Catholic guilt

I spent the day in a mall reading journal articles on Catholic education.  Most of them came from this new journal called International Studies in Catholic Education, but the most provocative one I read today was written by Michael Hand. Some very interesting stuff came up that are relevant to both my research and practice:

A whole bunch of the articles dealt with challenges faced by Catholic education–such as globalization, the ideology of secularism and the decline of “strategic subsidy” due to the lack of religious vocations. 

One registered and intrigued researcher

Officially registered as a research student

Yesterday I braved the English cold, took the London tube, and found my way to the Institute of Education to register, get an ID, and have my computer accounts for the internet and library access all set up. I was able to find some of the journals I couldn’t access from Singapore–and this morning I finished reading one article written by Michael Hand with a deceptively simple title, “Religious Education.”

Really, really interesting! At first blush, it seems quite irrelevant to my research and to our work back home since it talks about the different justifications of Religious Education in the U.K. Of course the situation in the U.K. is so different from ours in Manila–most especially in Catholic schools run by religious congregations. Whereas the UK RE has moved to what is called the phenomenological approach which tackles different world religions, ours has remained quite confessional in nature and its purpose socialization into Catholic beliefs and practices still.

Scholarly thoughts in Sevilla, Spain

Studying in Seville, of all places.  I’m actually here for an IB Conference, then I fly to London at the end of the week to meet with my supervisor at the IoE and do some research there.

My research assistant has just completed administering the survey to the teachers in Naga.  I’m told it went pretty smoothly, taking about 30 minutes only.  He will be flying to Mindanao this whole week to do the same for six schools there.   And I think next week he goes to the Visayas.

So more or less, the dye has been cast.  We are now officially into the data-gathering phase of our study.  Keeping my fingers crossed that the survey will yield some insight that’s interesting and relevant not only for my study, but for the different schools as well.  After all, I promised the schools a session on epistemology with their teachers, if they wish.  That’s bribery to get them to say “yes” to the study. 🙂