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Understanding American Catholic Educational History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Marvin Lazerson
Marvin Lazerson*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
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Extract

How does one study Catholic history? It is easy to acknowledge that, on the whole, it has not been studied well. As Andrew Greeley tirelessly reminds us, Catholics have been of only peripheral interest to historians and social scientists. The historiography of American Catholicism has traditionally been directed at confirming Catholic beliefs and commitments to the Church's institutional structure. The argument generally offered is that the flock, threatened by a Protestant environment and by attacks on Catholics, sought consolation in the Church and forged structures essentially compatible with loyal Americanism. Initial historical writings stressed the heroism and piety of early Catholic missionaries, immigrant patriotism, and Catholic difficulties in times of anti-Catholic agitation. Religious questions and Church institutions, the hierarchy (especially the “liberals” within it), the Irish (except where the non-Irish are presented as a “problem”), and neglect of the years since World War I except as a measure of the triumph of Roman Catholicism as an American middle class religion have been its hallmarks. Only the internal Church controversies between liberal and conservative clergy and the ethnic tensions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have suggested the complexity and subtlety of American Catholicism.

Type
Research Perspective
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , Fall 1977 , pp. 297 - 317
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. O'Brien, David J., “American Catholic Historiography; A Post-Conciliar Evaluation,” Church History, 37 (March, 1968): 80–94; Cross, Robert D., The Emergence of Liberal Catholicism (Cambridge, 1958); Barry, Colman, The Catholic Church and German Americans (Milwaukee, 1953).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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16. Dolan, , Immigrant, pp. 72–73. In St. Louis, eighty percent of the children of German parents attended segregated schools in 1860. When the German community on the basis of its political influence was able to have German language instruction introduced into the public schools after 1864, the proportion of German children in public schools was reversed. By 1880, four of five German children were attending the public schools. Troen, , Public, p. 64.Google Scholar

17. Dolan, , Immigrant, p. 104.Google Scholar

18. Ibid, pp. 106–109.Google Scholar

19. Merwick, Donna, Boston's Priests (Cambridge, 1973), p. 39.Google Scholar

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23. Weisz, Howard R., “Irish-American and Italian-American Educational Views and Activities, 1870–1900: A Comparison,” doct. diss. Columbia University, 1968, pp. 97–162 notes that many Irish hoped for accommodation with the public schools, but were frequently treated to “insults to their people and religion by teachers and textbooks; administrative penalties against Catholic children; prejudice against Irish Catholic teachers; prejudice against the Irish and other Catholics in the election of school boards.” Google Scholar

24. Ibid., pp. 163–210.Google Scholar

25. Ibid., pp. 278–279; Kuchera, , Church-State, p. 135, n. 2; Thernstrom, Stephan, Poverty and Progress (Cambridge, 1964), pp. 171–180; Lazerson, Marvin, Origins of the Urban School (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 19–24.Google Scholar

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29. Morrissey also notes the opposition of a small group in the hierarchy usually identified with the liberals. The liberal-conservative split within the American hierarchy is discussed in Cross, , Emergence. Google Scholar

30. Morrissey, , pp. 306–307. On opposition to the parochial schools among Irish Catholics, see Weisz, , “Irish-American” pp. 62–96. Many of Weisz's arguments are summarized in his “Irish-American Attitudes and the Americanization of the English Language Parochial School,” New York History, 53 (April, 1972): 157–176.Google Scholar

31. Cross, Robert D., “The Changing Image of the City Among American Catholics,” Catholic Historical Review, 48 (April, 1962): 38.Google Scholar

32. Sanders, , Education, p. 48.Google Scholar

33. Greene, Victor, “For God and Country: The Origins of Slavic Catholic Self-Consciousness in America,” Church History, 35 (1966): 446–460.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34. Sanders, , Education, p. 50.Google Scholar

35. Ibid, p. 54.Google Scholar

36. Sanders, Education, p. 70. Also see Vecoli, Rudolph J., “Prelates and Peasants: Italian Immigrants and the Catholic Church,” Journal of Social History, 2 (Spring, 1969): 217–268; Covello, Leonard, The Social Background of the Italo-American School Child (Leyden, Netherland, 1967); Olneck, Michael R. & Lazerson, Marvin, “The School Achievement of Immigrant Children, 1900–1930,” History of Education Quarterly, 14 (Winter, 1974): 453–482.Google Scholar

37. The Bishop of Pittsburgh had expressed concern as early as 1852 that “our feeble hierarchy” might be swamped by the religious orders over which it had little direct control. Ellis, John Tracy, Perspectives in American Catholicism (Baltimore, 1963), p. 140. The centralization of authority is ably discussed in Merwick, , Boston Priests. Google Scholar

38. See Sanders, , Education, pp. 105–140.Google Scholar

39. On the continuing conflict between Chicago's Poles and the hierarchy, see Shanabruch, Charles, “The Catholic Church's Role in the Americanization of Chicago Immigrants, 1833–1928,” doct. diss., University of Chicago, 1975, pp. 558–570. See also Galzer, Nathan and Moynihan, Daniel P., Beyond the Melting Pot (Cambridge, 1963).Google Scholar

40. Sanders, , Education, p. 141.Google Scholar

41. Chicago may have been extreme in its disorganization since many other cities moved toward greater administrative centralization before 1910. But in the large cities at least the differences were of quantity not kind.Google Scholar

42. On developments in public education, see Tyack, David, The One-Best System (Cambridge, 1974).Google Scholar

43. Sanders, , Education, p. 147. The idea that centralization and bureaucratization were responses to consumer demands has been insufficiently studied by educational historians. What exactly this meant and how the interplay between consumer desires and policy decisions worked also remains very unclear.Google Scholar

44. Sanders, , Education, pp. 141–179 discusses Chicago. On national trends, see Catholic Educational Review, established in 1911; Sister Eugenia Marie Golden, “Aspects of the Social Thought of the National Catholic Educational Association, 1904–1957,” doct. diss., Fordham University, 1958; Buetow, , Singular Benefit, pp. 233–241, & passim,; and Weisz, , “Irish-American Attitudes,” pp. 328–358.Google Scholar

45. Clarke, Stephen J., “Two Schools and Two Ideas: A Study of Progressivism and Character Education in the Public Schools of the City of Boston, Massachusetts, and the Parochial Schools of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, 1920–1940,” doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 1965, p. 2. See also Schrag, Peter, Village School Downtown (Boston, 1967).Google Scholar

46. Sanders, , Education p. 139. Given this line of argument, it is not surprising that the first major study of the effects of Catholic schooling published in 1966 found few differences between public school and Catholic school students. Greeley, Andrew M. and Rossi, Peter, The Education of Catholic Americans (Chicago, 1966). See also Madaus, George F. and Linnan, Roger, “The Outcome and Catholic Education,” School Review, 81 (Feb., 1973): 207–232.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

One last comment should be made. This essay has treated neither social class nor race in the development of Catholic schools. On the whole, there is little available for the pre-World War II period and much must be inferred from highly disparate sources. James Sanders discusses “the poverty factor” in Chicago, but it is the least satisfying of his book, simply reaffirming that Catholic immigrants were poor but were upwardly mobile during the twentieth century. In the late nineteenth century, upper class Catholics tended to oppose parochial school building, but over time, and certainly after 1945, they became strong supporters of separate schools. Both questions of race and class will be addressed in forthcoming work.