Launch of New Catholic, Classical Academy in Warrington at St Mary’s Shrine: Spread the word, September 2023.
St Mary’s Academy Warrington
http://www.stmarysacademywarrington.co.uk/
A very warm welcome to St Mary’s Shrine and Academy. How did this all start…
St Mary’s Academy is very much a grass roots academy inspired by an article written in the Dowry called ‘The Villiage Option’. Click here to read the whole article. A few Homeschooling families from the Parish got together once a week on Wednesday to learn, pray and socialise. We decided that we would like more of the same thing and therefore wanted to increase it to two, then three days a week. We also realised that it needed to be more structured, so we created a curriculum and a number of resources. So essentially it has become a Catholic classical homeschooling-hybrid academy. We are a growing academy and are currently have reached year 5. We intend to grow up to GCSE and maybe beyond.
Background
At Saint Mary’s Academy we are not trying to do something new or innovative with the Curriculum. In fact quite the opposite we are doing something old, or to put it another way something Classical. Every young person has a desire to be great, and often this is either subdued or misdirected in the modern world towards vice. However, what would this desire look like if it where nurtured into the greatness that God has planned for us. Well we have to look no further than the Saints to see what true greatness looks like. So by classical education we mean an education fitting for saints in the making. In doing so we are standing on the shoulders of giants like Aristotle, St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas.
I have taught in OFSED judged ‘Good’ or ‘outstanding’ state schools for over 20 years and could honestly say that good or outstanding are certainly not words that I would use to describe them, despite some of their good exam results.
Soon into my teaching career I began to notice something was fundamentally wrong with modern schools. I am not saying the teachers were not good, in fact some of them were outstanding, virtuous and inspirational. It was not for lack of effort, often we would work 70 hour weeks and still take work home. In my opinion the reason modern schools have lost their way is because they have lost sight of what education is for. So it has become for whatever the most dominant force decides it is for, and today that is Modernism in its many guises ie; cultural marxism, moral relativism, and materialism. It is as if the value of the child is only recognised through what they achieve. This is not what the Classical thinkers taught us.
According to Aristotle the aim of all education is Eudaimonia which is human happiness or human flourishing through mastering of the virtues. As the Angelic doctor, St Thomas Aquinas reminds us, True education not only works towards what we must know and do in this life, but always keeps in view man’s ultimate end in God…
To read more please visit https://www.stmarysacademywarrington.co.uk/curriculum/our-philosophy
What are they up to? To find out more,
Please visit http://www.stmarysacademywarrington.co.uk/ for up to date information on the academy.
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