Building character through virtue

Our Catholic schools exist to serve the Church’s mission of education and evangelization. Parents entrust their children to Catholic schools with the expectation that our schools will form and inform their children as well as keep them safe from harm. Catholic schools have a longstanding commitment to educating the whole child—mind, body, heart, and spirit. Through education of the whole child, we aim to provide students with a faith that enables them to choose the right course of action in difficult situations and to grow in practical and ethical insight over time.

Catholic schools across the Diocese of Fargo are implementing character education and formation of the whole human person through the pursuit of virtues. St. John Paul II Catholic Schools in Fargo is in the first year of implementing “Education in Virtue,” an interactive curriculum structured on the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas. The program was developed by the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist from Ann Arbor, Mich. It is designed so that the entire student body is studying the same virtue each week, to provide a whole school focus. The program covers 38 virtues over the course of a year.

Daily prayer, role-playing, and modeling provide students with a foundation in virtuous living. Across all grade levels, instructors define each virtue to give shared understanding throughout the system. Students learn how to live out the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, and the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.

Sara Dudley, principal at St. Michael’s School in Grand Forks, is in year three of implementing the Education in Virtue program. She says, “ Education in Virtue has provided our school with a thorough and complete program that gives students the language of virtue and the examples of the saints. With each virtue, students have a prayer that is developmentally appropriate to help them grow in virtue and grow closer to God. The whole school implementation of Education in Virtue helps students understand all of the beautiful graces that God has given us.”

Catholic schools recognize that parents are the primary educators of their children. Through the partnership between school and home, parents are invited to follow each week in the study of virtue. Parents receive a monthly “School/Home Virtue” connection focusing on one of the theological or cardinal virtues. Included in the information are practical activities to do with the family as well as a saint study that will strengthen lessons from school.

Catholic schools are no doubt in the business of education, more importantly, we seek to inculcate the Church’s tradition and form students in mind, body, heart, and spirit. We are educating students not only for the time they spend in our schools, we are educating them for the time they will spend in the world, where they will make a difference.