Schooling for Faith, Citizenship and Social Mobility: Catholic Secondary Education in New Zealand, 1924–1944

Abstract

The increased demand for secondary schooling, which took place in New Zealand in the years after 1924, had important consequences for the Catholic educational mission. No longer was it sufficient to provide a comprehensive elementary system of education that transmitted a ‘simple faith to a simple people’, and a secondary schooling for the educational advancement and social mobility of the select few. Justified on the basis of the need to protect the faith of the growing number of pupils going on to secondary school, the expanded educational mission was also grounded in a new Catholic identity as ‘moral’ patriotic citizens committed to Catholic family values and successful participation in New Zealand society. Catholic secondary schools offered a utilitarian secondary education, which focussed on success in state‐mandated examinations, to the children of parents ambitious for their social and economic success in the world. Nevertheless, there were tensions in a Catholic educational mission that worked for the social and educational advancement of Catholic pupils while aiming for their ultimate salvation and the protection Catholic religious and cultural values.