World News
Academics and faith should go together, says head of NCEA
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GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (CNS) -- As the new school year gets under way, Catholic educators may wonder if academics or faith should get more emphasis in the classroom. Karen Ristau, president of the National Catholic Educational Association, believes the two should go hand in hand. "My big question is how can we talk about Catholic identity and excellent academics in the same sentence, the same paragraph," she said in an Aug. 30 address to nearly 500 educators at the Diocese of Grand Rapids' back-to-school kickoff at Catholic Central High School in Grand Rapids. Ristau urged the group of staff members and pastors from Catholic schools to remember that their schools promote "a Catholic way of life" and should "cultivate a sense of awe and gratitude, a desire for truth, an ability to continue learning about the world and the knowledge that we are especially loved by God." "We want young people to learn that this is how we do things, this is how we live," she added. Ristau told her listeners that Catholic education has changed since she and many others in the room attended Catholic schools and certainly since Catholic Central became the nation's first private coeducational high school in 1906. Where religious once dominated the classrooms, she said, now 96 percent of teachers in Catholic schools are laypeople.
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