Dispelling myths about public/parochial schools

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I don’t have children but if I did I would probably be forced financially to send them to a public school. I see nothing wrong with it as long as I would be active in what they are being taught.
 
gmarie21 said:
It’s a private school, but more importantly it’s a style of teaching. That’s as much as I can say about the teaching philosophy of the school. As a graduate of Montessori, I can say that I knew all the continents and some countries by the time I left kindergarten, not to mention many other things my peers did not know because of what I was taught at Montessori. It was a school that challenged students and when I entered first grade I, along with other Montessori graduates, were moved to advanced classes because we were ahead of the other first graders (like I had to go to second and third grade classrooms for reading and math, as well as my peers who I graduated with from Montessori). Whatever there teaching philosophy, it definitely worked and promoted learning.
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Wow… that is amazing! Are they very expensive as far as tuition?
 
kamz said:
Wow… that is amazing! Are they very expensive as far as tuition?
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In the city I live in, tuition at the private Montessori is competative with for profit and non-profit private and parochial schools.

In a city about 9 miles from my home and a city about 20 miles from my home there are public Montessori schools. Unfortunately, public Montessori schools are having great difficulty implementing a true Montessori curriculum as NCLB (No Child Left Behind) does not allow for the 3 yr developmental cycle that Montessori uses.
 
Myth: All religious material,themes and songs are removed from Public school curriculum.

Truth:
Not in all districts. My kids go to Public School. I love the school and am so please with the district. At Christmas, 2 out of the 4 songs my son sang were religious based. One was sung in Hebrew. Yes, all the kids in 8th grade learned Hebrew. Fabulous.

They have a Christian prayer support group that meets after school in the lounge - led by a teacher. The Principal sat next to us this past Sunday at mass.

Fabulous - I am one happy person and grateful for the district we live in.
 
jrabs said:
Myth: All religious material,themes and songs are removed from Pulic school curriculum.

Truth:
Not in all districts. My kids go to Public School. I love the school and am so please with the district. At Christmas, 2 out of the 4 songs my son sang were religious based. One was sung in Hebrew. Yes, all the kids in 8th grade learned Hebrew. Fabulous.

They have a Christian prayer support group that meets after school in the lounge - led by a teacher. The Principal sat next to us this past Sunday at mass.

Fabulous - I am one happy person and grateful for the district we live in.
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Wow, sounds like you have a wonderful school… you are so lucky!
 
Giannawannabe said:
I can say with certainty that each schooling choice presents it’s own sets of pros and cons. Nothing is perfect. As parents, we need to take our set of circumstances, and raise our children in the Faith as best we can. It would be a much easier task if we would all support each other in this endeavor.
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THAT is so true. There is no one size fits all - I have done all three as well and have had a love/hate relationship with each one.

For me, the parochial school is the easiest - I trust my kids’ teachers (very conservative school) - they get lots of religious instruction & the whole uniform thing takes the pressure off buying the “right” clothes. But public school was good too - FREE - always a plus, and we live in a good district - very organized - not as gossipy as the parochial school (parents not kids gossip - well, not really gossip so much as complain about this or that)

Homeschool was what my kids liked best by far. I thought their teacher was a little nutsy at times though. 😉

Every year I question what to do for the following year - right now I’m trying to discern if I should homeschool just one of my children who begs the most - she’s going into 6th grade and would give anything to be homeschooled again. Time to pray again…

🙂 Parenting - it is sooooo NOT for wimps.
 
My teen went to both Catholic and public schools and I can tell you that they both have their PROS and CONS. We are still pretty much up in the air about our 2 year old at this point and I shall pray on the subject since we still have 2 years left. LOL
 
carol_marie said:
THAT is so true. There is no one size fits all - I have done all three as well and have had a love/hate relationship with each one.

For me, the parochial school is the easiest - I trust my kids’ teachers (very conservative school) - they get lots of religious instruction & the whole uniform thing takes the pressure off buying the “right” clothes. But public school was good too - FREE - always a plus, and we live in a good district - very organized - not as gossipy as the parochial school (parents not kids gossip - well, not really gossip so much as complain about this or that)

Homeschool was what my kids liked best by far. I thought their teacher was a little nutsy at times though. 😉

Every year I question what to do for the following year - right now I’m trying to discern if I should homeschool just one of my children who begs the most - she’s going into 6th grade and would give anything to be homeschooled again. Time to pray again…

🙂 Parenting - it is sooooo NOT for wimps.
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:amen:
 
puppylove said:
My teen went to both Catholic and public schools and I can tell you that they both have their PROS and CONS. We are still pretty much up in the air about our 2 year old at this point and I shall pray on the subject since we still have 2 years left. LOL
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I’m in the same boat.

The problems I had with Catholic school were:
  1. I waited until my dd was in Jr. High. Not a good time to start a child in Catholic school. If I do it again, I’ll start my 3 y/o dd in Kindergarden.
  2. The school I sent dd to was somewhat elitest. They claimed they weren’t, but I disagree. The parents who could afford to give the school money seemed to be catered to, while those of us on scholarship seemed to be looked down on.
I really love our public schools. My son’s elementary school is very much into the arts. Ds has learned to play the violin and the clairnet. I didn’t have to pay for an instrument or music lessons. I feel he’s gotten a quality education. Dd loves her high school. It’s another “arts minded” school. She’s set on being a photographer and her scool has one of the best photography programs in the nation.

Oldest ds has autisim so I didn’t have a choice of private or public.
He went to public special ed. programs. those were a “cr*p shoot”. I really had to stay on top of what was happening with his classes. For the most part, I liked them. He was main-streamed for the last four years and graduates on Wensday.

As far as homeschooling goes… I’ve never tried it. I don’t feel equipt to homeschool. The people I know who’ve homeschooled are great at it. The kids seem to have benefited and, for the most part, are well-rounded.

I’m thinking of sending my 3 y/o to a Waldorf pre-school. The one in my area goes from preK through high school. I have to check it out more, but am intrigued by the idea.

Kim
 
I agree that Catholic schools can be spendy… we have grants at our school but it is still a huge leap of faith that we take on each year… so far… God has always managed to provide the money for us and we are willing to do with less of the “little luxuries” so that we can afford this. We have seen such amazing results that I know it is worth it but I ache for the families who want to send their kids but just can’t afford it… it should be available for all families who would like to send their kids.

Also, lots and lots of fundraising year round to keep tuition prices down… that can get old sometimes but my kids enjoy it and the activities we do end up being fun but they sure take lots of planning… but they do help cut the costs.
 
Oh, my five year old niece is severely autistic and public school has been a God send for my brother and his wife… she has been going since she was two and they also come to their home to do therapy with her. They do the a.b.a. training with her and she is now beginning to talk and she can dress herself and she has potty trained… has started to play with other children… all things that the rest of us take for granted has had to be worked with her over and over and over all the time to get her to understand and remember… my sister in law said without that help from the school she would feel so alone in all of this.
 
Giannawannabe said:
Very good thread, kamz. I have parochial schooled, homeschooled, and public schooled my children. When I parochial schooled, a lot of parents wanted to “justify” their choice to parochial school by saying negative things about public school. When I homeschooled, some parents there “justified” their choice saying negative things about public AND parochial schools. In public school, some parents “justify” their choice by speaking negatively about parochial schools. It seems in every milieu, there were SOME parents who felt they needed to justify their choice in a negative way.
I firmly believe that most parents choose the educational path for their children very carefully. It hurts when a “friend” feels the need to constantly tell me why my choice is bad or not as “caring” or “responsible” or “Catholic” as her choice. My dh and I prayerfully came to each every decision we’ve made.
Since I’ve experienced hsing, public schooling, and parochial schooling, I’m in a very unique position. I can say with certainty that each schooling choice presents it’s own sets of pros and cons. Nothing is perfect. As parents, we need to take our set of circumstances, and raise our children in the Faith as best we can. It would be a much easier task if we would all support each other in this endeavor.
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I too have always thought we should support each other… but I am finding that “others” don’t feel quite that way… sad to see that… but I’m glad that we can find support from parents who choose to private and public school their kids and find it to be awesome as we do… my 3 in Catholic school have had all A’s this year and two of them were in the regional spelling bee:D

By the way… why did you stop home schooling if I may ask?:confused:
 
kamz said:
they feel that somehow their choice to public school or private school is being questioned or frowned upon,

This seems to result from some misintepretation. We can say time and again that people can also prayerfully make a decision to send their kids to public school and that we believe that all must do what they believe God wants them. We can also say that we know people to have graduated from traditional schools who turn out great and that others can have the same thing happen to them. For some reason the fact that we find benefits to homeschooling always seems to be twisted by some schoolers to mean that we think they are wrong, bad parents, etc. It would seem that the only way we can’t have a superiority complex is to agree that traditional schooling is the best for everyone. 😦

I am a parochial school graduate. For my family I see many more benefits to homeschooling. We have a smaller class size (can anyone actually deny this), we have more individual attention (can anyone deny this one too), we have less negative peer pressure (at least in my family - can anyone deny this?), etc. Notice that NONE of this says that you are a bad parent, not prayerful in your decisions, that your children will turn out horribly, etc. It is what it is. We find our way of schooling beneficial for our family. If we found ourselves in a situation where we no longer felt that God wanted us to homeschool then we’d research and find the best school situation possible for our family just as I’m sure that most of you have done.

As far as supporting each other’s decisions…I frankly don’t think that this is necessary or always possible. We can have no knowledge of what goes into someone’s decisions. Whether they be homeschooling or traditional schooling, they could be the wrong one. What we do need to do is to support each other through prayer. It would seem that praying that we ALL raise devout Catholic children would be the most important and to pray that they be as educated as at all possible would be secondary.
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kamz said:
I too have always thought we should support each other… but I am finding that “others” don’t feel quite that way… sad to see that… but I’m glad that we can find support from parents who choose to private and public school their kids and find it to be awesome as we do… my 3 in Catholic school have had all A’s this year and two of them were in the regional spelling bee:D

By the way… why did you stop home schooling if I may ask?:confused:
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kamz,
I think we don’t “support” each other because we are all so defensive about our schooling choices. It’s ALL of us! Not just homeschoolers or traditional schoolers. I think bear06 is right, but she just indicated traditional schoolers get defensive. I’ve seen a lot of defensive responses from homeschoolers, too. I think that when we make prayerful decisions, then we need to simply trust in God that we made the right one, and stop feeling like we need to constantly defend our decision. This, in and of itself, would decrease the amount of vitriol seen in schooling threads. In a way, puzzleannie is right. If we don’t have anything to contribute to a schooling thread…especially if it’s one asking for advice, then we simply should not post. I’ve stopped reading the homeschooling threads, unless it’s something about a particular curriculum, etc. I still homeschool certain subjects in the summer, and like to see what’s out there.
As to why I stopped homeschooling. Well, there’s plenty of reasons, but probably the biggest one is financial. I have to work, and it was beating me down something terrible to try and work around dh’s schedule, and homeschool. Plus, we were involved in a group that required dues and had lots of activities that cost money, etc. We simply could not afford to do it, both emotionally, spiritually, AND financially. Financial reasons were also why we had to pull them from parochial schools. I loved school as a kid. My kids all love school. They’ve made lots of new friends and enjoy all of the extracurricular activities(at no or low cost). I felt (and still do) that traditional schooling is the best route for my kids. I would have loved to keep with parochial schooling, but it simply was not in the cards for us. We are still paying the debt from sending them for a few years. NOT KIDDING!!! We tried to work with the school, but they just couldn’t help us. Such a shame.
I pray every day for my children. I pray that they stay close to God. I pray to their Guardian Angels. I have to trust that God has helped me make the best decisions. I can’t second guess or become defensive or wish for something that can’t be.
 
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