What does Religious Education "look like" in Catholic Schools?

In the last post, I suggested that the experiences of preparing for and celebrating the Sacraments of the Eucharist, Penance, and Confirmation as a student in a Catholic School might somehow prepare students to understand and participate in the Sacraments more deeply as adults. I did not provide a theoretical framework to support the idea, although one framework that might be useful in describing part of the effect of experiencing the Sacraments might be social capital, as described in relationship to Catholic Schools by Fr. Andrew Greeley in a presentation he made in 1997 called Catholic School Research at the Crossroads. That is, the experience of the Sacraments might help to solidify students' identities as Catholic and their participation in the Catholic community. From the perspective of faith, experiencing the Sacraments might help students to develop a sort of "spiritual capital" - a shared faith experience - that benefits them both socially and spiritually and that they continue to seek throughout their lives.

The Role of Curriculum and Textbooks
Of course, it is also probable that students' experiences of the Sacraments - and of their faith more broadly - depend at least in part on the quality of the catechesis they experience. Like any other academic subject, teaching the Catholic Religion occupies a space in the class sequence of every day in the lives of K-12 Catholic School students. Also like other subjects, what students learn and how it affects their lives depends in large part on the knowledge of the teacher and the skill of the teacher in organizing instruction around the religion curriculum. In many (most?) cases, the primary source for organizing instruction is the religion textbook.

Based solely on personal experience, I found religion textbooks to be dull as both a student and a teacher. The textbook series that I used as a teacher rarely afforded the opportunity to do anything beyond reading the text and answering questions. There were no additional activities suggested; no suggestions for providing opportunities for students to live their faith; no instructions to the teacher about the Church teaching on the topics in the textbook or how to talk to kids about them. Textbooks in other subjects can - and do - provide teachers with all of those kinds of resources to enrich the classroom environment.

I know of no current research on Catholic religion textbooks outside of textbook evaluation studies. One such study was conducted by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Their study provides a useful guide to evaluating whether a textbook series is aligned with the Catechism and a list of textbook series that have been found to be so aligned. This is definitely a good first step. However, there is an important difference between the content of a textbook and the means through which the content is experienced by students.

Therefore, an interesting line of research for Catholic Schools researchers might be to investigate what religious education "looks like" in a Catholic School using one of the textbook series that conform to the teaching of the Catechism. Do the textbook series allow opportunities for students to experience their faith? Do they encourage reflection about the faith and action? Or do they support knowing about the faith but not knowing it personally?

Of course, I base my hunches on my own experiences in the classroom. I'd love to hear the experiences that others have had using religion textbook series, and whether or not these curriculum materials (i.e., textbooks) encourage an active faith, and not just rote learning of facts and stories through reading.