Criteria for Submitting Courses
Overall Directive
Given that each course in the Social Justice Studies Minor is part of a greater whole and that the minor includes courses specifically devoted to ethics, each course need not deal with the complete ethical issue at hand nor need the course resolve every ethical issue that arises. What each professor does need to do is to identify those issues in their courses that are relevant to the Social Justice Studies Minor, and indicate (usually by reference to a text) how the Church’s view of the issue will be included in the course.
Specifics
- A paragraph in the overview of the syllabus indicating the course incorporates Catholic Social Teaching.
- Brief annotation of specific themes
- References to CST documents
- Noting in the timetable in the syllabus when Catholic Social Teaching is being used.
Curriculum Guidelines From the Approved Social Justice Studies Proposal (2006)
The fundamental guideline for evaluating whether courses fit the Social Justice Studies Minor is whether material in the course specifically addresses Catholic social teaching as communicated in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, 2005).
In addition, key reference points for professors teaching courses for the minor are the following seven principles of Catholic social teaching articulated by the U.S. Bishops:
- the life and dignity of the human person.
- rights & responsibilities of the human person.
- call to family, community, and participation.
- dignity of work and the rights of workers.
- option for the poor and vulnerable.
- solidarity - distinction between charity & justice.
- care for God's creation - the environment.
Finally, courses for the social justice minor should strive to:
- cultivate in students the capacity for understanding the normative frameworks that foster just relationships in family, community, national, and transnational networks.
- develop and apply ethical decision making to specific professional and policy areas.
- connect the key principle of the dignity of the human person to specific human and civil rights and conversely to types of associations which manifest just relationships.
- cultivate in students a capacity for bringing about justice as participation in political, cultural, social, and economic arenas - a capacity for the common good as understood by Aquinas.
For more information contact John Francis Burke, Ph.D.; Director, Social Justice Studies Minor 713-525-3814; jfburke@stthom.edu |
