"It’s very orthodox in the different presentations, which are tied to liturgy and Scripture," he [Andrew James, director of religious education] said, "but it allows the children to reflect personally and to develop a sense of the holy on their own."There is just one problem: It does not use a student textbook, meaning there is no way of determining whether participants are getting a systematic, comprehensive presentation of the faith in conformity with the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
A defender of the program said she believed the students could pass any test they'd be given on the faith.
At St. Al's the text I use for my tenth grade Sunday School class, Send Out Your Spirit, remains on the list of "texts and series have been found to be in conformity with the Catechism of the Catholic Church" according to the Catechism Update. But this is only because I complained the assigned text wasn't on the Bishops' list. Instead, it was selected some time back by a parish subcommittee. Their textbook exemplified The Error of Incompleteness. Its actual text sections totaled fourteen pages, with lots of white space and pictures. On page 14 it says
Roman Catholics believe that the act of faith is intimately connected with the content of the faith ...
The Bishops' committee apparently didn't think it met that need.
On the other hand, the students do take an archdiocesan test at the end of the year. Its fifty multiple choice questions. (Maybe we should instead have them take these.) The publisher's lesson plans contemplate 90 minutes to three hours for each of the text's ten chapters. Since I have four two hour classroom sessions (up from three originally planned), I have less than an hour per chapter. As a result, I'm pretty much teaching to the test.
Four sessions only? for the whole year?
ReplyDeleteBack in my supposedly-lax immediately post-conciliar days, ccd class for us public-schoolers was 1 to 1 1/2 hours a week for 9 months/year.
Of course, confirmation was in 5th or 6th grade, so classes for jr high and high schoolers were very small and only had those of us who actually wanted to be there; and tenth grade was the end of classroom, after that the parish put ya to work, and to study groups with the grownups.....
In addition to the four classroom sessions there are the following seven mandatory events:
ReplyDeleteParent/Student Orientation;
Mission Presentation with guest speaker;
"Parent/Teen Communication" presentation with guest speaker;
NET Retreat at a neighboring parish;
Stations of the Cross;
Parish Reconciliation Service; and
Closing Mass.