COMISION NACIONAL PARA EL DESARROLLO DE LOS PUEBLOS INDIGENAS
III. ANTECEDENTES HISTÓRICOS
Given their commitment to educating the whole person, to providing a thorough, critical, and liberative education, and to understanding education as a work of justice, the mission of all-‐girls’ Catholic schools is a feminist mission. All-‐ girls’ Catholic schools are concerned about girls – about prioritizing the education of girls in a society that does not always value women and girls. While not denying the need for quality education for boys in all-‐boys’ schools or for girls and boys in coeducational schools, the all-‐girls’ Catholic school is committed to the
empowerment of girls so that they can take up whatever future they want. Even when schools hesitate to name it as such, this is a feminist mission.
Feminist pedagogy draws from two distinct sources: liberative pedagogy120
and feminist theory. It then interrogates schools and schooling practices to determine the influence of a patriarchal culture and it proposes pedagogical
approaches that both include the voices of women in the curriculum and that model ways of knowing that speak to the experiences of women. Feminist pedagogy is not merely adding some examples of women to a curriculum that is written by and from the perspective of men; nor is feminist pedagogy simply about the education of
women or education about feminist perspectives. Rather it is an approach that re-‐ imagines the entire learning experience in a way that privileges the experiences of women and seeks to foster a dialogue that will lead to the transformation of society.121
Catholic schools and feminist educators both hold the conviction that the student is inherently good and to be valued. Feminist educators would put a priority on the recognition of the goodness of female students so that they do not get lost in either an uncritical assumption that boys and girls have similar
experiences of school and so that the female students aren’t socialized into a dualistic anthropology that privileges the male experience. Catholic schools and feminist educators both put significant stress on the role that critical reasoning plays in personal growth. A feminist pedagogy, borrowing from the work of Paulo Freire, insists that critical reflection on the experience of oppression is foundational for ending that oppression and establishing a world where each person will flourish. Finally, Catholic schools and feminist educators both have a profound concern for the establishment of justice. For feminist educators, the creation of a more just world is the central concern driving all of the analysis and the classroom and school
121 Robbin D. Crabtree, David Alan Sapp, and Adela C. Licona, “Introduction: The Passion and the Praxis
of Feminist Pedagogy,” in Feminist Pedagogy: Looking Back to Move Forward, ed. Robbin D. Crabtree, David Alan Sapp, and Adela C. Licona (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 4. It is important to note that feminist pedagogy is a large and diverse reality; the ways that feminist pedagogy is engaged is determined, in part, by which feminist theories are utilized. For an excellent discussion of the variety of these, please see Carolyn Zerbe Enns and Ada L. Sinacore, “Second-Wave Feminisms and Their Relationships to Pedagogy” in Teaching and Social Justice: Integrating Multicultural and Feminist Theories in the Classroom, ed. Carolyn Zerbe Enns and Ada L. Sinacore (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2005), 25-39; Ada L. Sinacore and Carolyn Zerbe Enns, “Diversity Feminisms: Postmodern, Women-of-Color, Antiracist, Lesbian, Third-Wave, and Global Perspectives” in Teaching and Social Justice: Integrating Multicultural and Feminist Theories in the Classroom, ed. Carolyn Zerbe Enns and Ada L. Sinacore (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2005), 41-68.
practices and policies. Without a concern for justice, feminist pedagogy is hollow and useless.
In an interesting study, Mary Rose McCarthy surveyed and interviewed teachers at several all-‐girls’ Catholic schools and found that the school policies, curriculum, and classroom practices reflected a feminist pedagogy.122 McCarthy
found that the teachers and administrators at these all-‐girls’ Catholic schools viewed their work as service to women and as providing students with the tools they would need to create their own futures. They saw the tensions that existed between their goals and practices and the expectations of mainstream society and the Catholic Church. They were influenced by the feminist movement and were actively creating feminist educational strategies that drew on the spiritual heritages of their
schools.123 Of particular interest is the way in which the teachers in these Catholic
all-‐girls’ schools understood their students:
In their philosophy, the individual has dignity and worth as God’s creation. The school communities’ understandings of womanhood include the sense that women are capable and competent; that they are responsible and autonomous human beings; that they are, as God’s children, the subjects of their own lives; and that they are accountable to communities in which they live and work.124
Interestingly, many of the teachers made a distinction between the ways that their Catholic faith had positively shaped their understanding of women and their
122 Mary Rose McCarthy, “Feminist Pedagogy and Teachers in Catholic Women’s High Schools,” Journal
of Women and Religion 17 (1999): 57-68. The study involved 430 teacher surveys at 85 all-girls’ Catholic high schools and sought to answer the following questions: “We wanted to know if [the teachers] saw education as a political project in which relationships between systems of class, race and gender oppression must be acknowledged. We wondered if they challenged traditional forms of educational structures and if women’s narratives of their experiences were seen as valid sources of knowledge. Did their curricula reflect a balance of perspectives, including those that have been neglected in the past? Did their classroom practices promote critical thinking about society and the educational process? Did they negotiate the power relationships among themselves and their students?” (58-59).
123 McCarthy, “Feminist Pedagogy,” 59.
frustration with the institutional Church and its failures to promote gender equality.125 McCarthy concludes that all-‐girls’ Catholic high schools do, in fact,
reflect a feminist pedagogy in their approach to school policy, curricular decisions, and classroom practices.
All-‐girls’ Catholic schools, as places that value girls, are living out a feminist pedagogical perspective. By explicitly claiming to educate the whole person, to provide a thorough and challenging curriculum that is liberative, and to educate for justice, these schools are feminist institutions.
Every dimension of school life is lived by pupils and teachers in girls’ single-‐ sex schools as if there should be no difference between the future aspirations of women and men… [At girls’ schools], girls learn “how to be” not only full participants in the Catholic, female tradition, but also, through a learning trajectory, what “sort of person they wish to become.”126
If the Catholic school is to be a conscientizing and liberating place for those who are marginalized and oppressed, then the all-‐girls’ Catholic school is a place where girls are invited to think critically about the patriarchal forces that ground society and the Church and to engage in resistance to those patriarchal institutions. All-‐girls’ Catholic schools have the opportunity to help girls “to become visible, to have their questions heard, to have their answers listened to, to hear a word of theology that ennobles them, too, and to be sent, as the Samaritan woman was, to evangelise cities where, as scripture says clearly ‘Because of her thousands were converted that day.’”127
125 McCarthy, “Feminist Pedagogy,” 65.
126 Darmanin, “Empowering Women,” 97.
127 Joan D. Chittister, “Reimagining the Catholic School in this New Century,” in Reimagining the Catholic
1.3 CONCLUSION
At the beginning of this chapter, the stories of Georgetown Visitation
Preparatory School and Mount Saint Joseph Academy stood as instantiations of the wide variety of all-‐girls’ Catholic schools in the United States. Today, the mission statements of these two schools are apt illustrations of the Catholic mission of all-‐ girls’ schools. In its mission statement, Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School commits itself to the education of young women who are valued in their own right, educated to think critically about the world, and empowered to find their place in making the world a better place.
Georgetown Visitation, founded in 1799, is a college preparatory school rooted in the Roman Catholic faith and Salesian tradition, committed to educating young women from diverse backgrounds. We are a faith-‐centered community dedicated to educational excellence, enriched by co-‐curricular and service programs. Our mission is to empower our students to meet the demands and challenges of today’s rapidly changing and morally complex world. We guide our students to become self-‐reliant, intellectually mature, and morally responsible women of faith, vision, and purpose.128
Students who attend this school are provided with the very best of educational opportunities and are expected to live lives that make a difference. The school recognizes the diversity among students and the ability of students to engage the world around them. They are valued as unique expressions of God’s care and as made in the image and likeness of God. As young women of “faith, vision, and purpose,” these students are being called to lives of full human flourishing as they enable others to also flourish in communities of justice and care.
Before its closure in 2012, students at Mount Saint Joseph Academy were
128 Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School, “Mission Statement,” http://www.visi.org/about-us/mission-
similarly valued as persons created by God and as called to great things. In its mission statement, the school committed itself to preparing young women who would succeed at college and in whatever they were called to do.
Mount Saint Joseph Academy, a Catholic High School for young women, provides a college preparatory education in a community of lived Christian values. Founded and sponsored by the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Boston, Mount Saint Joseph Academy promotes academic excellence, cultivates respect for all people, fosters unity and reconciliation, and educates young women for compassionate leadership and service.129
The school saw women as leaders who will, through their work with others, make the world a better place. Living out of their common Christian values, the students of Mount Saint Joseph Academy belonged to a community that claimed to respect others, to create community with others, and to lead or serve that community as needed. Sent out into the world, these were students prepared to live out these commitments.
The stories of these two schools speaks to the larger history of communities of women who took seriously the education of women and the roles that women played in society. All-‐girls’ Catholic schools were and continue to be committed to the education of girls as girls – as valuable in their own right. By preparing students for whatever challenges they will face, these schools evidence a confidence in the abilities and potential of young women. Not only are girls understood as basically good (as demanded by Catholic teaching), they are valuable, necessary, and created by God. In short, the history and mission of all-‐girls’ Catholic schools reveals a set of institutions that recognize that girls are made in the image of God and, therefore, are
129 The Mount: The Voice and Vision for Mount Saint Joseph Academy Alumnae, Students, and Friends,
valuable members of schools communities, of the Church, and of society as a whole. Young women who attend all-‐girls’ Catholic school not only receive a
challenging academic education, they are helped to see themselves as persons created in the image of God. As such, they are valued in their own right; they are invited to be who they are, to embrace the sometimes-‐messy givenness of
adolescence, and to become self-‐confident young women who value themselves and others. As persons made in the image of God they are empowered to resist the cultural forces that seek to marginalize women and, especially, adolescent girls and to work to fight the patriarchal worldviews that shape the sexism of their society and Church. All-‐girls’ Catholic schools, because of their grounding in the larger mission of Catholic education and their often unacknowledged feminist approach, are able to help girls confront the challenges of being a young women in the twenty-‐ first century, to counter the conflicting and impossible expectations laid upon girls in the United States, and to resist the pressure to conform to the expectations of others. With this perspective, all-‐girls’ Catholic schools are not institutions that reproduce the patriarchy of the dominant culture; rather, they are sites where these can be identified, analyzed, and challenged by girls who are then prepared to make a real difference in the world for other girls, women, and marginalized people.
Given this discussion of the history and mission of all-‐girls’ Catholic schools and given the profound commitments to the girls who are students in these schools, it is appropriate to turn next to the girls themselves. Girls who attend all-‐girls’ Catholic schools are not removed from the cultural norms and societal pressures of the twenty-‐first century. And, if all-‐girls’ Catholic schools are going to be feminist
institutions prepared to challenge the patriarchy of the dominant culture, then the ways that that dominant culture is experienced by girls must be explored.
2.0 CHAPTER TWO