Thomas Groome Analysis

“It is a sacred privilege and an awesome responsibility to be an educator.”
Thomas H. Groome is an author, academic and a former Catholic priest. A professor in at Boston College, he lectures in theology and Religious Education. Born in County Kildare, Groome studied at St. Patrick's College, Carlow. A deeply Catholic man, Groome was ordained as a Priest in 1968. Seventeen years into his ministry Groome took a one-year sabbatical, during which time he fell in love with a woman. After being granted dispensation from the church, Groome got married. Groome said that he found celibacy to be a destructive force in his life and that his faith had been enriched by marriage.
Thomas Groome is a man with a serious respect and admiration for education
His belief is that every teacher has a vocation to be a ‘humanizing educator, to teach with a spiritual vision’. According to Groome, an education which humanises is only possible if the educator in question believes that their vocation has value and also that each pupil in front of them has enormous worth and potential. On a personal note, it would be nice to believe that every educator would hold this ideal as best practice, however, is this slightly presumptuous? Groome believes that a teacher need not separate themselves from their own personal particularities, rather it is possible for a teacher to teach out of their own particularity which is inspiring and humanising for everyone involved. He further believes that educators who maintain deep or otherwise religious beliefs have the ability to apportion that into their own lives and use it as a platform by which they can use as a source of commitment throughout their teaching careers. Once again during this year’s placement the fundamental values of Mary Ward founder of the Loreto Sisters; justice, freedom, sincerity, truth and joy, were instilled into both staff and students and were evident within a lived reality within the school. I feel as though it would have been difficult to teach in such an environment had I not been authentic to my own faith. For this to be possible, however, while one must attend the structures of their own tradition, they must also be conscious of the needs of other people. As Groome suggests; teachers teach people, not traditions. Groome states that teacher training programmes and degrees should be concerned with a theological formation that presents the best current understandings, informed by reliable scholarship, that Christians have of their tradition. This theological formation that Groome discusses must always happen alongside the educational and professional development of the