"What do you want to be when you grow up?" From our youngest days, we envisioned becoming doctors, ballerinas, firefighters. With costumes and toys we mimicked what we saw adults doing. Doing work. Creating things. Putting out fires.
Where in this youthful role-play did we learn to think? When was reasoning modeled to us? Who gave young children not pre-made tools, but the entire world as a resource for his or her lifework?
While children are born with limitless potential, each day their limits encroach by choices that they make or choices made for them. Should I learn a foreign language? Take up dance? Study martial arts? By the time children reach junior high, if they have not chosen a favorite sport to play year-round with camps and travel teams, they stand no chance playing in high school.
And by the time students enter college, just when they should be allowed the freedom to study everything and anything, they are asked to declare a major immediately and shuttled into appropriate classes without any opportunity to explore the great world of ideas and knowledge existing beyond the limits of business school or nursing school. This is one of the tragedies of living in a modern, expedient society.
Catholic education seeks to offer a remedy. Our Catholic faith has a uniquely holistic approach to faith and life, rooted deeply in philosophy and an understanding of the natural world. Throughout our history, this complementarity of faith and reason has been a cornerstone of our spirituality as well as the mission of Catholic education. The study of religion has never been confined to one class each day, but integrated throughout the course of study so students learn how to apply faith in all facets of life.
Put another way: Catholics look at the world through the lens of our faith. There is no time that a Catholic can leave his or her religion at the door and act merely as an accountant or a teacher or a politician. Our faith is integral to who we are.
In addition to uniting faith and reason, this holistic model of Catholic education seeks to preserve the concept of a whole person, not a compartmentalization of thinking. While choosing majors may be inevitable and budget-conscious, allowing students the opportunity to study the interconnection of knowledge and ideas most fully allows them to grow.
To this end, Catholic high schools are beginning to introduce the International Baccalaureate Program (IB) to their students. IB is an interdisciplinary course of study providing students academic excellence in a program that encourages thinking across traditional disciplinary boundaries. IB provides high level course work in an integrated program, allowing students to think expansively.
The IB Program itself is not faith-based. However, it integrates beautifully with the goals of Catholic education. While seeking to produce informed, faith-filled graduates, Catholic educators also want them to be critical thinkers looking at the world with an eye for change, not complacence.
The capstone course to the IB curriculum is the class, Theory of Knowledge. This year-long course is based on the idea that knowledge can be gained through a variety of sources and, once obtained, ought to be used as the foundation for every action, every decision. Catholics know that knowledge comes to us not only from the material world, but also through revelation and the Word of God. Catholic high school students taking the Theory of Knowledge class understand in greater detail what it means to be a person of faith enlivened by truth.
Integrating the study of religion and the modeling of faith into the IB Program is a challenge that Catholic educators are excited to take. The precepts of our faith blend harmoniously with the integrated search for truth of IB. In addition, students are taught the skills of effective communication, written and verbal, that are key to discipleship.
Finally, IB builds fruitful communities of learning among our students. The two-year program (juniors and seniors) places students together for each class, allowing them to develop relationships of trust and caring. These smaller classes, where students work together and educators expand the classroom model, create a thriving community unlike any other on campus. Vibrant intellectual pursuit meets Christian small-faith community. Rocky Domingo serves as Religion Department Chair and International Baccalaureate Coordinator at Bishop Amat Memorial High School, La Puente.
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