College or Heaven? Orienting School Culture to the Highest Pursuits

"As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” -- 1 Peter 1:15-16

If you were to ask the students of St. Rose of Lima Catholic Academy in Denver, CO, during my tenure as principal, what their most important goal was, I would venture to say that many would probably answer with some variation of, "To go to college and to go to heaven." This message was drilled into them. It was repeated during our daily morning assembly, our monthly 'crew' gatherings (known by many of you as mixed grade 'school families'), and other community assemblies throughout the year. It was part of the student pledge they memorized and recited: "I am going to college. I am going to heaven. We are St. Rose." The words "college" and "heaven" were tapered on the walls in our building, the pages of our newsletter, and appeared on every click of our website. I think at some point we may have even had t-shirts with those words printed—after all, it isn’t official until it is on a T-shirt.  
 
As I reflect on that time, I wish someone would have challenged me to consider the message we were giving our students. I must confess, as a teacher and at the start of my time as a school leader, I wholly bought into the college/career obsession that has befallen education and schooling today. Especially working in a school like St. Rose of Lima in Denver, where many students were most likely going to be the first in their family to graduate high school, let alone go to college, promoting college and a well-paying professional career seemed like a no-brainer. Necessary even. And heaven? That was a no brainer add on. We were a Catholic school after all!  
 
Over time, through the renewal of my own heart and mind as a Catholic educator and leader, I have come to realize that even if well intended, the messages students were receiving fell incredibly short in conveying the fullness of what the Church proposes as the highest aims for her schools. Sadly, too, it was leading to some great confusion in the hearts and minds of our students. One of these students was a young man who we will call Adan.  
 
Adan's background and story resembled that of many students who I taught and worked with throughout my career as a teacher and school leader. He was a Latino young man who grew up in the heart of urban Denver. His parents worked hard to make ends meet for his family and provide Adan with a Catholic education. I ran into Adan at a community event a few years after he graduated from St. Rose of Lima. It was an awkward ‘catch-up’. Adan was very sheepish with me and after some small talk, he revealed the source of his sheepishness. He opened-up about feeling embarrassed talking to me because in his mind he didn't succeed like St. Rose of Lima had expected of him. He didn't go to college. In fact, he had to get his GED because he had dropped out of high school. He was now working to provide for his family. As I asked him what his desires and plans were, I heard a young man who longed to live a good and virtuous life, but was convinced he was a failure.
 
Hearing Adan painfully describe his situation with the conviction that he was a failure, crushed me. What crushed me was not that he had failed to live up to the St. Rose standard we drilled into him and many other students. What crushed me was the realization that in fact, we had failed him. We had failed in helping him to realize that this longing for goodness and virtue was indeed the longing that would lead to heaven—you know, the other part of our two-word articulation of student outcomes. Our failure was in treating the aim of ‘heaven’ as a perfunctory Catholic word to use in our mission statement language to ensure we could display a strong link to our Catholic identity or as a word to use to give cover to character formation.
 
I can tell you that as a teacher and young school leader, I never really spent time considering what beliefs our school was transmitting to students directly and indirectly through the messages we shared with and instilled in students. Looking back to my time as a principal, I wish I had spent more time asking and answering the question: "What, in the mind and heart of the Church, is the greatest aim we can help our students to aspire to through their education? Is college and career really all there is? Is academic excellence the mission imperative of a Catholic school?” Thanks be to God, though, it was the question that my second Pastor pushed us to start asking in response to stories like Adan’s. Fortunately, we didn’t need to search far, for it was the Church that provided a beautiful and clear answer:  
 

"In fact, since education consists essentially in preparing man for what he must be and for what he must do here below, in order to attain the sublime end for which he was created, it is clear that there can be no true education which is not wholly directed to man's last end," (Divini Illius Magistri, Pope Pius XI, #7).

What is the greatest aim, the ultimate aspiration and pursuit we can plant in the heart and mind of our students? In one word: holiness. While college can certainly be a means to continue our spiritual, intellectual, human, and vocational formation so as to mature and live the good and virtuous life, it is not the highest aim for human flourishing. Even though we talked about "heaven" as one of the goals, it was an afterthought, a "no brainer add-on." We never seriously considered what the implications were of pointing to heaven as a student learning expectation. Ultimately, though, it was thought of as a reality separate from the academic work of the school and thus, became an afterthought. Even the way the words were sequenced-- "College and Heaven"-- conveyed at once an inherent value equivalence and an order and hierarchy of importance.  
 
Here I want to point out what is arguably the most powerful means of education and formation that exists in a school: culture. School culture can be defined as the guiding beliefs and values evident in the way a school operates (Fullan, 2007), how adults and students behave, and how decisions are made. Culture is taught and reinforced through the messages we share, the words we use, the things we celebrate and encourage, what we correct, and what we allow to happen or not. School culture has the power to transmit critical beliefs that can shape and form the mind and heart of a person. In my experience, school culture is what enables or deforms the labor of education of the human person.  
  
If I were to take the newsletters, school social media posts, emails, annual reports, and transcripts of conversations we had with students at St. Rose of Lima, Denver at the time, and plot out the frequency of certain messages over others, you would probably see that much of the airtime in these spaces was dominated by words, phrases, and messages that, whether intended or not, conveyed to students, families, and donors alike a very particular belief:  

“At St. Rose of Lima Catholic Academy, we believe academic excellence is the most important endeavor in this school. It will be measured by students going to college and getting a well-paying career. These are the markers of success, on par with getting to heaven, and depending on how you look at it, maybe even more important than heaven.” 
 
And the result? Certain messages became internalized in the hearts and minds of our community:  

• "You're a failure if you don't go to college.” 

• "Your success is contingent on going to college."  

• "You can't be a good person without going to college."  

• "Heaven is important, but college is just as important.”
  
  

We know many Catholic school graduates may not go to college, and that's okay. Many others will. However, regardless of the worldly pursuits and outcomes of our graduates, what remains as the standard for them all is sanctity.  

This doesn’t take away at all from the fact that as schools we do aim to provide the most rigorous intellectual formation (academic excellence). In fact, focusing on sanctity and heaven, first, rightly-orders the school’s rigorous intellectual pursuits with students (academic excellence) and elevates it to even greater heights, transforming it from an education for mere utility which easily fixates on a low standard of freedom and happiness:  

“Learning is good insofar as it helps me to do and achieve useful things in this world that bring me wealth, status, and influence.” 

…to an education for true freedom and happiness, one which offers students a greater purpose to learning:  

“Learning is good because it enables me to know Jesus, love truth (wisdom), set me free to live in conformity with God’s plan for my life (virtue), and thus, get to heaven.” 

Inevitably, because it is ordered to the highest pursuits beyond the worldly, it also makes learning more meaningful, more impactful, more engaging, and more rigorous, increasing the worldly outcomes of students because they will be well formed humans, not merely cogs in an economic wheel. How much more invigorating and rigorous, for example, does math and science become when the learning is positioned as the intellectual pursuit that allows us to get a glimpse into the genius of the God who created the universe to draw us to himself for a relationship of love, instead of being positioned merely as an endeavor to endure to get into advanced STEM courses in high school so you can test out of them in college or as the disciplines to pursue to get into great paying careers post-college. 
  
Here too, though, we must be cautious because we could be tempted to view even the highest aim through a utilitarian lens and get caught seeing our work as a Catholic factory producing, making, or creating saints. While well intended and even if oriented toward higher aims, I would argue that this language conveys confusion for a few key reasons. 

• First, sanctity is not something to be produced, but something to be nurtured to grow through good formation. It is the result of intentionality and of an intentionality built Catholic school culture. 
• Secondly, it is the Lord's work of sanctifying that produces saints (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1999). It is not possible for human efforts alone to produce or make saints, but we can participate in this work in a school setting by forming a culture and environment where the Lord can readily go to work sanctifying students and families, raising saints for this time.  
• Thirdly, it is in the heart of the school of the family where the duty to form children for holiness is primary (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2221-2231). Schools must be viewed as cooperators and supporters of parents whose God given duty it is to educate their children to fulfill God’s law and must operate with full respect and recognition of this reality in order for it to not be destructive of each other (Divini Illius Magistri, Pope Pius XI, #77). One of the primary ways this occurs is through calling families to their greater purpose as primary educators, and to help them to understand then, the highest aims and pursuits of the Catholic school as a service to their greater purpose.  

So, what if our school culture was defined first by the Church's conviction that the work of the Catholic school is to be a "sanctuary of education" (Divini Illius Magistri, Pope Pius XI, #77) that supports families in their God given mission to prepare their children for what they must be here in this world (holy and virtuous men and women—saints) so they can attain the end for which they were created (heaven)?  How would this conviction impact how we order our day and use our time, approach the content we teach, the books that we read with students, the things we celebrate or post on social media, or how we spend our money? What messages would we share with students, families, and others?
  
I wish these were the questions I would have led with and spent time discerning early on in my career as a Catholic school leader with my pastor and with my faculty and staff. I do believe they hit at the heart of forming a vibrant Mission Passionate Catholic School culture, a culture where students can internalize that success in the eyes of the Church and in ours as Catholic educators is for them: 

• "To be holy and blameless in his sight, all the days of my life."  

• "To be holy as the Father in heaven is holy."  

• "To live a holy life through the vocation I have been uniquely created for."  

• "To be a saint and get to heaven." 
•  

 Imagine with me what our school environments would feel like and sound like if any one of these phrases is what you heard students respond with and repeat when asked what they have learned is their most important goal in life. These are the indicators of student success that capture the highest vision of excellence we believe our students are worthy of as children of God. It is a vision that says, 

“Adan, you matter more than whether you go to college or get a lucrative career. Your worth and dignity are so great, that the God of the universe calls you to be holy as he is holy. We will assist you in growing in knowledge and wisdom and refining your gifts as a human person so that you can be an agent of holiness in this world through the profession and vocation the Lord has in mind for you.” 

This is what the Church calls our Catholic schools to cultivate in our students—a sense of their infinite dignity and supernatural purpose. Such a school environment could truly transform lives and change the world… 

And would have lots of cool T-shirts.