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Sister Formation believes that nuns should take a wider and more active mission role in the world. Thus nuns majoring in sociology at Marillac spend long hours in St. Louis courts learning how the law operates, and those at Mundelein study civil rights and the psychology of poverty. In pursuit of higher education, nuns sometimes exchange their habits for dresses (as did the Columbia student who toured Russia) or get ecclesiastical permission to study writers, such as Sartre and Gide, whose works are on Rome's Index of Forbidden Books. And when nuns go on to graduate school, says Sister Mary Ann Ida of Mundelein, "the best type of university is often a state or large private university, and not necessarily a Catholic one."
"We must be dedicated to being the best-prepared teachers possible," says Sister Mary Emil of Detroit's Mary-grove College, who believes that "we are within ten to 15 years of establishing the sisterhoods as the best-trained teachers on the American scene." Since one-tenth of the nation's children attend Catholic parochial schools, Sister Formation represents a national asset that will pay off not just in better-educated sister-teachers but also in better-educated Americans.