It often has been justly remarked that one of the defects of modern education is that although students are offered a large quantity of information taken from a wide range of subjects, they are seldom taught to think and to express their thoughts clearly. Presented with a new fact, they are unable to assimilate it or to refer it to what is already known, thereby giving their knowledge the unity of a coherent whole. Upon turning their consideration to a new subject they are unable to perform an elementary division of its parts or to distinguish a necessary demonstration from one that is merely probable, or detect an argument that is fallacious.

            This defect in mental formation is attributable to the simple fact that such formation is not a serious concern of modern education. An unreasonable profusion of subjects weakens and distracts the intellect. The methods of defining, distinguishing, arguing, and expressing oneself clearly and richly have been left by the wayside, to be picked up by the student himself, if at all. But true education is more than the mere learning of subjects or the assimilation of facts. It is a cultivation of mind that, as Cardinal Newman says, “implies an action upon our mental nature, and the formation of a character.”

            Perhaps the greatest obstacle in restoring the traditional goals of education is the distorted and underdeveloped imagination so indicative of the modern mind. There is a tendency among good-willed Catholic educators, those who are concerned about correcting the intellectual errors of the day, to seek an intellectual development through the concentrated study of the more advanced areas of mathematics and science, including the supreme sciences of philosophy and theology. While this effort is laudable, it rarely is able to achieve the desired end without a prior concern for the imagination. We cannot correct a diseased imagination by the direct study of philosophy and theology, because anyone with a diseased imagination is incapable of studying philosophy or theology. We have all experienced the truth of this, if only because of those things to which we are involuntarily exposed. The more our minds are filled with imaginative abominations, the less we are able to contemplate God.

St. Gregory’s provides a necessary retreat from the distractions of the world and many of its temptation in an environment where both the moral and intellectual virtues can grow, so that boys may leave St. Gregory’s prepared to enter the world as men. Education addresses not the mind alone, but the whole man. Without the support of the moral virtues the intelligence and the imagination shrink or swell, warping the person, and often introducing errors and deviations. By contrast, in a well-formed character the constellation of moral and intellectual virtues bestows on the whole a beauty and splendor that is the mark of a certain perfection. St. Gregory’s offers every student the opportunity to work on perfecting himself in virtue, while remembering that we live in an imperfect world, and that nothing is accomplished without God’s grace.

            At St. Gregory’s Academy our primary concern is the mental and moral formation of character so neglected to the detriment of both our nation and our Faith. Subjects we must certainly have, for the mind cannot develop in a vacuum, and the students need to gain information about the world. But those subjects are always viewed in a subordinate relation to the mental and moral development which is our true end. To attain this end our teaching is directed by traditional principles concerning the proper order of learning and the integration of knowledge.

One of the great treasures of our Catholic intellectual heritage is a profound philosophical and theological tradition based on sound realist principles. This tradition has been greatly undermined by the influence of skepticism and idealism which have reached the very fortress of Christendom. It is therefore important to reestablish the realist principles that uphold right reason. Yet this cannot be done by the direct study of philosophy or theology alone, for that study itself presupposes a great deal of prior emotional, imaginative and intellectual development following a proper order.

            The intellectual life of man is perfected in truth: the conformance of the mind to what is—to reality. But our first, our most intimate, and indeed our only contact with things in their concrete existence is through the senses. The sensible presence of external reality first awakens man’s cognitive power, and our experience is the root of all subsequent conceptual understanding. One of the primary truths of learning maintained by the best of the scholastics is that nothing is in the intellect that is not first in the senses. What this tells us is that there is an order of learning, beginning with the direct experience of reality. An orderly intellectual development, however, entails not only the direct experience of things through the senses but the development of the imagination and memory, facilitated by the study of poetry, music, literature, and history – subjects which, if properly taught, can provide a real though indirect experience of reality, both natural and supernatural. In order for these subjects to provide that needed cultivation of the imagination they must not be taught using an analytic method which inordinately isolates a certain element from the whole in order to give it detailed consideration. Specialized consideration has its place, but the rule is: no reflective analysis until the students are in firm possession of some real thing upon which to reflect.

            The intellect of man is accordingly grounded in the senses and the imagination, which latter faculty preserves, correlates, and orders the impressions of the external world received through sensation. Without this grounding the higher rational faculties are grievously impaired. We may learn the languages of philosophy or science, and may learn to manipulate their words with dexterity and grammatical correctness, but it will be with little true insight into the reality that those words express. As a healthy imagination must be rooted in reality, we place great emphasis on direct contact with the reality of things towards the cultivation of experience and imaginative development and the very inclinations of the heart.

            In our day this ground has been seriously undermined by a technology and lifestyle that removes us in large measure from direct contact with the elemental things of creation. Add to that the distorting influence of television, video games, and popular music, and the result is a retarded and deformed imagination, inclined more to the world of bizarre fantasy than to the world of the real. On the one hand we are flooded as never before, with a vast amount and variety of powerful and often, subversive images; on the other hand, education gives little attention to the importance of images, concentrating rather on the commercial possibilities of a calculating and manipulative reason. Yet as Catholics, we believe that we were made in the image and likeness of Him who is the image of the invisible God, and therefore we cannot deny the importance of the imagination. Contrary to popular opinion, the imagination is a faculty ordered not to fantasy but to reality. The only way to correct this deformation, then, is by placing children in an environment that is open to reality, and where the influences on the imagination are such that they become receptive to reality in all its goodness and beauty.