A Catholic education initiative in Melbourne and Sydney aims to achieve where previous catechetical approaches have failed, Melbourne Bishop Peter Elliott told The Record recently.
Both the Melbourne and Sydney archdioceses are trialling the provision of their secondary Religious Education texts in a digital format.
The format is free for Catholic schools throughout Melbourne and Sydney for the remainder of 2013, for use on personal computers, as well as on increasingly ubiquitous tablet devices. It will become a paid subscription service in 2014.
Bishop Elliott said the initiative was not only an answer to requests from schools dating back to the late 1990s, but also enabled integration with other material through the use of web links, integrated in the text.
“What began as a request from one school has now become very widespread,” Bishop Elliott said.
“It parallels what is happening with media information… in [the news media] industry, and we have to make the shift as smoothly as possible.
“The Religious Education texts were never meant to be standalone. They’re meant to provide core curriculum but they’ve always been open to be enriched.”
While the prospect of integrating external material with the To Know, Worship and Love series of texts brought many advantages, all links would be vetted for their suitability.
“We have to be cautious because the texts are never meant to be gateways into the purely secular, or worse still, anti-Christian material.
“So it’s not an open slather approach which would be highly irresponsible but it is within the ambit of the Catholic culture, the Catholic faith, and Catholic heritage.”
Although the texts are richer in their doctrinal content, they do not represent a retreat to earlier didactic methods of teaching.
Its treatment of vocation for Year 11 and 12 students was a case in point, Bishop Elliott said, beginning with the vocation to be human at conception, through to Baptism, the specific vocations, martyrdom and, finally, death itself as a potential gateway to eternal life.
The ability of an online format to link to websites, films and audio made much more concrete, historical examples of people trusting in and cooperating with grace.
“It’s what life is about. This is where the RE texts and the philosophy behind it in Melbourne and Sydney can achieve what was attempted but failed 40 years ago with the ‘life situation’ approach because we integrate doctrine, Scripture, liturgy, and life.”
Bishop Elliott said that while he had ‘a lot of criticisms’ of the catechetical approaches that dominated Catholic education from the 1960s on, he did not doubt the good intentions of the educators who implemented them.
“It had a lot of ideals in it but I think it overestimated human capacities… They drained content out and jumped ahead to get effect; the life situation dominated the message and content of Catholic faith. You have to mix them together in a very specific way, which is what [contemporary] catechetics is attempting all around this country, right now.”
The texts integrate the three main themes of Catholic education over the last 50 years, Bishop Elliott said: The doctrinal content of the traditional approach; the Kerygmatic approach of situating contemporary life in the Scriptures, prominent in the 50s and 60s; and the life situation approach of the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
Bishop Elliott said that while past Catholic graduates may have had little doctrinal knowledge and experience of religious practice, they had a great fondness for the concept of social justice.
“That would be about the best effect that came out of that era. It left people with goodwill toward the Church who didn’t know what they believed but they knew they were meant to be good and just.
“Now we’ve tightened all that up and enriched it. Justice… runs right through the text.”
The teaching materials are steeped in Catholic culture and heritage in art and literature, from the very realistic to more abstract styles.
Melbourne will not abandon hard copy versions of the textbooks entirely. Bishop Elliott said there would always be a need, and for some, a preference, for hard copy texts.
More information about the Melbourne and Sydney trial of the To Know, Worship and Love e-Text trial is available at kwl.com.au.