Catholic Education in America had already been a strong point of society by the time the first Catholic school was established in 1606. It was founded by the Franciscan order in present-day St. Augustine, Florida, and it would start small like this but eventually spread slowly over the United States for the next century. It was after the Revolution when it really started to blossom. Just a few years after the war ended, in 1789, the first Catholic college in the United States was founded as Georgetown in present-day Washington DC. Two years later, there was the ratification of the bill of rights, and with it the first amendment would guarantee freedom of religion. This would help Catholics further cement their place in this new country.
Georgetown is now the oldest Catholic university and is one of the most prestigious colleges in the nation. Over the next few decades, Catholic schools would be established in several other states including Maryland and Kentucky. Mass immigration from Catholic Ireland in the mid-1800s caused an increase in demand for religious education and many private Catholic schools were founded during this period as an answer to the Protestant education that then dominated the nation’s public schools. By 1900, there was an estimated 3500 in the United States reaching all age groups.
The growth of Catholic education over the course of time is very interesting because of how small it started, and with such limited resources, but it still grew very well. It is not easy for something to start, grow, and become very successful, especially in a time period where there wasn’t an abundance of resources or anything like that. I was surprised to see how dominant protestant-based schools were and how Catholics were able to assert some dominance of their own even with the success of the protestants. As I look at society today, it is an essential opportunity for kids and their families to have to be educated through a catholic school. So all in all, I found it very interesting and surprising how much it was able to grow and expand over the years, and how they were able to overcome the competition from other religions to have plenty of their own success. It is very important because millions of students in today’s age have the opportunity the be educated from a Catholic school and get a lot from their experiences.
