I work at a Catholic school that, in an attempt to become more modern and competitive, is in the process of tearing down the library to replace it with a technology lab complete with 3D printers and robotics equipment. The technology lab carries with it the abstract promises of modern innovation, and I too hold hope that it will be a benefit to many students’ educational experience, but I can’t shake the feeling that by exchanging its ‘outdated’ library for a ‘modern’ technology lab the school is sacrificing a significant piece of its Catholic identity.
This effort aligns with the STEM movement in education. Despite the fact that STEM education – standing for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math – is said to benefit the economy and help Catholic schools compete with secular institutions, the valuing of STEM education over and above the humanities is ultimately incompatible with the Catholic faith. The STEM movement in education is driven by a philosophy that denies transcendence and adheres to a type of pragmatism discordant to the Catholic understanding of the value of education.
Modern thought is marked by a radical denial of transcendence – a denial our faith stands adamantly against. It is radical because it rejects something fundamentally human. The denial supposes that beliefs, ideas, values, ideologies, systems, philosophies, etc. have no truth value outside of the time and place where they exist. This view only makes sense when one looks at the way humanity has changed and progressed over the course of time, but reason would have us also understand the ways in which humanity has remained the same. We feel the same joys and sorrows as our ancient ancestors, we are subject to the same natural world as Abraham and Aristotle, we know the same thirst for truth, beauty, freedom, and justice that has always driven human beings. We are confronted with the same fundamental, yet unanswerable questions that have always stained the human condition. To ignore the ways in which the human condition has remained the same despite the passage of time, and therefore transcends time, is to deny truth.
Truth, knowledge, morals, etc. – if these things do not transcend their time and place, then everything is relative. Reading history through the lens of relativism, we create the understanding that truth’s value, throughout time, has been based on its relevance to a particular time and place. History therefore becomes “little more than an archeological resource useful for illustrating positions once held, but for the most part outmoded and meaningless now”[1]. This viewpoint carries with it not just an understanding of the past, but an implicit suggestion for the present: if truth is based in relevance, then today, society should serve whatever it finds to be most collectively relevant. Our society would have the economy be the most collectively relevant system capable of serving and unifying the most people, and therefore, our leaders would direct society towards the service of the economy. The stated purpose of the STEM movement in American education is to benefit the American economy, and therefore, STEM is perfectly compatible with the pragmatism of modernity. The problem is, however, that the STEM model reflects a “form of modernism incapable of satisfying the demands of truth” to which Catholic schools are called to respond.[2]
In responding to the demands of truth, we cannot limit our values, goals, meaning, and purpose to our particular time and place; we are called to recognize our responsibility to both the past and the future. Studying the humanities gives us clues to our transcendent nature. Philosophy, art, literature, religion, language, music, and history, all articulate the very real ways in which we are still part of a transcendent collective human journey on earth – an experience that is never limited to a particular people or a particular time.
Our God is the God of truth that surpasses time, transcends space, and is ultimately beyond even human understanding. While Catholic education is rooted in these transcendent truths, it is dangerous to underestimate the power of the market. The market has vast influence, even over curriculum. As Timothy O’Malley recently wrote in Notre Dame’s Church Life Journal in an article addressing Catholic education and the technocratic paradigm, “Educational curricula will be dehumanized through the power of the market, erasing the last vestiges of the liberal arts in Catholic education.”[3] While it might be some time before my school does away with our Religious Studies or English departments, abandoning our library for the promises of technocracy is a clear step in that direction.
Both.And.Yet. 