Education

Reply to Robert Gordis By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Catholics are used to attacks on their school systems from professional critics like the editors of The New Age or: Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Often bitter and seldom objective, these agencies are at least predictable and to that […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. In 1894 John Dewey was invited to the newly founded University of Chicago to become head of its department of philosophy and psychology. He replied that he would accept the appointment if the department would include the subject of pedagogy. His proposal was approved, and Dewey became dean of […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Surely one of the great developments of our day has been the rise and growth of what is popularly called home schooling, and what I prefer to describe as home education. Behind this development is far more than a reaction to the inadequacy of so many organized schools in […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. When John Dewey celebrated his ninetieth birthday on October 20, 1949, fifteen hundred guests crowded a huge ballroom in New York City to do him honor. Messages of congratulation poured in from President Harry Truman, Prime Minister Atlee, Pandit Nehru, and from a hundred United States colleges and universities. […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. So much has been written and said about secular higher education in North America that it seems almost arrogant to try to add anything new or different to a mounting library of information on the subject. Yet perhaps I have a message and what I have to say will […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. I could not do justice to the depth of spiritual hunger among the students, which is not being satisfied in the present system of university education. Each contact with the undergraduates gives further evidence that they want to learn desperately about man’s relations with God. There are several reasons […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. In a recent issue of the American Mercury, under the title of “Fund for Whose Republic?” One of the editors critically examines the seven years’ record of the Fund for the Republic and finds it seriously wanting. He describes it as “the non-respectable left-wing of the wide-ranging Ford Foundation […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. The perennial problem for Catholic teachers of Latin and Greek literature is how to integrate these disciplines into the ultimate aim of education, which “ennobles what is merely natural in life and secures for it new strength in the material and temporal order, no less than in the spiritual […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. At the outset, I would like to change two words in our title. I wish to address myself to home education in the heart of the Catholic Church. I have one reason for each of these two changes. Homeschooling has become a legalistic term which some are interpreting as […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. This must seem like a strange title, “Mother Teresa, A Model for the Home Educating Family.” What is strange is that Mother Teresa never had a natural family of her own. In her early years she had vowed herself to a lifetime of consecrated chastity by sacrificing marriage and […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Part I: Past History—Motivational Factor for Home-Schooling and Parent-Based Orthodox Family Schools Reason for Change Having felt the existing educational establishments available to them are inadequate, several families in Omaha, Nebraska have begun in their efforts to found St. Thomas Aquinas Academy, starting with grades 9 through 12 (see […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Most people do not realize how secularized our nation has become. By secularized, I mean a society in which practical atheism is rapidly determining our national culture. To illustrate what I mean, yesterday I went to our library at the University of Detroit to see what a standard up-to-date […]