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Profile of the Graduate of Brophy College Preparatory When starting a journey, it helps to know what the destination is and why one wants to go there. To the members of our Curriculum Improvement Committee (the "Committee"), it seemed that such clarity was needed about the objectives of the Brophy curriculum. One way to achieve that clarity was to attempt to sketch a description of an ideal Brophy graduate. That would give us an idea of the kind of young men we were trying to develop, along with a clearer idea of why Brophy wanted to undertake a curriculum review. By examining our curriculum in the light of this description, the Committee might better judge whether the curriculum is adequately geared to influence our students to become that ideal graduate; in other words, to achieve our goal of developing responsible young men. A profile of the ideal graduate was drawn up. This profile was influenced by practical experience, earlier Jesuit Secondary Education Association documents, policy statements of the past two General Congregations of the Society of Jesus, and the thinking of other well-known educators. With the profile of this graduate in mind, the Committee felt more confident about proposing a curriculum plan as a better way for Brophy to achieve its goals. If the profile of the ideal graduate pointed to the desired result of our educational enterprise, then present and future curriculum plans can be developed and evaluated according to the benchmark of that profile. How does Brophy provide experiences during the student's four years in high school which offer the best potential for the student to grow into the graduate described in the profile? The answer is through its curriculum. By curriculum we mean that total congeries of experience over which the school has to offer, including normal classroom experience, course sequences, student activities (athletics, debate, student government, etc.), community service, liturgical activities, and the effects of students' and parents' experiences at Brophy functions. Even though all students may not fully achieve the desired levels of growth described in this profile, this description gives the school ideal outcomes for all Brophy graduates.
In one sense, the graduate is a threshold person: he is on or rapidly approaching the threshold of young adulthood. The world of childhood has been left behind. The movement from childhood toward adulthood has involved anxiety, awkward embarrassment and fearful first steps into sexual identity, independence, first love, first job and, sometimes, the first lengthy stay away from home. It has also involved physical, emotional and mental development which has brought out strengths, abilities, and characteristics which adults and peers begin to appreciate. The adolescent during the four years prior to graduation begins to realize that he can do some things well and, sometimes, very well, for example, playing basketball, acting, writing, doing math, fixing or driving cars, making music or making money. There have also been failures and disappointments. Even these, however, have helped the student to grow toward maturity. Fluctuating between highs and lows of fear and confidence, love and loneliness, confusion and success, the Brophy student at graduation has negotiated many of the shoals of adolescence. On the other hand, the graduate has not reached the maturity of the college senior. During his senior year of high school especially, he is beginning to awaken to complexity, to discover many puzzling things about the adult world. He does not understand why adults break their promises, or how the economy functions, or why there are wars, or what power is and how it ought to be used. Yet he is old enough to begin framing these questions. And so, as some of the inner turmoil of the past few years of adolescence begins to settle, he looks out on the adult world with a sense of wonderment, with a growing desire to enter that world, but not yet quite able to make sense out of it. He is more and more confident with peers, he knows the territory, so to speak, of the youth culture; he can more easily pick up the clues of that culture and what is expected of him in a given situation; and he is independent enough to choose his response. As for the adult world, he is still a "threshold person"; one who is entering cautiously; an immigrant eager to find his way. In describing the graduate, we chose five general qualities which are desirable not only for this "threshold period," but which are desirable for adult life. These five general qualities are those necessary to live the Christian life. Whether one conceives the desirable qualities of a Brophy graduate under the rubric of a "Man for Others" or as a "Vatican II person," an Insignis or as a fully mature Christian, the qualities summed up under the five categories below are the kind--granted that they are not fully developed in late adolescence--which point to a person who can live an adult Christian life leading into the twenty-first century. What is said here, respectful of the conscience and religious background of the individual, also applies to the non-Catholic graduate of Brophy. These qualities reveal a young man who is Open to Growth; Intellectually Competent; Religious; Loving; and Committed to Doing Justice. Obviously, these qualities are dynamic; the division into the five categories simply provides a helpful way to analyze and describe the graduate. Some overlap is evident because, in fact, many of these qualities are mutually interrelated or intertwined. But these are the qualities that the Brophy curriculum is intended to develop in each student by graduation.
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