THE VALUE OF A KA EDUCATION
One of the most common but unspoken questions I believe parents and benefactors have when they consider enrolling their children in or supporting KA is this: “Is an education at Koinonia Academy better academically than at a top-tier public school?” This is a serious and fair question. Notice the nuance: they are comparing the best public schools with KA with a focus on academic quality. As a relatively new faculty member at KA, who has seen the inception of our transition to a Catholic, classical, liberal arts model, I am convinced that the school is superior academically to even the best of public schools in New Jersey.
First, Koinonia Academy, like many Catholic schools in the last ten years, has transitioned to a classical liberal arts model of education, a change that has laid the foundation for a strong academic legacy. The classical liberal arts education, which is organized around the “trivium,” anticipates and moves with the development of the child. It is more than just a curriculum – it is a method of drawing students out of ignorance into truth. Beginning with the structure, order, and rules of the disciplines, the classical model moves with the students’ minds as they begin to question why order exists and how we move from one truth to another. Once students know how to reason and think, they move to the final stage: the art of communicating the truth in the public sphere. An education with this kind of depth, which follows the natural development of the child’s mind and is oriented toward understanding the truth, will always be superior to a standard, common-core education found in public schools.
Second, we have to take into account the situation of the last two years, which has involved varying responses among state governing bodies and public school boards to the SARS-COV2 pandemic. During the 2020-2021 school year, institutions like KA remained open for full-time, in-person instruction, while many public schools were either closed or operated on a hybrid model. Just because public schools are now largely open for business does not mean that a year of schooling wasn’t lost. Indeed, it was, and it is uncertain whether public school students will ever be able to recover. Virtual learning is a poor substitute for in-person education, and what the past two years have revealed to us is that schools and educators in the public sector differ from Catholic educators in how they view their duty to educate. In the case of Catholic schools like KA, the balance struck between ensuring health and safety and the right to education was exemplary.
Third, parents often have a noble desire to expose their children to “the world” at a public school, and thus avoid a stifling “Catholic bubble”. Although this sentiment is one I’m sympathetic to (I was educated in Catholic, Protestant, and public schools growing up) I think our local situation in New Jersey prevents children from being completely insulated within Christian communities. Smartphones, social media, travel sports clubs, extracurriculars, and just the fact that we live in such a densely populated area, tend to burst cultural bubbles at some point. But besides this fact, what is more important is that with the classical transition, Koinonia Academy is now engaging culture and the great questions of humanity with an increased vigor. Faculty and students are digging deeply into the Church’s perspective as it comes into conflict with the world’s understanding of human dignity, human rights, social justice, marriage, children, religious freedom, and many other issues. Students are encouraged to bring their questions to the table, to grapple intensely with the most difficult cultural issues of our time, and to engage seriously with a world that is still “haunted by Christ” even as it rejects Him.
I can think of no better place for our children to move out of ignorance into knowledge than at Koinonia Academy, where Jesus is Lord, where our community discovers ever more deeply how the Logos, the Word, has ordered all things toward love, and where we learn to love one another through the Holy Spirit. What a gift!
REBECCA MARCHINDA, KA TEACHER, BENEFACTOR, PARENT