if you have kids, what kind of schooling do they recive? catholic, public, homeschool, etC… and why?
also, what sort of school did you attend yourself? was it a good experience?
Oldest two start in Catholic then switched to public, the other four all public. - Why? Because it’s what works best for us.
One, cost - a year of Catholic high school costs the same as a year of college. We choose to try to put what limited resources we have towards college instead of high school. Many people we know have done the reverse - told their kids since they paid for the high school, they are on their own for college.
Two, “systemic flow” - here, at least, it’s set up for everything from gifted classes, to band classes to flow from the elementary to the middle school to the high school. That’s the same for all three options we have available - public, Catholic, and Lutheran. If you switch schools it’s incredibly difficult for your child to enter into many of the programs. Each school type has a different system with teaching different things in different years so it’s much simpler and easier for all concerned if we keep the children in the system they are going to end in (rather than say doing elementary at the Catholic school and going to the public school for high school).
Three, lack of significant difference - again, I speak for my situation right here only. While each type of school has strengths and weaknesses, in the end, they balance out making any of the three a good choice, and so we go back to reasons one and two.
Homeschooling - never, ever an option for us. The kids are two spread out and too ridiculously intelligent and I am way too disorganized. I have many skills - this is not one of them and I’m not ashamed to say so. (Though for some reason the assumption outside of the Catholic community is that with six, I’d automatically homeschool - which always surprises me
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Regarding the teaching of our faith - the children attend religious ed classes that use the same book as the religious ed classes at the Catholic school - and I am fairly confident that I can, and do, teach doctrine as well or better than what they’d get by attending Catholic school alone, so that doesn’t bother me.
Regarding being exposed to, well, everything. One, I live in a conservative, middle class suburban area which is about 90% Christian. That makes it easier - most of the kids my children interact with come from the same basic background and most of the parents are on the same page I am. As for the ones who aren’t - well, my belief as a parent is that all of “this” is already out there - and my children are going to encounter it. I, personally, prefer to deal with whatever comes up and teach through words/actions/and, yes, negative consequences if necessary, what is right, what is wrong, WHY it is wrong, and when you have to accept that someone else may be doing something wrong but that doesn’t make it acceptable. On the other hand, I do know several kids who were sent to Catholic school, and the parents really seemed to feel this was sufficient so that no further discipline or supervision was necessary. And thus these kids were partying, drinking, doing drugs, etc. The parents never checked up on who they were going out with or where to - just that it was someone else from their Catholic high school - and let’s face it - unsupervised kids (even good ones) will end up getting in trouble. Of course, it’s the same for some of the public school kids, but in general it seems the parents (at least the good ones I know) are more vigilant than their Catholic high school counterparts.
But anyway, kids will be kids no matter the school, and why mine know that if there is even a remote suspicion of wrong-doing, they are presumed guilty till proven innocent.
Anyway - that’s my 30 cents worth
