CONTEMPORARY CATHOLIC SCHOOL. THE WAY TO ELITE EDUCATION.
Catholic education is a confessional-oriented system of education and upbringing, which aims at the transfer of the personality of a certain amount of religious information, a conscious perception of the content of the Catholic dogma, the formation of ideas about Catholicism as the highest spiritual value to be guided by the Catholic believer in everyday life.
When people hear the “Catholic school”, they often have the image of a closed, gloomy boarding house, where severe nuns make children read the Bible and pray. Probably, this stereotype was formed after the novels of English writers (for example, “Jane Eyre”), but it does not correspond to modern reality at all.
MAIN FEATURES OF MODERN CATHOLIC SCHOOL.
Catholic schools offer quality education, so it is very prestigious and it is not easy to enroll in them.
Despite the fact that schools are private schools, they receive financial support from the state, so the cost of training in them is often cheaper than private schools that are fully self-sufficient.
The programs of these schools are designed in accordance with state educational standards and are inspected by government officials. Some approaches to learning are so successful that they have become popular all over the world.
As a result of a competently implemented training program, at 6 years old (the first stage of compulsory education), children read well, write small dictations, and consider double-digit figures in the column. At 18 years after the end of the Lyceum (the last stage of school education), graduates successfully enter prestigious higher schools, in which, unlike universities, there is an introductory competition.
In Catholic schools, teachers are taught by qualified teachers with a state diploma.
Schools accept students regardless of their religion, so today not only Catholics but also Christians of different faiths, Muslims, atheists study there.
Catholic schools observe the national school schedule and the rhythm of the holidays.
IS THERE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE CHILDREN?
Children who study in such an education system don’t differ from others. They do the same thing as in a public or private school: they stay at school from 8.30 to 16.30, study, rest and rowdy in the schoolyard.
STILL, WHY WAS THE PREFIX “CATHOLIC” PRESERVED?
Despite the general secularity of education, there is still a certain Christian atmosphere in these schools. So, on the territory of the school, there is a chapel, in the classes, there are Catholic crosses with a crucifix. Periodically, students are told about the upcoming Christian holidays and unobtrusively explain the universal concepts of good and evil.
The theoretical basis of Catholic education since the late XIX century is “Catholic pedagogy” – a complex discipline associated with the confessional study of religion, psychology, linguistics, the theory of education, etc. The subject of this discipline is the principles of the comprehensive study of religion and the principles for the formation of a confessional worldview in children and youth in pre-school institutions, schools, and universities related in some way with the Catholic Church, in contrast to the Catholic catechetics is the teaching of believers themselves to the truths of the Catholic faith and morality on the basis of the “Catechism of the Catholic Church”. Finally, the Catholic school is a tradition and part of the cultural and historical heritage.