While we most often associate Fr. Titus interest in education with his work at the University of Nijmegen, he was also deeply involved in Roman Catholic secondary education. These schools were only beginning to take root in the Netherlands. He realized that there was a cultural lag among Catholics that needed to be addressed. He worried about the deteriorating link between secondary and university education. When the Association of Roman Catholic High Schools and Gymnasia Boards was founded in 1924, Titus became the chairman the following year and continued in that position until his death in 1942.
Following his doctoral studies in Rome, Brandsma began teaching philosophy at the school the Carmelites had founded in Oss. He had a very keen interest in people who searched for truth and justice and were able to find a solid frame of reference and a safe place. He did not limit himself to the classroom. He went out into the community. He discovered that in Oss there was a crying need for secondary education. Ever a man of action, by 1919 a secondary school for business was established in Oss.
By 1923 the Hogere Burger School—the present-day Titus Brandsma Lyceum—was opened. This presented the opportunity of an education to many more young people. The Catholic Twente region, with Oldenzaal as its center, also needed a Catholic secondary school. That school also became a reality in 1923 as did the Catholic University of Nijmegen where Titus would become a professor.
Fr. Titus encouraged the study of philosophy at the secondary school level. His reasoning was that familiarity with philosophy only deepened education and helped students to think independently and become conscious of what is essential in human life. He felt it was so critical that he even developed an outline for the study of philosophy on the secondary level.
Many of Fr. Brandsma’s talks and writings stress the value he saw in education. Often framed in terms of a struggle “for the honor or God and against all evil,” he did believe that, if we engage in education but fail to speak of God, then we fall short of our goal.
[from: Constant Dölle, O. Carm., Encountering God in the Abyss: Titus Brandsma’s Spiritual Journey. Leuven: Peters. 2002]
*Statue of Titus Brandsma created by Gerard Mathot in the Thomas van Aquinostraat at the wall of one of the buildings of the Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.