To Nurture the Soul of a Nation: Latino Families, Catholic Schools, and Educational Opportunity

  • Tompkins K
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Abstract

This Task Force report demonstrates that we can find extraordinary— even miraculous—stories of urban Catholic schools serving Latino communities with zeal and tenacity, in the most unlikely of places and with exceptional results. Our goal with this report is to shine a light on those schools, those roses in December, in order to identify ways to attract and sup- port the Latino community’s fuller participation in Catholic schooling in the United States. For the University of Notre Dame, this report is a first step toward a long-term commitment to attract and support the Latino community through U.S. Catholic schools. In it, this task force puts forth an audacious challenge: for the Church to provide a Catholic school advantage to 1 mil- lion Hispanic children within a de- cade. Doing so will entail doubling the percentage of Latino children, from 3 percent to 6, who currently benefit from the educational, social, and spiritual advantages of Catholic schooling while simultaneously re- versing the trend of urban Catholic school closures that disproportionately affect Latino communities and other populations in dire need of effective schools. We offer these reflections and recommendations in the spirit of San Juan Diego, with prayerful faith that the roses in December de- scribed here might enliven Catholic schools—and through them, Latino communities and the com- mon good—just as Our Lady of Guadalupe brought new life, first to the barren hillsides of Tepeyac and then to all the Americas.

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APA

Tompkins, K. (2011). To Nurture the Soul of a Nation: Latino Families, Catholic Schools, and Educational Opportunity. Journal of Catholic Education, 14(4). https://doi.org/10.15365/joce.1404102013

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