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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Aspects of religions (non-Christian) > Religious life & practice > Religious instruction
Just outside downtown Newark, New Jersey, sits an abbey and school.
For more than 150 years Benedictine monks have lived, worked, and
prayed on High Street, a once-grand thoroughfare that became
Newark's Skid Row and a focal point of the 1967 riots. St.
Benedict's today has become a model of a successful inner-city
school, with 95 percent of its graduates-mainly African American
and Latino boys-going on to college. Miracle on High Street is the
story of how the monks of St. Benedict's transformed their
venerable yet outdated school to become a thriving part of the
community that helped save a faltering city. In the 1960s, after a
trinity of woes-massive deindustrialization, high-speed
suburbanization, and racial violence-caused an exodus from Newark,
St. Benedict's struggled to remain open. Enrollment in general
dwindled, and fewer students enrolled from the surrounding
community. The monks watched the violence of the 1967 riots from
the school's rooftop along High Street. In the riot's aftermath
more families fled what some called "the worst city in America."
The school closed in 1972, in what seemed to be just another
funeral for an urban Catholic school. A few monks, inspired by the
Benedictine virtues of stability and adaptability, reopened St.
Benedict's only one year later with a bare-bones staff . Their new
mission was to bring to young African American and Latino males the
same opportunities that German and Irish immigrants had had 150
years before. More than thirty years later, St. Benedict's is one
of the most unusual schools in the country. Its remarkable success
shows that American education can bridge the achievement gap
between white and black, as well as that between rich and poor. The
story of St. Benedict's is about an institution's rise and fall,
resurrection and renaissance. It also provides valuable insights
into American religious, immigration, educational, and metropolitan
history. By staying true to their historical values amid a
continually changing city, the downtown monks, in resurrecting its
prep school, helped save an American city. Some have even called it
the miracle on High Street.
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