Excellence and Catholic Education

By David G. Bonagura, Jr. "Excellence," along with its cousin "success," is the most overused word in education. It adorns mission statements and admission pitches at all levels of both Catholic and secular schools, seeking to convince prospective students to enroll and prospective donors to give. The Catholic elementary school where I was educated, to name but one, had a citation on its outdoor sign: "A National School of Excellence." The honor was bestowed by some accrediting agency that somehow wielded the majestic power to define what is excellent. And there is the game: everyone uses "excellence," but no one really knows what it means. The dictionary defines excellence as "the state of possessing good qualities in an unusual or eminent degree; the state of excelling in anything." For Aristotle, excellence was synonymous with virtue, arete in Greek. A thing is "excellent" if it performs its purpose at a high level. A knife is excellent if it cuts well, a calculator is excellent if it calculates well, a person is excellent if he lives well. A school is excellent, then, if it educates well. As we celebrate Catholic Schools Week, whose bland theme for 2025, "United in Faith and Community," does not conjure excellence, we should consider what Catholic education is so that we can ensure that it is, in reality, excellent. Education, a word whose meaning is in the eye of the beholder, is the process of developing the minds and characters of youth through the study of nature and culture. Catholic education, as explained by the Sacred Congregation of Education, perfects education with grace, for it "works towards this goal [of education] guided by its Christian vision of reality." Young minds and characters are cultivated in order to foster "those particular virtues which will enable [the Christian] to live a new life in Christ and help him to play faithfully his part in building up the Kingdom of God." In other words, Catholic education employs academic study to develop young people's capacity to love God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love their neighbor as themselves. All courses and activities at Catholic schools - from arithmetic, art, band, and basketball to science, technology, theater, and writing - ought to contribute to meeting these two ends of Catholic education in their complementary ways. God is the Creator of all things; to study any aspect of Creation and to exercise the abilities He has given us leads us back to Him. Each Catholic school has its own style and emphases, yet each has to unite its particulars to the whole - the catholic - vision of God as Creator, Jesus Christ as Redeemer, and human beings who, made in God's image, are on pilgrimage to Heaven. A Catholic school achieves "excellence" to the degree that its particulars - curriculum, sports, activities, programming, and religious formation - contribute to bringing students to God. And the particulars cannot be viewed apart from the whole. If an academic curriculum helps students grow in wisdom, virtue, and faith, it is excellent; if it is a disjointed series of courses that do not foster growth in both reason and faith, it is not excellent, regardless of how many students matriculate at Ivy League universities or work for Fortune 500 companies. If a sports program teaches sportsmanship and helps athletes grow in their talents with an awareness that their abilities are gifts from God, it is excellent. If it cares only about winning without an eye to the greater good, it falls short, regardless of how many trophies it accumulates. If a band program makes terrific music conscious that, as an expression of human creativity, its power points to the infinite creative powers of God, it is excellent. If it requires practice every Sunday morning before performing in that afternoon's football game, it contradicts everything that a Catholic school stands for, regardless of how much admiration its music draws. Given how difficult it is to...