THE END OF EDUCATION - Dominic Iocco

The American education system is broken. I saw this first hand running a company, where all too often, the graduates we hired from respected universities were completely unprepared for a career. I also saw it first hand as the Provost of a Catholic University. We routinely welcomed students who were not ready for university education. As a country, we’ve dumbed down education, focused on politically correct indoctrination, and our measure of success has become a standardized test score - and even on those, we’ve made no progress.

We should not be surprised. When God was removed from the classroom, no other result was possible. How can we educate students when we’ve lost sight of the ultimate purpose of the person we are trying to educate? If I want to build a house, I need a blueprint. If we want to form a person, we must start with the end in mind. Education must begin with understanding our ultimate purpose. We are sons and daughters of God, and true happiness is found in knowing, loving, and serving Him. At a time when depression and anxiety are at all-time highs, especially among young people, we need to remind our students why we are here and what leads to authentic happiness.

Thankfully, Catholic schools in this diocese are well on their way to restoring Catholic education. At Lansing Catholic, our mission is to form students spiritually, intellectually, and socially into faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. This mission is critically important. That is why I moved my family back home to Michigan, honored to accept the role of LCHS President. We know that families are the fundamental building block of society. Parents are the primary educators of their children. Family time matters. Schools must partner with parents, not contradict them, and education must focus on the whole person: spirit, mind, and body. We take seriously the intellectual and moral virtues in order to prepare students for a fully human life, one lived in the service of others.

Education should seek to cultivate in students a love for learning and a desire for wisdom. Lansing Catholic refuses to operate as a “factory” for the learning of various skills and competencies, even though we do equip our graduates with enviable skills. Education is what’s left after the content is forgotten. We aim to liberate students from the “dictatorship of relativism” – which cripples all genuine education by eliminating the objective truths of reality. We take seriously both faith and reason as we educate “in the truth.”

We strive to cultivate a community marked by true friendship. We aim to form in our students those virtues that will enable friendships and community to flourish. Ultimately, we recognize that none of this is possible unless we ourselves are missionary disciples: for we cannot give what we do not have. Every day, we try to imitate more closely the perfect example - Jesus Christ. At Lansing Catholic, we believe that forming saints is the true object of Catholic education. The only way to fix education is to start with the end in mind: and our end, our true aim, is eternal life.

For more information about Lansing Catholic High School, visit lansingcatholic.org.