Public School vs. Catholic School

  • Thread starter Thread starter MysticMissMisty
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Not being Catholic, I obviously never attended catholic schools. Back when I was in High School there were two Catholic H.S.’s near by us. One for boys and one for girls. Our public H.S. often got kids that were switching over and they were always ill prepared. They had a reputation as just meeting general standards.

That is completely different now. First, the two schools merged and for the last five years at least (maybe longer) it is now rated as one of the top five Schools in that city! There are two other catholic H.S.’s and about fifteen elementary ones. All three HS’s are top rated! So, at some point in time, the Church or whoever is in charge, really turned them around!
 
We sent our oldest to public school for her first two years of school, then we tried Catholic school. We stuck to Catholic schools after that, and our youngest will be starting Catholic high school this fall.
Some things to consider:
  1. I think the actual curriculum is going to be similar at Catholic and public - especially if they are all following common core. If your local Catholic schools are good quality, they may include Catholic teaching to some degree in some classes.
  2. If you’re looking for special programs - such as high quality instrumental music, a top quality public school is probably going to be much better than Catholic school in this regard.
  3. Overall it depends on which public school you are comparing. Our local public school is not that great, but if we are comparing to the best (ritzy suburban) public schools, it would be harder to spend the money on Catholic school.
  4. People have the idea that discipline is better at Catholic schools, but I’m not sure thats true. There are two huge and influential families in our area, and it seems that their kids get away with quite a bit. I think the schools /parishes honestly cannot afford to lose certain families, so they look the other way when a troublesome kid has a certain last name.
 
I would say all other things being equal I would choose Catholic school. However, it depends on your child and the quality of the respective schools. I sent my son to public school and faith formation because he had special needs that could not be met in the Catholic school, but there were trade offs I did not care for.
 
In my country (Argentina, at least in my area) it also depends on the school and is sometimes a matter of quality of secular education vs. quality of religious education.

I went to a really good high school in the technical sense, with a somewhat acceptable level of catechesis. But I see in many places that usually the most orthodox religious schools are also mediocre in their secular level. They also don’t make many converts, I think, as I’ve heard many ex-students bash their orthodox schools for being run by too strict and cranky nuns or things like that.

In conclussion, there are good catholic schools with a good secular curriculum in my area, but they are rare, like mine.
 
I disagree. I certainly do not think it’s up to us to decide if a particular canon is necessary or not. It’s the Church law, we obey.
What other laws of the church do you feel can be ignored because they are “not necessary”?
 
littlebird said:
If you dont want your child to be vaccinated, you may not have a choice anymore depending on which state you live in.
Click to expand...
Why any parent would not want their child to be vaccinated is beyond me.

What do you mean by “pretty sad”? Many public schools in the United States offer an excellent education.
CorydonMundi said:
public school is nothing but a cesspool of mediocrity and degeneracy. Lazy teachers, lazy students, and government interference.
Click to expand...
Wow, thanks for that sweeping generalization, in which you manage to insult the schools attended by some 90 percent of Americans. I can assure you that my public school was neither mediocre nor degenerate and that neither the teachers nor the students were lazy.
 
I said it was a great shame if the Church that Catholic schools are often not available. We are all to blame, but particular blame falls in the bishops.

But we cannot ignore or sneer at the law.
 
Last edited:
CorydonMundi said:
and public school is nothing but a cesspool of mediocrity and degeneracy. Lazy teachers, lazy students,
Click to expand...
WOW. You have painted with a very broad brush there.

I went to Catholic school. My Catholic husband went to public schools. My mother-in-law and husband are public school teachers and my kids are a mixture of homeschooled, charter school, and regular public school. There is good and bad in all of these situations.

I guarantee you, you can find lazy students, lazy teachers, and degenerates at nearly every Catholic school and you can find good, hardworking teachers and students at nearly every public school.
 
I have never read info before about the obligation to send children to Catholic school. Thanks for posting it!
It looks like plenty of people do ignore it.
 
Annie said:
The priest came over and yelled that they were sinning by pulling their children out.

So yeah, the Vatican has written its documents, but people still have to live with the realities of CINO schools, high tuitions, and sometimes really bad encounters.
Click to expand...
When I enrolled in the parish school in 6th grade, my mom had to fight more than once with the principal (who was a nun) to get me in. The principal claimed there wasn’t room for me. My mom’s position was that if the school was taking in unruly undisciplined trouble-making kids that weren’t even Catholic there most certainly was room for me, an exemplary straight-A student.

I knew none of this until years later. It would explain why Sister always glared at me when she saw me.
 
A parent who is willing to “write a check” is probably a parent who is involved in his child’s education. I imagine the Catholic schools want that kind of personal involvement–as well as the check.
 
In this area this is certainly not the problem. We have a lot of Hispanics in most of our parishes and the parish schools have worked hard to attract the Hispanic families, by both marketing the benefits of a Catholic education and by offering substantial tuition discounts based on income. This latter has been greatly aided by a diocesan wide scholarship program which comes with hard money raised by the diocese. As to black students, one of our diocesan high schools is in a part of town which is heavily black and I would not be surprised if upwards of 50% of their students are black (just a guess on my part based on attending sporting events there). In many of the parishes around here there are quite a few 1st or second generation African Americans who are often Catholic and these students also often attend the Cahtolic schools.
Indeed, I would guess that many of the Catholic parish schools would be closed by now (I know our parish would be) if they had not made a concerted effort of serving the Hispanic communities in their parishes.
 
on_the_hill said:
I knew none of this until years later. It would explain why Sister always glared at me when she saw me.
Click to expand...
I found out years after I graduated that the sisters who ran my high school were angry at my mother and by extension, at me because they had told my mom they would pay to send me for free to a particular all-girls Catholic liberal arts college affiliated with their order, which was an okay school but let’s just say not an academic powerhouse and no good for what I wanted to major in (engineering). They thought Mom would jump at the chance because our family didn’t have much money. I had really high test scores and had been told I could write my own ticket pretty much anywhere as admissions weren’t as competitive then and high test scores were also more rare.

Mom knew I did not want to go to a Catholic all-girls college because after 12 years of Catholic school and 4 years of all-girls school, I wanted something different and to go to secular co-ed college, and she also knew that I had already chosen a secular co-ed college. So she just never told me about the sisters’ offer and she turned it down herself, which when I found out about it I was perfectly fine with her having done, as I would have turned it down myself had I known. Mom did this because she felt I should be able to choose my own college without getting pressure from the sisters. I ended up getting a lot of scholarship aid which covered most of the costs for the college of my choice, although my parents did have to hustle to come up with the relatively small amount left over for them to pay.

The sisters apparently took their revenge in various ways such as by denying me a graduation honor and by various other petty stuff. My mother was angrier about it than I was. They denied quite a few deserving girls a graduation honor, and gave it to someone who was known for kissing up to the sisters and was also quite far down (I’d say about 6 to 10 spots down) from the top on the grade point average list. IDK if the Catholic schools still play these kinds of head games, but it’s a negative factor to watch out for.

Needless to say I have not rushed back to that school checkbook in hand to make donations since I left. I do have happy memories of many of the nicer/ better teachers including some of the sisters, but the school administration left much to be desired. I also went through another ongoing incident involving a mentally unwell classmate bullying me while I was there at the instigation of another classmate. This is the sort of thing that can happen anywhere including in the public school, but the Catholic school did not handle it well.
 
Last edited:
Some Catholic schools seem to be havens for the top athletes. Kind of like playing college ball. Recruited.
 
You can’t be serious. You don’t think that people who can’t afford private school tuition are involved in their child’s education? Some of the elementary schools in my area have tuition rates that are comparable to a semester in state college!
 
I find it rather disturbing that when the subject of Catholic schools comes up on this forum everyone is so anxious to jump in and tell their anecdotal stories about awful experiences. Many times these stories are decades old. I don’t know any other topic that draws so much of a negative spin. If a Catholic school did a bad job teaching the faith in the 70s or 80s , that is fair game to judge the schools today. If a person who is late middle aged was mistreated by one staff member as a kid, then lets make sure we get that story out there so others will not make the mistake of sending their kids to one of these horrid places. I for one, can say that the nuns who taught me as a child were excellent. Were they perfect, no. Could I tell one or two stories of a mistreated friend? of course. Whats the point?
I have sent all of my kids to Catholic schools from K-12 and have been quite happy with the results. Were there times in the schools where, as parents, we needed to step in an complain? yes. Have there been wonderful teachers who really cared about my children and great class mates? More than I can count.
The questions posed in the OP were fair topics to be discussed. There have been a few posts which tried to answer the questions. None of the anecdotal stories help at all IMO. . . .
Rant over.
 
Last edited:
That’s true - our state college tuition is $10,000 / year, and the local Catholic high schools are roughly $8,000 / year. And I know most Catholic high schools are even more costly.
 
Last edited:
Wow, I wish our diocesan high schools were only 8K a year. As I said before, the one huge failure among Catholic schools the last couple of decades is the run away tuition costs. It is inexcusable. Around here, many of the parish schools have taken steps to stem the tide starting 10 years or so ago. This has unfortunately not been done at the high school levels and it has gotten to the point that diocesan high schools are only for the well off. That is an institutional sin in my opinion.
 
I teach in a neighborhood that currently has a 30% Hispanic population and a 30% black population. I grant you, a majority of the black population isn’t Catholic, but some of them are and the majority of the Hispanic population are. Meanwhile, taking a look at the local parish first communion class, you’ll see one black student with white parents. I could accept that this might be a coincidence if it wasn’t for the fact that at community soccer games we see groups of Catholic parents chanting “mow our grass” at the brown kids on the other team. Racism is a issue in our community and I do think it’s a driving force for most of the check-writing parents out there. If the tuition became income-based, and students’ families had to be active parishioners, there would be an exodus to secular and non-denominational private schools (which are also very big in our area.) But the parochial schools might then be a place worth sending your kid.
 
Actually, they demonstrate the point that each case is different and parents need to look at the available schools closely and consider many things before making their choice.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top