Who Do You Think You Are?
Updated: Sep 1
I specialise in how Catholic schools write their websites.
That means I must also read how Catholic MAC websites perform. Spoiler alert, not very well.
Many of the school website writers struggle with understanding what it means to be Catholic, or how to express it.
MAC web writers have an added problem. Many of them write as if they were still in a school. They don’t realise they are writing for a different demographic. Fortunately, on the evidence available from Catholic school websites, the schools pay little attention to their MAC writers’ efforts.
What’s Catholic?
A professional footballer going in once a week to give football training doesn’t turn a school into a football academy.
Schools have multiple first aid kits and qualified first aiders who treat pupils who are sick, suffer cuts and bruises or faint. That doesn’t make the place a hospital.
Celebrating the Eucharist once a term, with staff saying the occasional prayer and recording lists of spurious gospel values, doesn’t make the school Catholic.
I once lived on a new housing estate where there was no Catholic church. In fact, the parish was only being set up.
The parish priest lived in a council house. He celebrated Sunday Mass in a social club. That did not make the club a church.
During the week, he said Mass in an upstairs room in his council house. The ‘upstairs room’ had a symbolism of its own, but it was still in a council house.
We were happy when we built a church. It looked like a church. It was used as a church. We said weekly and daily Mass, celebrated the sacraments, attended religious ceremonies and activities and it was where we met God. Everyone fully understood what the church meant as the heart of our Catholic parish. We knew we were a living part of the diocese and of the worldwide Church. People living on the estate knew what our church stood for and why we went to it.
A Catholic school should have the same public image. The building, the activities, and the main purpose of education place it in the same category as every other school. It's Catholic nature makes it unique - rooted in the message of Jesus, playing a key role in the mission of the diocese, being a living thread in the colourful tapestry of the wider Church.
Those extra levels need to be proclaimed making the true nature of a Catholic school as visible as our church was on the estate.
A Catholic School?
The school is part of the Church’s mission to preach the gospel.
It does so by providing the most superb education possible to meet the needs of its pupils and particularly those in most need.
The education activities play out in the context of a living faith community of learning.
In a Catholic school a superb education is an expertly delivered programme of learning and growth intertwined with living the gospel message. As a result, its members experience, know, understand and can respond to the gospel message of salvation that comes from believing in Jesus Christ.
The leaders create a living faith community of learning. In that context of learning and growth the leaders show the gospel message and bring people to Jesus and salvation. These are the key elements that makes a Catholic school.
Say it loudly and clearly
Why don’t the writers say this? One Catholic school wrote the Nolan Principals for standards in public life governed them. Another said their mission was to “serve the Common Good”. It is bad enough to be so far off the mark without publishing their limited grasp for the entire world to read.
Write what your version of a living faith community of learning look like.
What does it feel like?
How does it affect those teaching and learning there?
How does the school's Catholic nature colour the way teaching is done?
In what ways are learning and growth delivered that shows it is Catholic?
Write about these issues on websites instead of polluting your website with nonsense about cooked-up values that do not relate to the gospels.
A word to MAC website writers.
You are not leading a school.
What you do and how you write about your part in Catholic education is different to the way your schools write about their role.
Write about how you create, sustain and enrich the Catholic schools you lead.
If you don’t know, ask for help.
A word to the diocesan authorities.
Clearly, you do not read the websites of your schools and MACs. You would not tolerate the sorry state of many of them if you actually read them.
Where is your published guidance on writing about Catholic education on websites?
Where is your modelled version of skilled writing that opens the richness of Catholic education without descending into slogans, shibboleths, jargon, and inane lists of so-called values?
Please point us to it.
Go wide – world wide
Schools rinse their staff through rigorous safeguarding procedures before allowing them among their students.
Their first aiders are trained and checked.
Why let unskilled writers with little understanding of these matters expose the Church to ridicule when they publish their work to a world-wide audience?
It is not called the world wide web for nothing.
© Ted Dunphy
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Disclaimer
I am not connected in any way with the Birmingham Diocesan Education Service or the Catholic Education Service. The views expressed here are my own and are based on experience, research and evidence.
The experience comes from teaching in and working with Catholic schools around England over many years.
The research is based on the past three years investigating Catholic school websites in countries around the world, but especially in England.
An evidence-based approach challenges and refines the learning from the experience and the research.
I strongly support Pope Francis’ concept of synodality as a way of finding truth. I listen before I talk. I welcome you to have your say.
Ted Dunphy
Tel: 44 (0) 1527 894659
Mobile: 44 (0) 7891 179180
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