St. Louis Cultural History Project—Spring 2020
The Educational Statesman
:
William Joseph McGucken, S. J. (1899-1943)
By John Waide, M.A.
He was given the honorific of educational statesman
by a fellow Jesuit. Recognized by both secular and Catholic scholars as the most able spokesperson during his day for the principles of Catholic education, he was an early leader in the development of the National Catholic Educational Association. He was the first Catholic educator, religious or lay, to publicly advocate for coeducational instruction in American Catholic colleges and universities! And yet today his name is virtually unknown and his work more-or-less forgotten among most Catholic educators!
William Joseph McGucken, our educational statesman,
was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on March 10, 1889. (This was sixteen years after Joseph Husslein, his Jesuit colleague and proponent of social justice, was born in Milwaukee.) He attended Holy Rosary School in Milwaukee and then Marquette Academy (High School) and Marquette University in Milwaukee, graduating in 1909. As an indication of his interest in education and teaching, after graduating from Marquette, McGucken taught for a school year at the Marquette High School.
It was during this year of teaching, that the young William McGucken discerned a call to religious life, and so he entered the novitiate of the Missouri Province of the Society of Jesus at Florissant, Missouri, on July 25, 1910. He completed his novitiate studies at Florissant and then after finishing one year of his juniorate, he was sent to teach mathematics at St. Ignatius High School in Chicago in 1913.
McGucken returned to Florissant for his philosophy studies and then he returned to St. Ignatius in Chicago to teach from 1918-1921. He was then sent to Campion College in Wisconsin where he taught from 1921-1923. McGucken was ordained a Catholic priest on June 27, 1923. He took his two years of theology in Europe where he was asked by his Jesuit superiors to study carefully the educational methods in Europe. These studies would prove invaluable later in his career as an educator.
Father McGucken returned to Chicago where he served as a Professor of Education at Loyola University in 1926-1927 while completing his doctoral studies in education at the University of Chicago. The title of his doctoral dissertation, completed in 1927, was Jesuit Secondary Education in the United States.
The following year, 1928, Father McGucken came to Saint Louis University. Saint Louis would serve as McGucken’s home for the remainder of his career until his death in 1943 at the young age of 54 years. (He struggled with health issues much of his adult life having suffered several small strokes.) He was named a Professor of Education at Saint Louis and the Director of the Department of Education upon his arrival in 1928. That same year he was named the Dean of the School of Education and the Regent of the University’s Corporate Colleges. Remember that the School of Education was school in which Saint Louis University’s undergraduate female students were enrolled as women were prohibited by Jesuit leadership from registering in the College of Arts and Sciences with the men. The Corporate College arrangement at Saint Louis University permitted the University to support the undergraduate degrees being offered by the many Catholic undergraduate women’s colleges in the St. Louis area such as Fontbonne, Maryville, and Webster Colleges.
Father McGucken served as the Director of the University’s Summer School for several years, and he was appointed Acting Dean of the Graduate School for one year. In 1930, McGucken was appointed as the Regent for the School of Education. The Missouri Province of the Jesuits also named him their General Prefect of Studies.
But it was as a teacher of future teachers and as a tireless advocate of Catholic education, including co-education at all levels, that Father McGucken left a lasting legacy. Father McGucken was passionate in his role as General Prefect of Studies for the Missouri Province, McGucken was responsible for working with the young Jesuit scholastics and preparing them for their responsibilities of teaching not only other Jesuits, but also the young lay men and women attending Jesuit schools. It was said that Father McGucken could recognize the qualities of a good teacher among the younger Jesuits, and he insisted that these young men understand and appreciate the responsibility they have in teaching others. McGucken wanted these young men to realize that part of their responsibility was to remain diligent in their own studies and desire to improve their own intellects. Father McGucken had a special interest in the teaching of religion, both in high schools and in colleges. He undoubtedly contributed more to the future development of religious education by the course he gave the scholastics than did any other single influence they experienced.
Father McGucken worked to raise the standards of Jesuit high school education throughout the country. He encouraged high educational ideals, and promoted the preparation of textbooks, especially in the fields of English, history and the classics. In time, his position amounted to that of personnel director for the Missouri Province. He used his influence to send men for advanced studies to American and Canadian universities, not just European schools. McGucken was able to successfully relate the historic educational traditions of the Society of Jesus to the American experience. Within the Society, he was considered the most influential Saint Louis University Jesuit of his day. Father McGucken ultimately expressed his view of the Jesuit apostolate of education in these words: Teaching, to the Jesuits, has always been an apostolate, the class-room just as hallowed a place to win souls for Christ as the far-off mission land of India. Rightly, Jesuits can take pride in the prestige and efficiency of their schools, a prestige and efficiency purchased through self-sacrifice and a deathless enthusiasm.
But Father McGucken’s work and influence was felt far beyond the Missouri Province or other Jesuits. The breadth of Father McGucken’s educational apostolate was extraordinary. Not only was he an outstanding figure in national Catholic educational meetings and associations, but he was also recognized by secular educators and secular organizations in the United Statesas as the clearest spokesperson for the Catholic view of education. He exerted an equally powerful influence in both Catholic and non-Catholic circles by his many publications, in particular by his book, The Catholic Way in Education.
Father McGucken’s influence on education was also felt through the various professional organizations and learned societies he joined, and through the committees on which he served, both national and Jesuit. He would often write about or speak the Catholic perspective on education at numerous conferences of the most respected educators in the country.
Of particular importance was Father McGucken’s efforts with the Jesuit Educational Association and with their Jesuit Educational Quarterly journal. A member of almost every important committee of the J. E. A., his efforts helped to shape not only its Constitution and its Statutes for Colleges and Universities, but also to formulate its long-range plans for development. As each issue of the Quarterly appeared he would find the time to send a note of encouragement and comment; his own contributions to it were marked alike by the solid nature of his educational thinking, which was always Catholic and Jesuit. Broad and progressive as he was in his views on academic matters, and widely acquainted with the modern schools of thought in education, he was always sensitive to the need to maintain and apply the Catholic philosophy of education in every discussion of change or reform that affected Catholic schools.
Father McGucken’s influence was felt in the National Catholic Educational Association as well. While chair of the NCEA’s Committee on Educational Policy and Program,
he helped formulate the goal of imparting Catholicism as a total culture
in the Catholic schools. Although McGucken struggled in actualizing what this meant in the actual curriculum, the NCEA did formally adopt this goal for Catholic schools.
As was mentioned earlier, Father McGucken was an advocate for co-education at all Catholic schools. In an essay he wrote entitled Should We Have Coeducation in Catholic Colleges and Universities?, McGucken was the first major Catholic educator to publicly advocate for coeducational instruction at all American Catholic colleges and universities. He reasoned that if American bishops and pastors could justify coeducation in elementary and secondary schools, the same reasoning applied to colleges and universities.
Father William Joseph McGucken passed away on the night of November 5, 1943, at Loyola University, Chicago. He was in Chicago to attend a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Jesuit Educational Association. He had just left the hospital in St. Louis so that he could participate in this meeting.