Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Will the Graduate Honor His Teachers?

William McGurn wrote yesterday in the Wall Street Journal that one of the parallels between JFK and Obama is that both attended Catholic schools as children. Catholic schools produce results in urban areas where public schools are failing miserably. The longer students remain in Catholic schools, the more they out-achieve their public school counterparts. They also have higher retention and graduation rates.

Unfortunately, America's Catholic schools are in the midst of a crisis: they no longer have the numbers of nuns, priests, and brothers who once supplied these schools with low-cost teachers. When Kennedy was President, more than 5,000,000 children were enrolled in Catholic schools. Now, less than half of that number are enrolled.

This is Catholic Schools Week. Simply by acknowledging Catholic schools as a treasure that ought to be preserved, Obama could give them a badly needed shot of publicity. Will he?

2 comments:

Terri Wagner said...

I wonder if Rush is right...is this guy so arrogant he just can't acknowledge what amazing opportunities he's had.

MommaLlama said...

My guess is that he would rather people not tie him to his Catholic school upbringing! I mean, that would mean that he was taught right from wrong... and that murder is wrong... now, he can't have that hanging over his head right now! Especially with ole' Nancy wanting to push for even more funding for horror of abortion!