How to Argue for Christian Day Schools

Timothy Cardinal Dolan gives instruction indirectly to those neo-Calvinists spooked by Betsy DeVos:

These stellar Catholic schools help the community dramatically. Let me just mention one incredible stat: 98% of our high school seniors graduate on time, and 96% of them go on to college! A large part of that high school success is that our Catholic elementary schools do a great job getting students ready to learn and thrive in high school. No wonder we’re so proud of them, and committed to keeping them open!

But these celebrated schools that so help society need help! Although four of these school changes were decided because the school is no longer connected to a local parish church and office, and only two were made due to declining enrollment, it is still a fact that we must always fight for our schools. We often find ourselves in a catch-22: if we raise tuition, fewer parents, already sacrificing so much to meet even our modest tuition, can’t do it, and tearfully withdraw their children; if we don’t increase fees, well, we don’t have enough funds.

That’s why we’re so grateful to our benefactors, of all faiths or none, who are especially generous to our Inner City Catholic School Scholarship Fund, and to our own Catholic people, who dig deep each year to help keep them strong.

Notice that Dolan thinks by going private you help the public. The neo-Calvinist critics of DeVos seem to think education is a zero sum game — either pro-public or pro-private. If that’s the dynamic, why are neo-Calvinists still advocating private schools? (Thus, another way that Protestants shoot themselves in the foot on public education.)

One thought on “How to Argue for Christian Day Schools

  1. Shooting themselves in the foot or stepping on rakes? As I said in a previous post, if I hadn’t read “A Secular Faith” much of the debate taking place over the DeVos appointment wouldn’t make much sense. But what has clarified things for me even more is a recent post over Heidelblog with Machen’s 1926 testimony before both the Senate and House committee on the formation of the proposed Dept. of Education. It’s very interesting how Machen nailed it exactly all those decades ago and now here we are today with the Fed’s having intruded into the educational sector way too far, just as he had predicted.

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