the nature, objectives, and content of Jesuit education. At the very beginning, the first Jesuit educators simply adopted what they considered the best educational structure of the day, the so-called modus Parisiensis,^[2] as the basis of their school. Over time, the Jesuits began to craft their own order of studies and guidelines for the schools that they opened. They produced several documents in succession to organize their schools. In the early 1550’s St. Ignatius wrote part IV of the Constitutions, which dealt with the work of the Jesuits in the colleges. To specify this more general outline, several Jesuit schools produced their own educational plans over the following twenty years.^[3] Eventually, the Society saw the need to have a universal plan of studies for all of the schools. Through extensive consultation, and drawing on many documents, the first Ratio Studiorum was proposed in 1586.^[4] Experienced teachers reviewed and commented on this text. The committee received those comments, revised the text, and in 1591 promulgated a new text, which was put into practice in all of the Jesuit schools for three years. Again, Jesuit teachers sent their comments to Rome. After further revisions, in 1599 Fr. General Aquaviva published the Ratio Studiorum. In 1599 there was a second revision of the Ratio Studiorum. This edition became the definitive edition and remained the primary document governing how the Jesuit schools were to be structured, what they were to teach, and how they were to teach it, until the suppression in 1773.

The Ratio Studiorum of 1599 is a comprehensive plan for a school. One could describe a school as having three levels: a course of studies (curriculum), a pedagogy, and the administrative structure. The Ratio has all three of these parts. There is a set of rules for each of the administrators of the different parts of the school. There are sets of rules for the teachers of each course, which lay out the order of studies, the goals and content of those studies, and the methods for teaching the content. In contemporary parlance, it is a curriculum (course of studies) with a series of teaching techniques embedded within it, set within an administrative structure that gives clear guidelines for each of the jobs in the school.^[5]

Although one often hears people in Jesuit circles say that the Jesuits developed a new way of teaching, in reality the distinctiveness of Jesuit education at its beginning lay not in pedagogy but in its unique synthesis of various currents of the time and in the importance of spiritual formation. The Ratio Studiorum is remarkable in that it draws heavily upon both the medieval scholastic tradition, evidenced most clearly in the courses of philosophy and theology, and the Renaissance humanist tradition, evidenced in the courses on the humanities and rhetoric. As Codina puts it, “Ignatius of Loyola and the first Jesuits had the intuition to take part in the new culture of humanism, without leaving behind the wealth from the past.”^[6] This synthesis, so unusual at a time when the scholastics were locked in fierce debates with the humanists, was a novel way of organizing education. Regarding teaching methods, the Jesuits adopted wholesale the techniques of the modus parisiensis but organized them in their own distinctive way. ^[7] Codina summarizes these results as follows, “The Jesuits were not very original. They did not invent a new method, but took elements from a common pedagogical foundation that appeared to them most useful to create their own synthesis, stamped with their own seal.”^[8] Again, it was the synthesis of various pre-existing elements into an integrated whole that made the Ratio innovative and effective.

The second aspect of the distinctive character of Jesuit education outlined in the Ratio Studiorum is that it places the intellectual ends of education at the service of moral and spiritual development. The curricular goals for each course are perhaps no different from what non-Jesuit teachers of the 16^th century would seek, whether they be the linguistic eloquence of the humanist^[9] or the perfect knowledge of the philosopher.^[10] However, those course goals are subordinated to the higher moral and religious goals. The common rules for the lower studies put it perfectly:

The teacher should train the youths who are entrusted to the Society’s education in such a way that, along with letters, they also and above all interiorize the moral behavior worthy of a Christian. However, his special attention, both in the lessons whenever the occasion arises and apart from them, should be directed at preparing their impressionable young minds for the devoted service and love of God and the virtues by which we ought to please him.^[11]

This goal was not merely an abstract ideal. The Jesuit teachers intentionally built their courses with an eye toward it. For example, they carefully selected which ancient works students would read in the courses, such as in the humanities.^[12] They were very careful to avoid texts that may give poor moral examples to the students. Moreover, the moral and spiritual goals shaped their instruction at every level of the program. So, one can say that the Ratio integrated the various intellectual ends of the different subjects within a broader formation that has the love and service of God as its highest end. It is this intellectual-spiritual-moral integration that gave Jesuit education its distinctive character. Other schools offered one or other of these elements, but not all of them together.

The history of Jesuit education from 1599 until the twentieth century is characterized by a slow departure from the integrated vision of the Ratio Studiorum. The Ratio was not revised after 1599 and continued to be the standard manual for the Jesuit schools up to the suppression. However, over time there were a growing number of local additions and adaptations. So, by 1773 the colleges in Austria taught several subjects not outlined in the Ratio, such as French, German, Italian and Hungarian, as well as more practical disciplines such as architecture and engineering. In the colleges of the French provinces history and geography were standard subjects in the curriculum by the 18^th century.^[13] After the suppression the Jesuits thought to implement the Ratio again, but realized that such a plan would not work in the changed cultural circumstances of the time. So, Fr. General Jan Roothaan sent out a revised Ratio Studiorum in 1832 that maintained the same overall structure of the course of studies, but reduced the time spent on Latin, added vernacular languages, and expanded experimental science.^[14] It was not considered a binding document, however, so the uniformity of the old system of Jesuit education gave way more and more to local differences. The Ratio slowly faded away as a guiding document.

By the early twentieth century there was enough diversity among Jesuit schools in the United States that Jesuit leaders engaged in several initiatives to foster more uniformity and ensure the highest quality of education. In 1921 a group of Jesuits led by Fr. Edward Tivnan, S.J., set up an Inter-Province Committee on Studies, which met annually from 1921–31.^[15] That committee produced a report in 1932 which summarized the state of the Jesuit colleges and universities.^[16] Following up on this report, Fr. General Wlodimir Ledochowski commissioned a group of Jesuits to draft a guiding document for Jesuit educational institutions.^[17] They produced the Instructio in 1934, which all Jesuit institutions were required to incorporate into their work.^[18] The Instructio led to the founding of the Jesuit Education Association (JEA) in 1934, and to the Superior General setting up a commission to create a new Ratio Studiorum for the whole Society of Jesus.^[19]

From the time of the formation of the Jesuit Education Association, Jesuit educators and lay collaborators in the United States have sought an answer to a pressing question: what are the nature, objectives, and content of Jesuit education? After much feedback and discussion, the JEA committee promulgated a revised Instructio in 1948.^[20] The JEA went on to produce a document for school principals, Manual for Jesuit High-School Administrators (1952), which was revised and expanded to become, Teaching in Jesuit High Schools (1957). This document acted as a manual for administrators and teachers at Jesuit schools in the United States. Later, they commissioned a book entitled Jesuit Education (1963), by Fr. John Donahue, S.J. Then, with the re-envisioning of the JEA into the Jesuit Secondary Education Association (JSEA) and Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) in 1970, the JSEA wrote a constitution with a famous Preamble, which served as a charter for Jesuit education in the U.S. They then produced, Profile of the Graduate at the Time of Graduation (1985), which became the authoritative statement on what Jesuit schools should aim to produce in their students. This document was revised in 2010. Then General Congregation 33 (1983) set up an international commission in order to produce a document that listed the main characteristics of Jesuit education. After several years of work, The Characteristics of Jesuit Education was published in 1986. From the feedback on this document, some felt that it was only half the story.^[21] There needed to be a statement more specifically about Jesuit pedagogy. In response to those calls, another commission was set up that eventually produced, The Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (1993), an attempt to translate the pedagogy of the Spiritual Exercises into a method for classroom teaching. Later on, the U.S. provincials saw the need to have clearer juridical structures put in place between the Jesuit schools and the Jesuit provinces. This was driven primarily, but not exclusively, by the rapid decline in the number of Jesuits working in the schools and the rise of lay presidents and principals. In 2000 they produced the document, What Makes a Jesuit School Jesuit?, which still serves, in its revised 2007 version, as the guiding definition of the relationship between the Society of Jesus and the schools. A restructuring of the JSEA took place in 2010, aligning it more directly under the provincial leadership. The JSEA was renamed the Jesuit Schools Network (JSN). In 2015, the JSN produced, Our Way of Proceeding: Standards & Benchmarks for Jesuit Schools in the 21^st Century, which serves as the standards the Jesuit provinces use to evaluate and accredit the Jesuit schools.

Yet, with all these documents, nothing has been officially promulgated that deals with the curriculum of a Jesuit education. Although Duminuco argues that The Characteristics of Jesuit Education and Ignatian Pedagogy taken together constituted a new Ratio Studiorum for the 21^st century,^[22] it is difficult to justify this position given the nature of what the Ratio is. According to Duminuco, the commissions that wrote these two documents deliberately chose not to produce a course of studies.^[23] As mentioned briefly above, the Ratio is not a description of what Jesuit education is. It is a curriculum (course of studies) with a series of teaching techniques and administrative structures embedded within it. One could argue that Ignatian Pedagogy is a methodology, but that method is not embedded in any content. It is an abstract structure to be adapted to any content. The Characteristics of Jesuit Education is a description, with few curricular elements. The Profile of the Graduate at Graduation is a statement of goals, so it does touch upon some curricular elements, but these are general and only relate to those areas of the curriculum that touch upon the five pillars of the profile. All the documents listed above are either descriptive or prescriptive; none of them are curricular.^[24] Something is missing. Does this matter? Do we need a ‘Jesuit curriculum’?

Claude Pavur, S.J., a contemporary expert on the Ratio Studiorum, has argued very convincingly that we do need a distinctively Jesuit curriculum. In a largely overlooked paper on the subject, Pavur argues that the Ratio Studiorum teaches us that it is the curriculum more than anything else that carries the mission of the school. Although he focuses on the university context, what he says applies mutatis mutandis to the high schools. He states,

There are many great things that happen on Jesuit college campuses today: retreats; service projects; study-abroad programs; liturgies; social events; special lectures; workshops . . . extracurricular activities (including sports); musical and theatrical events . . . and clubs of all kinds . . . none of them, I would say in light of the Ratio Studiorum, is as important as the curriculum, for the curriculum is where all the students must go and spend much of their time, whether or not they take part in any of these other enterprises. Without the everyday student-teacher events giving shape to a definite curricular journey, we would not even have a college or university. The Ratio Studiorum says something about administration and liturgies and study-clubs and sodalities, but it puts the main accent on the curriculum: what to teach and what to learn, when and how. In the midst of an abundance of competing factors in college today, the curricular aspect needs to be recognized as the essential bedrock of the mission.^[25]

The argument is clear. The primary activity of a school, to which the vast majority of the time and the resources are dedicated, is the intellectual formation of the students. That intellectual formation is based upon the academic curriculum, the course of studies. If the course of studies, that is, the actual subjects that the students study, the books that they read, the experiments that they conduct, the essays that they write, and so on, is not formed by the Jesuit mission of the school, then it is formed by something else, because every school has a course of studies. So, the question becomes: is the academic curriculum of Jesuit schools informed by the mission of Jesuit education? Perhaps the best way to answer this question is to compare the curriculum of Jesuit schools to their secular counterparts.

When one compares the curricula of Jesuit schools with secular private and public schools, one does not find many differences. The curriculum in Jesuit schools is more or less as follows.^[26] English and theology are four-year requirements. Students must take one year each of biology, chemistry and physics. Math is a three- or four-year requirement. Two to three years of both social studies and a foreign or ancient language rounds out the major subjects. The greatest variation between schools is in the areas of fine arts and physical education, which can be anywhere from one to three years each. There may be a computer science credit added in. Throw on top of the academics a retreat every year, a handful of Masses, some daily prayer in the schedule, and grade-level service requirements, and one has all of the major components of a contemporary curriculum at a Jesuit school. There are also a whole array of co-curricular activities and strong athletic programs. The vast majority of these requirements are no different from secular private schools and even public schools, especially if one takes into account that many of the courses use the same textbooks and, in the case of Advanced Placement courses, take the same exams.

This fact highlights what could be called the ‘Jesuit curriculum’ problem. Simply put, the problem is that the curriculum in Jesuit schools is almost completely secular in scope, philosophy, and structure. In speaking of Catholic schools in general, a Catholic philosopher of education described this problem as follows,

In many respects, although the struggle to assert religious truths in an increasingly post-Christian world goes on, Catholic schools have accepted the basic terms that the liberal-democratic polity offers for their continuance, amongst which is a wholesale affirmation of the curriculum and the forms of knowledge of late technological society.^[27]

The structure and content of the course of studies that students at Jesuit schools take is almost identical in every subject to secular schools, with the subject of theology added on at the side. With this ‘secular curriculum + theology’ model there is no longer anything that could be labeled a distinctively ‘Jesuit curriculum,’ as there was in the past. This is what I call the Jesuit curriculum problem.

Objections and Responses

The bold claim of a Jesuit curriculum problem invites several objections. One objection is that the theology courses, the faith formation programs, and the service programs are what distinguish Jesuit schools from secular schools. This is certainly true. However, if one looks at the footprint of these programs, one finds that they are quite small. Outside of the theology classes, one could probably total all of the hours of the other components and it would not add up to one week of school a year (depending on the number of service hours required at each grade level). That means that students only spend a little more than one seventh of their time in a Jesuit school in the area that is special to it, theology class. This is exactly what Davis argues, the Catholic nature of the school has been marginalized in the curriculum to a side element. He states,

It can be argued that the price Catholic schools have had to pay for their accreditation as appropriate centres for the delivery of the modern curriculum is a restriction of their Catholicity to those features of school life where secular society is prepared to permit the manifestation of Catholic ideas—mainly worship, ethos and Religious Education (including sacramental preparation).^[28]

If the distinctiveness of Jesuit education today has been reduced to these three elements, then it has reduced the scope of the Catholic faith to only one part of the school week and left the other academic subjects to their own secular devices. This would certainly represent a retreat from what Jesuit education was in the Ratio Studiorum, wherein the overall course of studies had a distinctively Jesuit mark, integrated under a spiritual and moral vision. This integration has given way to fragmentation.

Another objection to the Jesuit curriculum problem thesis could be: the prominence of the classical tradition in contemporary Jesuit curriculum, including the elements of rhetoric and drama that have their roots in the Ratio, makes Jesuit schools today special. In reply: most of the Jesuit schools have greatly reduced, and some even jettisoned, the emphasis on the classical tradition. It is not uncommon for a student at a Jesuit high school today to pass his four years without studying any Latin or Greek, or even classical literature and culture, in any depth. As for the rhetorical and theatrical traditions, some of these have been maintained in some form in most Jesuit schools. However, their place is almost exclusively co-curricular. This means that only a small number of students actually participate in them, unlike in the Ratio, where every student was giving orations and performing poetic and theatrical presentations. A second reply is that there are private schools which still have classical languages and rhetoric, in some cases even more pronounced than in Jesuit schools.

A third objection to the curriculum problem in Jesuit schools today could be that the quality of what the students learn is the distinguishing feature. Jesuit schools are different from secular schools, both private and public, because they teach the same subjects better. This is, of course, a highly debatable point. Certainly, Jesuit schools tend to be rated very highly academically. However, in many cities where there are Jesuit schools, there are also private schools, and perhaps even some magnet public schools, that are considered as good, or better, academically. Yet, even if one concedes this point, it only strengthens the argument in favor of the problem. If Jesuit schools are unique because of the quality of their test scores and their college entrance results, then they have abandoned the centrality of the Catholic faith in favor of secular standards. This is what Davis calls cultural assimilationism, “doing the same things as secular schools, only better.”^[29] Again, this would be a departure from the tradition of Jesuit education going back to the Ratio.

Finally, some could argue that the Jesuit curriculum problem is not really a problem at all, because the theology and spiritual programs are very effective at the spiritual formation of the students. Ask any theology teacher or campus minister at a Jesuit school and the chances are they will be able to give you many stories of students showing growth in their Catholic faith, and even some going through significant spiritual conversions. There is more than anecdotal evidence for such positive effects. One limited study of students at Fairfield Prep showed that the spiritual programming at Jesuits schools, such as the theology classes, Masses, and retreats, had a positive impact on the religious beliefs and practices of the students during their years in high school.^[30] This conclusion finds some support in a national longitudinal study of youth and religion, which found that Catholic high schools in general, “seem to create in students a bond to the Catholic faith, even if they practice that faith at only a minimal level during emerging adulthood.”^[31] This is a fairly thin outcome, but a positive one nonetheless. The national study also vindicates the anecdotal stories of conversions. It found that Catholic schools seem to facilitate a categorical shift from a low to a high level of religiosity in emerging adulthood in some students from a weak religious background.^[32] The recent growth in OCIA programs at some Jesuit schools,^[33] which have led to a remarkable number of students being received into the Catholic Church, is also evidence that the religious programs foster conversions.

Yet, there is also evidence that the current configuration of religious programming at Jesuit schools is not having a deep and lasting impact on the spiritual lives of most students. Unfortunately, there are no specific studies of the impact of Jesuit schools on the long-term beliefs and practices of its students, as far as this author is aware. In order to evaluate that impact, one must extrapolate from studies of Catholic schools in general. Rather than summarize all of the research on this question, it will be enough here to highlight the most rigorous study that has measured such outcomes for Catholic schools, the longitudinal National Study of Youth and Religion led by Christian Smith at Notre Dame, mentioned in the previous paragraph.^[34] Based on the third wave of surveys and interviews done in 2007, the researchers found that Catholic students at Catholic schools showed higher levels of religious belief and practice during their years in high school than other Catholic teenagers, and that this difference persisted into their emerging adulthood years (18-23 years old).^[35] However, when they controlled for the level of religious faith of the families of those students, they found that young people from highly religious families and weakly religious families looked very similar in emerging adulthood regardless of whether or not they attended a Catholic high school. Smith and colleagues concluded that attending a Catholic school does not seem to have an independent effect on the religious beliefs and practices of emerging adults beyond their family influence.^[36] This major finding calls into question any claim by teachers and administrators at Jesuit schools that the current curricular configuration of ‘secular curriculum + theology + spiritual programming’ is in fact very effective at fostering the long-term religious beliefs and practices of students. Until there is a large, rigorous study of the religious outcomes of Jesuit school students, the evidence points to the lack of effectiveness of the current school configuration, albeit without brushing aside the two positive qualifiers of fostering conversions and promoting a sentimental bond with the Catholic Church.^[37]

Yet, for the purposes of the argument of this essay, even if the Jesuit school spiritual formation programs are highly effective at influencing the religious lives of students, the Jesuit curriculum problem would still exist. It would simply mean that the spiritual formation of students could take place effectively independent of the content and structure of the academic program. The two areas could be separate and still effective. That would certainly be a significant finding, and would lessen the importance, for many, of the argument being made in this essay. If we can form students well in their Catholic Faith using the current configuration, why does having a ‘secular curriculum + theology + spiritual programming’ curriculum pose a ‘problem’? Much rests on the that ‘if,’ which is uncertain at best, and doubtful at worst. However, one could still argue that Jesuit education in the tradition of the Ratio Studiorum was always more than faith formation. It was an intellectual formation grounded in an integrated Catholic worldview. Abandoning that dimension, even if one could save faith formation with a robust theology curriculum and campus ministry program, one would lose something important, indeed essential, to the tradition of Jesuit education. One would be conceding an integrated education program for a fragmented one.

The Historical Causes of the Jesuit Curriculum Problem

If one is willing to admit that there is a Jesuit curriculum problem, the question then becomes: how did it arise? How did the schools get to where they are today? The answer to this question is, of course, complex, with a long historical trajectory. The above overview of the history of Jesuit education allows one to see that the problem begins in the post-suppression Society and seems to intensify in the twentieth century. So, we can pick up the thread there and see whether one can give a general diagnosis of the main causes of the problem in order to identify, at the same time, some possible solutions. In this analysis we rely heavily upon Christopher Dawson’s important book, The Crisis of Western Education.^[38] We will begin with a historical analysis before moving to a systematic one.

The challenge that faces Jesuit schools today finds its roots in the Enlightenment inspired movement of the State to assume responsibility for education. Prior to the 19^th century, education in Europe and the USA was the domain of the Church and private organizations. With the rise of the nation state and then the forced secularization of society during the revolutions of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, in many European countries and in America the state began to move toward universal, state-run education. This movement, humanistic in intention, became a force for the secularization of culture. Dawson explains,

when once the State has accepted full responsibility for the education of the whole youth of the nation, it is obliged to extend its control further and further into new fields: to the physical welfare of its pupils—to their feeding and medical care—to their amusements and the use of their spare time—and finally to their moral welfare and their psychological guidance. Thus universal education involves the creation of an immense machinery of organization and control which must go on growing in power and influence until it covers the whole field of culture and embraces every form of educational institution from the nursery school to the university. Hence the modern movement towards universal education inevitably tends to become the rival or the alternative to the Church, which is also a universal institution and is also concerned directly with the human mind and with the formation of character. And in fact there is no doubt that the progress of universal education has coincided with the secularization of modern culture and has been very largely responsible for it.^[39]

The rivalry between the State and the Church, so characteristic of the Enlightenment and its aftermath, extended into the realm of education and created competing visions of human life.

As state-run education grew and developed, it slowly pushed out religious beliefs and replaced them with a sort of secular religion. The secular states sought a vision to unify their educational endeavors and propel their agenda of the social transformation of society. This vision essentially became a substitute for religion, or more specifically, a substitute for Christianity.^[40] Dawson explains,

The State is morally incomplete without some spiritual bond other than the law and the power of the sword. Ever since the loss of a living contact with the historic faith of Christendom modern society has been seeking to find such a bond, either in the democratic ideal of the natural society and its general will, or in the nationalistic cult of a historic racial community, or in the Communist faith in the revolutionary mission of the proletariat. And in each case what we find is a substitute religion or counter-religion which transcends the juridical limits of the political State and creates a kind of secular Church . . . . The continental conception of the State as an all-embracing community, a kind of secular church, has entered as it were by the back door [in England and the United States] and has gradually and inevitably destroyed the traditional conception of the limited State and drastically reduced the sphere of action of non-political organizations in education and social life generally . . . in the domain of public education, the principle of the separation of Church and State is now interpreted [in the United States] so rigorously as to ban any kind of positive Christian teaching from the school, with the result that the educational system inevitably favors the pagan and secularist minority against the Christian and Jewish elements who probably represent a large majority of the population. Now this leads, on the one hand, to the propagation of that kind of substitute religion to which I have already described as the established faith of the democratic state; and on the other hand, to the devaluation of traditional religion as unessential, non-vital, exceptional and perhaps even unsocial.^[41]

So, public education in the secular states of the West have created an alternative to the Church, and also pushed religious views out of education altogether. How has the Church responded to this movement?

The Catholic Church in the United States responded to the secularizing move of the state by creating a robust network of private Catholic schools. The European populations that migrated to the United States in the 19^th and 20^th centuries organized their communities around the parish and the school in their urban neighborhoods.^[42] Catholic leaders saw the Catholic schools as a way to preserve the Catholic faith of the immigrants as well as their ethnic traditions and identity.^[43] Thus, they were understood to be an alternative to the secularizing tendencies of the state. For this reason, the first generation of Catholic schools was met with much resistance from the wider culture.^[44] Jesuit schools grew up in those cities that had large Catholic populations. In their early years their curriculum had more affinity with the Ratio Studiorum than with American secular schools.^[45]

However, as time went on and the Catholic immigrant populations continued to assimilate to American culture, so too did Catholic schools assimilate to their secular counterparts. Catholic leaders consciously adopted an assimilationist policy in relation to American culture in order to elevate the standing of Catholics in the larger society.^[46] In Catholic education this policy turned into a tricky game: how to keep up with the state standards of education while at the same time maintain Catholic identity.^[47] In Jesuit schools, the goal of achieving a high academic standard, measured by the secular educational system, became a program explicitly called for by Fr. General Ledochowski, albeit while also calling for fidelity to the principles of the Ratio.^[48] Jesuit schools in the U.S. excelled in the realm of academics, although with questions about how this impacted the religious formation of the students.^[49]

There have been some positive consequences of this assimilationist policy in Catholic education. First of all, Catholic schools have gained acceptance and even respect in the educational landscape.^[50] As various studies have shown, Catholic schools perform quite well academically in comparison to their public school counterparts,^[51] especially in poor, urban environments.^[52] They have, in large measure, achieved their goal of becoming respected institutions in the eyes of the people of American society. This certainly extends to Jesuit schools as well. As Starratt, one of the founders of the JSEA, points out, “Jesuit schools were seen as even more valuable to the secular concerns of parents than other Catholic schools.”^[53] The second main positive consequence of this assimilationist policy is that it has allowed Catholics and Catholic schools to avoid the sectarian temptation of removing themselves from public life. Catholics are part of the mainstream culture. Even more than that, Catholic schools in general, and Jesuit schools in particular, have been a cause of upward mobility and economic advancement in American society for its graduates.^[54]

On the other hand, the main negative consequence of the assimilationist policy has been the erosion of Catholic identity in Catholic schools. Dawson lucidly explains how adopting secular standards of achievement goals were at odds with maintaining a Catholic identity,

Catholics are not immune from the pervasive influence of secularism in education . . . . In so far as Catholics preserve their own schools and universities by great efforts and sacrifices, they are forced to devote so much energy to the mere material or technical work of keeping the system going, that the quality of their teaching suffers. They become more concerned with the utilitarian need for practical results, as measured by the competitive standards set by the State or the secular education system, than with the essential problem of the transmission of Catholic culture.^[55]

Dawson’s claims here are confirmed by educational researchers Baker and Riordan who found that by the late 1990’s, many Catholic schools had become elite private schools for wealthy students, focused on academic outcomes above all else.^[56] As a result of this shift in focus, Catholic schools have slowly sidelined their Catholic dimension until it has become reduced to ‘some worship, some ethos, and some religious education.’ This is more serious than merely giving less time to religious activities. It is a replacement of what is Catholic with what is secular. As O’Keefe puts it, this secularization, “works to replace this [religious dimension] by developing logical, rational, empirical, and scientific intellectual cultures in which the notion of the transcendent has no place.”^[57] One sees this most clearly in the curriculum, as I will show in a moment. Jesuit schools have been part of this same movement. In fact, the JSEA was founded as a response to the secularization of the schools.^[58] The Preamble makes this absolutely explicit in its call for Jesuit schools to return to their religious roots in the Gospel of Jesus (§2), the Constitutions, and the Spiritual Exercises (§7).^[59]

The assimilationist policy has led to the curriculum in Catholic and Jesuit schools becoming a product of the intellectual tradition of the Enlightenment. Again, Dawson provides us with an excellent summary of the situation,

The old domination of classical humanism has passed away, and nothing has taken its place except the scientific specialisms which do not provide a complete intellectual education, and rather tend to disintegrate into technologies. Every educator recognizes that this is unsatisfactory. A scientific specialist or a technologist is not an educated person. He tends to become merely an instrument of the industrialist or the bureaucrat, a worker ant in an insect society, and the same is true of the literary specialist, though his social function is less obvious.^[60]

Donohue, writing in 1963, sees this exact shift in the Jesuit schools. What he calls the ‘integrated approach’ of the past has given way to, “the complex expansion and the dignity of the various disciplines,” which requires, “that the major subjects be taught separately by teachers with special competence in the field.”^[61] What predominates, therefore, is not a Catholic worldview, but, “the forms of knowledge of late technological society.”^[62]

This change has led not only to the compartmentalization of the branches of knowledge, but also to the compartmentalization of the Catholic faith. In the contemporary curriculum of Jesuit schools, subjects are taught separately and independently. No effort is made to show how they fit together and what is proper to each. So, there is no way for students to integrate all the different branches of knowledge. At best Jesuit educators hope for what Donohue calls, “subjective integration,” a series of connections between the disciplines achieved in the mind of the student.^[63] But is the more common outcome a certain soft relativism? This is worth investigating. In relation to the Catholic faith, in this curricular structure theology is taught as one subject among many. With no way for students to integrate all the different branches knowledge, there is also no way for them to understand how the Catholic faith fits with all the other disciplines, especially since it is noticeably different from them in form and content. This inevitably leads to a certain compartmentalization of the Catholic faith in the minds of the students.^[64] Can it survive in this compartment, let alone thrive, given that it should be above the disciplines and not alongside them?

This brief history of the development of the contemporary curriculum of Jesuit schools in the United States leads us back to our problem. Jesuit schools have adopted a ‘secular curriculum + theology’ model that bears little resemblance to the tradition of Jesuit education that has its roots in the Ratio Studiorum. The fundamental problem is not that the schools are teaching biology, physics, English, history and Spanish. The problem is that these subjects are not taught within a larger framework that allows the students to integrate their knowledge into a whole that has as its integrating principles God, Christ, and salvation history. Jesuit schools today face difficult decisions about the future direction of their programs, especially in the area of the new trend of innovation and applied science. If they neglect to acknowledge how far they have travelled along the road of secularization, and seek ways to change direction, they may lose what is left of their distinctively Jesuit, Catholic identity altogether.

A Proposal: A New Ratio Studiorum

The challenge facing Jesuit schools is to respond to the slow drift toward a more and more secular education that sidelines the Catholic faith, both in the curriculum itself and in the life of the school. The response that most Jesuit schools seem to be taking at the moment, inasmuch as they are consciously responding to the problem at all, is to improve as much as possible the four-year theology curriculum and the retreat and service programs. The hope is that more robust explicit Catholic formation will mitigate against the implicit secularization of the rest of the school’s activities. Perhaps this response will be sufficient to overcome the problem. But there are reasons to doubt its adequacy. Quite simply, it does not deal with the root cause of the problem, namely cultural assimilation and its consequence, curricular fragmentation. What response could attack this root cause?

The first and most obvious response is to de-secularize the curriculum of the schools. This approach already has adherents in non-Jesuit Catholic schools. For example, some Catholic schools are returning the curriculum to the classical humanist tradition of the past,^[65] adding on science, math, and some elements from modern history to round out the whole.^[66] The hope is that the Catholic faith can be fully integrated into the curriculum as one returns to a modified version of the old model of Catholic schooling. This is an attempted, albeit modified, restoration of the past. Is this the answer? Perhaps not. Dawson believes this approach to some extent ignores the current situation, which is characterized by, “the development of a vast nation-wide system of professional education which has nothing in common with the old classical culture.”^[67] The students graduating from these institutions would be ill-equipped to insert themselves into the dominant culture, for example, in the important area of the job market, and in the universities that are now mainly training schools for different job sectors. They would either have to abandon their classical roots and begin playing the game governed by secular culture, in order to work and live, or attempt a classical revival by building their own institutions and creating their own jobs. Both these alternatives are not very attractive.

Rod Dreher champions another approach in his book, The Benedict Option.^[68] He argues that Catholics must deliberately step outside of the mainstream current of American schooling and create an education based upon not the classical tradition but the Christian monastic tradition. These schools would serve as a vibrant, counter-cultural island in the otherwise secular sea of “liquid modernity.”^[69] Perhaps some version of this proposal can be found in certain versions of Catholic homeschooling,^[70] such as the Mater Amabilis program.^[71] This approach is what Dawson would characterize as ‘sectarian,’ and would suffer from what he calls the ‘leakage’ problem: the more tightly knit the Catholic community, the fewer the people who would be willing and able to be a part of it.^[72] Thus, the Catholics on this island would become a minority of a minority.

Both of these responses are legitimate responses to the current cultural situation. Although we have pointed out some of their weaknesses, one should not oppose these serious attempts to deal with post-Christian society or the slow secularization of Catholic education. At the same time, they cannot be models for Jesuit education. Jesuit schools have not, in general, adopted either an attitude of hostility to the dominant culture or have retreated from society to form an enclave. The Jesuit approach has been much bolder.

Jesuit missionary strategy has always been one of adapting to the existing culture while at the same time attempting to infuse the Gospel and the Catholic Tradition into it from within, thus leading to the transformation of the culture. This strategy is encapsulated in St. Ignatius’s celebrated recommendation in winning someone over that, “we go in with him his way but come out our own.”^[73] One need only look at the glory of the Guaraní reductions in South America,^[74] or the celebrated pioneer work of Mateo Ricci in China,^[75] to see this strategy at work. However, this strategy was not confined only to the foreign missions. One can say that the Jesuit schools followed a similar strategy. On this point Codina explains, “[through the schools] the first Jesuits had inserted themselves into the Renaissance humanism of their time. At a turning point in history, Ignatius of Loyola and the first Jesuits had the intuition to take part in the new culture of humanism, without leaving behind the wealth from the past.”^[76] One of the geniuses of the Ratio Studiorum is that it was able to synthesize the Renaissance humanist tradition, in the lower studies, with the scholastic tradition, in the higher studies, while all the time maintaining the essentially evangelical thrust of the overall endeavor. What would such a strategy applied to today’s Jesuit schools look like?

One possible way to respond to the curriculum problem without retreating into a Catholic ghetto would be for the Jesuit schools to remain culturally relevant while at the same time reorganizing their curriculum around a Catholic worldview. Jesuit schools today should maintain their secular credentials as excellent academic institutions that prepare students well for university and the workplace. In this way they will remain relevant in the dominant culture. This entails accepting how the secular culture defines the core subjects, such as, for example, in continuing to teach AP courses. At the same time, the schools should reintegrate the curriculum around a Catholic vision of the world. This entails, first and foremost, an order of studies that explicitly shows, by means of its structure and through direct instruction, how the different disciplines fit together and what the place of God and faith have in the overall picture. This would be based on a theory of Catholic education that would have a, “Christian idea of the unity of knowledge,” so as to infuse, “Catholic identity into the curriculum as a whole.”^[77] The content of each course must be shaped by the Catholic worldview in such a way that all implicit and explicit secular philosophies, whether they be materialism, secular humanism, Marxism, postmodernism, and reductionism, which find their way into all the subjects, are minimized as much as possible. There must be a means to ensure that the students have a genuine Catholic synthesis of knowledge by graduation. All of this is to say, we need a new Ratio Studiorum.

This reintegration of the Catholic worldview into the curriculum would require much creative thinking. There is no roadmap for how to create an integrated Catholic curriculum in a contemporary educational and cultural landscape. As mentioned above, most people attempting to create a thoroughly Catholic education today are going back to the classical tradition. A curriculum that is both contemporary and genuinely Catholic has not been seriously entertained. How would it look? Would we still teach seven subjects? Would the subjects still be English, math, science, social studies, languages, and fine arts? What would their ordering be? These are all open questions. What is certain is that any attempt to create a Catholic curriculum would require a new way of looking at the theology classes, and their relationship to the different disciplines. They could no longer be simply one subject among many, and they may have to be fundamentally changed. Furthermore, there seems to be an obvious need for more philosophy in the curriculum, especially as the epistemological complexities of the different disciplines would need to be understood. Finally, conceptual integration could only take place within a more inter-disciplinary framework. Perhaps a structure similar to the International Baccalaureate Diploma could be created, where the whole curriculum is ordered around a few central, core elements that ensure that the students synthesize their learning into a unified whole.^[78] Maybe the Integrated Humanities Program that flourished for a short time at the University of Kansas, under the leadership of John Senior, could provide a model to emulate.^[79] No matter what, there is a need to think outside of the existing structures, order, and subjects, in order to realize an authentic Catholic vision of the world in the curriculum.

This reintegration of the Catholic worldview into the curriculum would also involve all of the school’s stakeholders. In 1599 all of the teachers in the schools were Jesuits, who had the advantage of sharing the same intellectual and spiritual formation. They exhibited a union of minds and hearts. Today almost all of the teachers are lay and have a very wide variety of educational backgrounds and perspectives. Any attempt to create a Catholic curriculum must include the formation of teachers, who must communicate the vision in every subject.^[80] Furthermore, parents are more involved in the education of their children than in the past. They also must be brought into the plan, for what is not reinforced at home would likely not stick in the long term, especially when it comes to moral and spiritual formation. Again, there is a need for great creativity in this area.

The Catholic curriculum must also look to the future demands of the job market. It would be a disservice to the students of the Jesuit schools if they were not being prepared in some way for success in the workforce. Thus, the new curriculum would have to include the new technologies in a meaningful way, and even perhaps begin developing the students’ technical expertise. Such elements, although not central, would certainly help the schools remain relevant in a rapidly changing world. Again, how this would fit into the overall order of studies is an open question.

Such a synthesis of rigorous intellectual formation with Catholic faith formation could, in the long term, stimulate a cultural renaissance within society as a whole. Preparing young men to succeed in society and to be deeply Catholic, able to navigate their way in the world while at the same time journeying toward their heavenly end, is a noble goal. But Jesuit education has a wider hope. The hope is that graduates of Jesuit institutions become the leaders who shape the future direction of society. The hope is that the renewal of Jesuit education will lead to a Christian renewal of American culture. Many cultural commentators see that American society is coming close to dissolution.^[81] Dreher and others are ready to retreat and wait out the cultural turmoil. Jesuit educators should be ready to engage the culture through education in order to transform it from within, for the greater glory of God.

Conclusion

This paper has diagnosed the fundamental problem of Jesuit education in the United States today as one of creeping secularization. The movement away from the synthetic plan of the Ratio Studiorum toward an assimilation to the contemporary educational culture has led to the marginalization of the Catholic faith and the fragmentation of knowledge taught in the various disciplines. No longer is a Catholic worldview the guiding force in the curriculum of the schools. The explicitly Catholic elements of the curriculum are small and marginal. The overall thrust of most of the day-in-day-out work of the schools is dominated by the secular measures of test scores, university acceptances, and scholarships. The content of the courses themselves reflect much of the ideologies of late modernity and postmodernity. The response to this problem is to reintegrate the curriculum around a Catholic vision of the world. Creating a new Ratio Studiorum is by no means a small task. The Ratio of 1599 is the result of forty years of practice, reflection, and development. It is not difficult to imagine a similar period of time for the completion of this project. The form that the New Ratio Studiorum would take is not yet defined. There is a need for creativity, for there are many possibilities. None of this can be done by one person. We need to form a group of like-minded educators who will dedicate themselves to building a new Ratio Studiorum.

Notes:

^[1]          It is important to note that this was not always the case. In the first years of the Jesuit Secondary Education Association (JSEA) there was a serious attempt to measure the spiritual health of the schools via the student JSEA survey, given to incoming freshmen and then to graduating seniors. Many Jesuit schools still give this survey to its students. Yet, it seems that the data is not analyzed, or if it is, there is no follow-up. The schools do receive a summary report of the data from the JSN, but, to my knowledge, do not have direct access to the data.

^[2]          Cf. Gabriel Codina, “The ‘Modus Perisiensis,’” in The Jesuit Ratio Studiorum: 400^th Anniversary Perspectives, ed. Vincent J. Duminuco (Fordham University Press, 2000), 28–49.

^[3]          Cf. John W. Donohue, S.J., Jesuit Education: An Essay on the Foundations of its Idea (Fordham University Press, 1963), 47–48.

^[4]          John W. Padberg, S.J., “Development of the Ratio Studiorum,” The Jesuit Ratio Studiorum: 400^th Anniversary Perspectives, ed. Vincent J. Duminuco (Fordham University Press, 2000), 80–100.

^[5]          Claude N. Pavur, S.J., In the School of Ignatius: Studious Zeal and Devoted Learning (Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2019), 1.

^[6]          Codina, “The ‘Modus Perisiensis,’” 48.

^[7]          Donohue, Jesuit Education, 68.

^[8]          Codina, “The ‘Modus Perisiensis,’” 49.

^[9]          Claude N. Pavur, S.J., ed., The Ratio Studiorum: The Official Plan for Jesuit Education (Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2005), no. 375.

^[10]        Pavur, The Ratio Studiorum, no. 207.

^[11]         Pavur, The Ratio Studiorum, no. 325.

^[12]        Cf. Pavur, The Ratio Studiorum, no. 396.

^[13]        Padberg, “Development of the Ratio Studiorum,” 80–100.

^[14]        Donohue, Jesuit Education, 53, 141.

^[15]        A. Taiga Guterres, “Articulating a Jesuit Philosophy of Education in the Twentieth Century: A Critical Translation and Commentary on the Instructio of 1934 and 1948,” Jesuit Educational Quarterly, 2^nd ser., 1, no. 1 (2025): 76, https://doi.org/10.51238/1ZnRn8z.

^[16]        Guterres, “Articulating a Jesuit Philosophy of Education,” 77.

^[17]        Donohue, Jesuit Education, 55.

^[18]        Guterres, “Articulating a Jesuit Philosophy of Education,” 78.

^[19]        Guterres, “Articulating a Jesuit Philosophy of Education,” 82.

^[20]       Guterres, “Articulating a Jesuit Philosophy of Education,” 84.

^[21]        Cf. Vincent J. Duminuco, “A New Ratio for a New Millennium,” in The Jesuit Ratio Studiorum: 400^th Anniversary Perspectives, ed. Vincent J. Duminuco (Fordham University Press, 2000), 153

^[22]        Duminuco, “A New Ratio for a New Millennium,” 160.

^[23]         Duminuco, “A New Ratio for a New Millennium,” 153.

^[24]         The one exception to this would be the JEA document, which goes into some detail about the subjects to be taught, the order, the method, and the end.

^[25]         Pavur, In the School of Ignatius, 40.

^[26]         One can survey the curricula of Jesuit schools by going on their websites. For some representative examples, one can look at Regis High School in New York (https://www.regis.org/section/?id=9), St. Ignatius in Cleveland (https://www.ignatius.edu/SaintIgnatius/media/SaintIgnatiusMedia/Content/Files/SchoolCurriculum2018.pdf?ext=.pdf), St. Louis University High School in St. Louis (https://www.sluh.org/academics/curriculum), and Jesuit High School in New Orleans (http://www.jesuitnola.org/academics/curriculum/).

^[27]         Robert A. Davis, “Can there be a Catholic Curriculum?,” in Catholic Education Inside-Out/Outside-In, ed. James C. Conroy (Veritas, 1999), 223.

^[28]         Davis, “Can there be a Catholic Curriculum?,” 222.

^[29]         Davis, “Can there be a Catholic Curriculum?,” 223.

^[30]         Bret J. Stockdale, S.J., “Catholic Identity of Students of Jesuit High Schools” (DMin diss., The Catholic University of America, 2019), 131, ProQuest (13806999).

^[31]         Christian Smith, Kyle Longest, Jonathan Hill, and Kari Christoffersen, Young Catholic America: Emerging Adults In, Out of, and Gone from the Church (Oxford University Press, 2014), 253.

^[32]         Smith et al., Young Catholic America, 247–48.

^[33]         Cf. Rachel Amiri, “Responding to the Lord’s Call: Christian Initiation at Jesuit High Schools,” Jesuits Central and Southern, March 14, 2025. https://www.jesuitscentralsouthern.org/stories/responding-to-the-lords-call-christian-initiation-at-jesuit-high-schools/; Jonah McKeown, “How a ‘culture of conversion’ transformed a Catholic high school,” The Catholic World Report, June 10, 2021, https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2021/06/10/how-a-culture-of-conversion-transformed-a-catholic-high-school/.

^[34]         University of Notre Dame, “Youth and Religion,” accessed April 27, 2025, https://youthandreligion.nd.edu/.

^[35]         Smith et al., Young Catholic America, 243–44.

^[36]         Smith et al., Young Catholic America, 245–46.

^[37]         Smith et al., Young Catholic America, 252–53.

^[38]         Christopher Dawson, The Crisis of Western Education (Sheed & Ward, 1961).

^[39]         Dawson, The Crisis of Western Education, 102.

^[40]         Davis, “Can there be a Catholic Curriculum?,” 217.

^[41]         Dawson, The Crisis of Western Education, 107–8, 109, 110.

^[42]         Dawson, The Crisis of Western Education, 93.

^[43]         Joseph M. O’Keefe and Aubrey J. Scheopner, “Catholic Schools: A Tradition of Responsiveness to Non-Dominant Cultures,” in Two Centuries of Faith: The influence of Catholicism on Boston, 1808–2008, ed. Thomas O’Connor (Herder & Herder, 2009), 75.

^[44]         O’Keefe and Scheopner, “Catholic Schools: A Tradition of Responsiveness to Non-Dominant Cultures,” 77–79.

^[45]         Although it is difficult to ascertain curricula from the Jesuit schools in the 19^th century, one can get an overview from Donohue’s survey of the documents produced in the post-suppression Society that dealt with the educational apostolate. Donohue, Jesuit Education, 53–56.

^[46]         O’Keefe and Scheopner, “Catholic Schools: A Tradition of Responsiveness to Non-Dominant Cultures,” 79.

^[47]         Michael T. Rizzi, Jesuit Colleges and Universities in the United States: A History (The Catholic University of America Press, 2022), 297

^[48]         Donohue, Jesuit Education, 55–56.

^[49]         Robert J. Starratt, “The Spirit of the Preamble,” in The Preamble: Historical Identity and Contemporary Discernment, ed. Robert J. Starratt, John W. Padberg, John C. Futrell, and Edward C. O’Brien (Jesuit Secondary Education Association, 1971), 3.

^[50]         Davis, “Can there be a Catholic Curriculum?,” 221.

^[51]         Cf. Anthony S. Bryk, Valerie E. Lee, and Peter B. Holland, Catholic Schools and the Common Good (Harvard University Press, 1993).

^[52]         O’Keefe and Scheopner, “Bridging the Gap: Urban Catholic Schools Addressing Educational Achievement and Opportunity Gaps in the United States,” International Studies in Catholic Education 1, no. 1 (2009): 15–29, esp. 19.

^[53]         Starratt, “The Spirit of the Preamble,” 8.

^[54]         Starratt acknowledges this fact plainly as one of the intended goals of the schools. At the same time, he also criticizes this goal as undermining the religious goal of the schools. Thus, his analysis is in agreement with the one given here. Cf. “The Spirit of the Preamble,” 6–8.

^[55]         Dawson, The Crisis of Western Education, 110–11.

^[56]         David P. Baker and Cornelius Riordan, “The ‘eliting’ of the common American Catholic school and the national education crisis,” Phi Delta Kappan 80, no. 1 (1998): 16–23.

^[57]         Gerald Grace and Joseph O’Keefe, “Catholic Schools Facing the Challenges of the 21^st Century: An Overview,” in International Handbook of Catholic Education: Challenges for School Systems in the 21^st Century, ed. Gereald Grace and Joseph O’Keefe (Springer, 2007), 2.

^[58]         Jesuit Secondary Education Association, Preamble: Constitution (Jesuit Secondary Education Association, 1970).

^[59]         Starratt, “The Spirit of the Preamble,” 14.

^[60]         Dawson, The Crisis of Western Education, 132.

^[61]         Donohue, Jesuit Education, 148.

^[62]         Davis, “Can there be a Catholic Curriculum?,” 223.

^[63]         Donohue, Jesuit Education, 148.

^[64]         Juan Cristobal Garcia-Huidobro, S.J. found that several studies on Catholic curriculum since 1993 identified this lack of integration as a major problem for Catholic schools. Cf. Juan Cristobal Garcia-Huidobro, S.J., “What are Catholic Schools Teaching to Make a Difference? A Literature Review of Curriculum Studies in Catholic Schools in the U.S. and the U.K. since 1993,” Journal of Catholic Education 20, no. 2 (2017): 64–97, at 83.

^[65]         Dawson correctly pointed out the loss of cohesion that ensued from the decline of the classical tradition in Catholic education. Cf. Dawson, The Crisis of Western Education, 134.

^[66]         A good example of this approach is the Chesterton Academies network. For more information see: https://chestertonacademy.org/academics#curriculum.

^[67]         Dawson, The Crisis of Western Education, 133.

^[68]         Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (Sentinel Books, 2017).

^[69]         Dreher, The Benedict Option, see especially 146ff.

^[70]         There are several different versions of a Catholic homeschooling curriculum, some of which follow the classical model, some a hybrid model. For a list of different ones, see: https://www.catholichomeschool.org/educational-approaches/.

^[71]         For more information on this, see the website: http://materamabilis.org/ma/.

^[72]         Dawson, The Crisis of Western Education, 112.

^[73]         William Young, S.J., Letters of St. Ignatius of Loyola (Loyola University Press, 1959), let. 32.

^[74]         Cf. Philip Caraman, The Lost Paradise (Seabury Press, 1976).

^[75]         Cf. Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci 1552–1610 (Oxford University Press, 2010).

^[76]         Codina, “The ‘Modus Parisiensis,’” 48.

^[77]         Garcia-Huidobro, “What Are Catholic Schools Teaching to Make a Difference?,” 90.

^[78]         For more on this model see: https://www.ibo.org/programmes/diploma-programme/curriculum/.

^[79]         Cf. Francis Bethel, O.S.B., John Senior and the Restoration of Realism (Thomas More College Press, 2016).

^[80]         Garcia-Huidobro makes this same point. See “What Are Catholic Schools Teaching to Make a Difference?,” 90.

^[81]         One recent example is Patrick Deneen. Cf. Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed (Yale University Press, 2018).

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APA

Hill, J., S.J. (2025). Why Jesuit schools need a new Ratio Studiorum. Jesuit Educational Quarterly, 1(3), 397–420. https://doi.org/10.51238/GellMvj

CMOS

Hill, Joseph, S.J. 2025. “Why Jesuit Schools Need a New Ratio Studiorum.” Jesuit Educational Quarterly, 2nd ser., 1, no. 3: 397–420. https://doi.org/10.51238/GellMvj.

MLA

Hill, Joseph, S.J. “Why Jesuit Schools Need a New Ratio Studiorum.” Jesuit Educational Quarterly, 2nd ser., vol. 1, no. 3, 2025, pp. 397–420. https://doi.org/10.51238/GellMvj.

Turabian

Hill, Joseph, S.J. 2025. “Why Jesuit Schools Need a New Ratio Studiorum.” Jesuit Educational Quarterly, 2nd ser., 1, no. 3: 397–420. https://doi.org/10.51238/GellMvj.