From the age of about six up until I was seventeen, my parents avidly encouraged me to attend private schools (Roman Catholic, if that makes any difference). It didn't matter if my parents weren't Catholic, or not very religious. The appeal of private Catholic schools is not their dogma, but their promise of security and academic achievement. These schools guarantee students will emerge as disciplined and well educated members of society, and might even say their prayers before a meal. For any parent who just wants what's best for their child, what's not to love?
Except of course, it's just an expensive illusion.
My family wasn't particularly religious, so the importance placed on Catholicism at school wasn't significant at all. My parents would complain about how I was the only one in the family that should be attending church and saying prayers before dinner, which always confused me. Why would I do that when we never did that before and no one seemed to care? The only thing I learned at Catholic school was that I didn't care about Catholicism at all.
Furthermore, the spread of misinformation when it came to health and reproductive issues was just as bad as the lack of any substantial information on the same topic. Our health classes were either touted as "free periods" or led by biased educators who only shed light on one perspective - the one that most closely followed Christian doctrine.
So, instead of learning about condoms and birth control, we watched a video of a botched abortion taking place and a woman crying about how a health care provider "brainwashed" her into killing her baby. Yikes.
Being a student at a private Catholic school doesn't automatically make you better or "good". In fact, going to a private Catholic school just teaches kids to be better at being bad. There's more at stake when you have a reputation to uphold, so learning to sneak around and maintain a veil of innocence with a squeaky-clean record was an essential part of Catholic school. I knew plenty of kids who, for lack of a better phrase, were total pieces of sh*t and yet were still adored by counselors and teachers alike as they signed up for religious retreats.
As for the academic excellence? It's not that much better than a public school, except for a smaller variety of AP classes and mandatory religious courses. A student gets what they put in, but teachers make sure you pass. If you fail, you f*ck up their summer. So students can easily coast by doing bare minimum with the threat of summer school lingering like a holographic monster. Threatening, but is it real?
Mainly, I don't see the reason to send my own kids to Catholic school. I don't feel particularly inclined to the Catholic schools I previously attended. Besides, dropping all that money for my kid to receive a merely decent education in an environment that enforces restrictive doctrine to developing kids who barely even have their own opinions on the world around them just doesn't seem right.
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