Frustration builds as students struggle to decide between different electives when they only have one or two spots to fill due to school graduation requirements. With eight religion credits required for seniors to graduate, little space is left in a student’s schedules to take electives that interest them or that future colleges may require.
Since Benilde-St. Margaret’s is noted to be a college preparatory school, students should be allowed to fill more elective slots with classes that would benefit them most in their college path.
Taking into consideration that BSM is also a Catholic private school, as well as a service learning school, a valid solution would be to require freshmen and sophomores to continue the current religion schedule, as those are the years when the basics are taught, and for juniors to enroll in one service learning class either first or second semester.
This would leave most of junior and senior years open for other options, including religion as an elective for students to choose if they so desire.
Classes, such as Advanced Competitive Science, Journalism, and Personal Financial Management, as well as art classes, and additional science, English, and math courses, are often pushed aside to make room for religion classes that may not benefit a student’s career overall.
Many of the schools that BSM students attend anyway, including University of Minnesota, University of Wisconsin, and Iowa State University do not even look at religion grades and are more concerned with other academic areas. Even Catholic universities, such as University of St. Thomas do not specify the need for their incoming students to have taken religion classes in high school.
As students are required to take a religion class both semesters of each year, for upperclassmen, opening up those classes to electives would mean four more semester classes they can add to their schedule. As the religion classes for upperclassmen are essentially branches of the fundamental classes taken in earlier years, there isn’t much to take from these for future purposes when compared to a Personal Financial Management or Principles of Investing class––two classes that teach new and essential information as teenagers grow to become independent adults.
Also, if a student is interested in something such as journalism, having the opportunity to try out what it is like to write for a newspaper and get a feel for the atmosphere and demands can help to eliminate some indecision that that student is having with their college major.
anonymous • Aug 2, 2009 at 2:00 pm
I think what Miss Brown is trying to say here is that yes Benilde is a catholic school, but neccessarily taking religion classes is not the only way to learn more about faith and God as a whole. Often times I find myself thinking about religion more from my experiences and not at the mass or in religion classes. So if i may propose an alternative, why not elect to teach the upperclassmen in real world experience outside of the school or devotionals such as the first annual Relay For Life. This was an experience i myself went to, while throughout the whole night we talked about faith and what God does to help us in times of trouble like that with cancer. I by no means am degrading your point Pax christi, Claire or Ian but i think before we begin to rationale at what Miss Brown is proposing we take a look at how effective what were doing right now is compared to the BSM mission. Such as not neccessarily having specific religion classes but integrating the catholic faith as a whole into the curriculum. For example in a history class i took we talked about how the presidential race and the values we believed in compared to the catholic social teachings. Now this was a meaningful learning experience about Catholicism and History. So instead of having specific religion classes integrating it as a whole into electives and core classes maybe a better alternative and still being able to give students who choose to take electives such as investing the course they desire.
Charles Le Jeune • Mar 4, 2009 at 11:09 am
‘With eight religion credits required for seniors to graduate, little space is left in a student’s schedules to take electives that interest them or that future colleges may require.’
Yes, that is what should interest a Catholic school. I can picture it now, a meeting in the board room in the administrative office : ‘Should our Catholic school teach the Catholic religion to the students ?’ ‘Nah, let’s just let them do what they please so that, later in life, they can buy a lot of stuff.’ ‘That seems like the most responsible way to me.’
Please. With all of those extra credits and soft, mediocre, watered-down religion classes, students develop the absurd idea that they do not have enough time for God. And, if that is the case, there is certainly not enough time for the students to save their souls. I’m sure they think that when they go to Mass, they do God a big favour.
‘Classes, such as Advanced Competitive Science, Journalism, and Personal Financial Management, as well as art classes, and additional science, English, and math courses, are often pushed aside to make room for religion classes that may not benefit a student’s career overall.’
That’s what life is all about, after all: making money; acquiring more things; getting the big promotion; being able to make a down payment on that third car; purchasing fashionable boots for wintertime; having the best gadget for being able to listen to one’s music everywhere, without interruption; always being pleased, never being denied. Miss Brown, have you paused to consider that the whole point of a Catholic school is that the school believes in the Faith confessed by the Catholic Church, outside of which none are saved ? For the Catholic, one is best-educated if he is equipped to deal with all spheres of life, including the means and laws by which he will secure his eternal destiny, which, I cannot stress enough, is important to Catholics and is neither arbitrary nor free. You may not believe, but then perhaps you should have gone to a public school, where you could take all of the engineering and financial planning classes you like.
Pax Christi.
Claire • Feb 11, 2009 at 10:12 pm
I graduated in 2007 with probably the most competitive graduating class in BSM history. I didn’t have any problem getting the class I needed to go to college. Neither did people like Erika L. who is now at Yale or Elliot M. who is now at U chicago. What you get out of school is what you put into it. Every student is capable of going to a good college even with the requirements that BSM holds its students to. If you don’t like it try convincing your parents to not spend $11,000 a year for your education.
Ian • Jan 20, 2009 at 9:36 pm
If you don’t like religion classes, go to a different school, this is a Catholic school, and you knew that when you came here, get over it…