Education in a Family Spirit: Marianist Education, Grades, and Theology
The Adventure of Learning Meets Today's Constraints and Injustices
Editor’s Note: This post is a part of a series of responses to “From Coercion to Fascination: Grades, Vulnerability, and Responsibility” curated by Alessandro Rovati, the Associate Editor of the Journal of Moral Theology.
At St. Mary’s University, where I teach theology, we talk a lot about “education in a family spirit.” It is one of five characteristics of Marianist universities. It appears in university marketing materials as well as applications for tenure and promotion. Reading through this article by Jason Heron and Alessandro Rovati has motivated me to interrogate that maxim a bit more closely. What does it mean to cultivate a family spirit at the university or in my classroom? What does the idea of family signify in this context?
Heron and Rovati ground their defense of ungrading in the vision of education espoused by the Catholic Church. They quote the Vatican II declaration Gravissimum Educationis, observing that education “promotes friendly relations and fosters a spirit of mutual understanding” (no. 5). They see in Pope Francis’s words a similar sensibility. Christian education requires “communion in learning, holy intercourse, habit of life, [and] interchange of affection” (Veritatis Gaudium, no. 4c). This could certainly describe what the Marianist universities mean by family spirit. Genuine learning can only take place in community. Education requires human relationship. It requires interaction, collaboration, inclusive participation, trust, and care (CMU, no. 30). Only in that context can teachers and students authentically accompany one another in the quest for truth.
Maybe the family spirit of the Marianists has helped to shift my focus in the classroom away “from coercion and performance to the centrality of fascination and freedom, risk and responsibility,” as Heron and Rovati phrase it (p. 123). This is what my experiments in ungrading have tried to do: to frame my students and me as collaborators, to invite them to greater responsibility, to prioritize learning over external metrics, and above all, to address them as free selves and whole persons grounded in community.
Of course, I have also endured the costs of the “risk of freedom,” which Heron and Rovati describe in their dialogue with Pope Francis and Luigi Giussani. I have experimented with contract grading, and it seems I am constantly in the process of revising my rubrics and policies. When I first eliminated deadlines, even my most eager students would not do the work. I have gambled repeatedly on my students’ willingness to take responsibility, and sometimes I have lost. Some students give up and walk away. Nevertheless, most do rise to the challenge, and they are touched by my desire to know them and meet them at a human level. This is what family is about, is it not?
As much as I value the idea of teaching in a family spirit, I do harbor some concerns. The language of family is quite susceptible to misinterpretation and even abuse. The Marianist universities themselves acknowledge this. Families are not all about friendship and inclusion in every moment; disagreement and hardship are part of family life as well (CMU, no. 35). I think we must be careful to avoid deploying the word “family” in the style of the toxic workplace, where the term is used to smooth over conflict, diminish accountability, and extract labor without fair compensation. Families require justice, and they must make room for differences.
Which brings me to a set of questions for Heron and Rovati. These emerge from my context as an early-career professor of theology at a small, teaching-focused, Hispanic-serving Catholic and Marianist university in the Southwest United States. I think these questions touch on some of the key epistemological and ethical issues at stake in the effort to weave together Christian theology, education theory, and the practice of ungrading.
First, how do we respond to cultural and religious diversity among our students? I am personally quite compelled by Giussani’s understanding of Christian education. It is the role of a teacher to offer a working hypothesis about the meaning of reality, to substantiate that tradition with reference to authority, and to invite students to verify the truth of it in their lived experience. We do our students no favor by pretending that all views are equally plausible, or that they should craft a worldview of their own from scratch. That does not lead to authentic freedom but “obscures how individual instincts, the dominant culture, and the loudest voices shape us” (p. 115). To avoid this false neutrality, Giussani believes we must begin with the truth of the Christian proposition and provide students the critical resources to make it their own.
But what if a student cannot make the Christian worldview their own? This is not necessarily a failure. Perhaps this student belongs to a different religious tradition. Perhaps this student has been so harmed by representatives of the Christian hypothesis that it cannot be verified in their own experience. At my university, I must assume that these students are in the room. As a teacher of theology, I must therefore frame the task a bit differently. For those who come from a Christian background and remain hospitable to its message, I do frame our work as an opportunity to make this hypothesis their own. For those who do not, I describe my courses as an opportunity to investigate a religious hypothesis that is personally important to others and culturally relevant to all of us. In all cases, I tell my students that they must interrogate whatever traditions shape them, taking responsibility for what they believe and the practices they take for granted.
How does an approach like mine fit within a Christian vision of education? Is it a sensible outcome of reverence for the person and respect for human freedom, or does it circumvent the evangelical quality of our work? As I have said, family must make room for differences. Yet one of the risks of the family metaphor is that it implies all of our members come from the same background. In today’s university, that is rarely the case. Students and professors come from all sorts of cultures and traditions, which represent for them different certainties from which to begin. Giussani argues that his approach does not close off other perspectives, for “no one can be open to other cultures and proposals without starting from a certainty.” (p. 116). I entirely agree. But with so many certainties from which our students begin, what does undergraduate teaching look like? Is there still room to begin from the Christian hypothesis, or must we diversify our starting points?
Second, what do we make of the practical challenges that Heron and Rovati point out? When done well, this work is extraordinarily time-consuming. It is also more emotionally draining than traditional modes of teaching and assessment. Most of us are struggling already under a full-time teaching load, and loads are heavier at schools that prize pedagogy. We continue to see cuts to the liberal arts, the threat of censorship is looming, there is increasing pressure to demonstrate return-on-investment in our programs, and many institutions are merrily adopting AI infrastructure with relatively little focus on mission, ethics, or investment in teachers. In short, we are attempting new pedagogical innovations while in triage mode. What are some concrete strategies for capturing the spirit of ungrading while economizing on time and resources? How might this vision of education speak to our current moment in higher education?
Another challenge worth flagging concerns accessibility and justice. Heron and Rovati rightly acknowledge the barriers that ungrading may present to neurodivergent students, online students, and students who are underprepared for college. We can do our best to place our students in touch with campus resources, including offices of accessibility, student success staff, counseling services, and so on. We can modify our policies and procedures to place all of our students on an even playing field. Still, there are larger structural issues at play. Ungrading relies on student initiative. It assumes that students have agency and are able to use it. However, there are serious constraints on their agency imposed by forces beyond our control as teachers. College students today are under immense pressure to select majors that will result in high-paying jobs. There is evidence that this pressure disproportionately affects Black and Brown students, as well as first-generation college students. At my university, students often cannot give a course their all because they work long hours to pay for tuition, serve as caregivers in their families, or manage problems concerning immigration status. Under such pressure, students regularly prioritize the courses and programs that will land them jobs and also the courses with clearer, traditional grading systems.
In short, students are not always free to choose the adventure of learning when what they need is to make it through college and begin collecting an income. Here is where the ideal vision of education laid out by Heron and Rovati meets the reality of the situation for all of us experimenting with ungrading. How can we respond? What can we learn from where our students stand?
Editor’s Note: For more conversations with the Journal of Moral Theology’s authors and responses to their essays, check out HERE.
 | A guest post by
|