Why We Chose Catholic Schools

I spent the overwhelming majority of my educational years in Catholic schools.  From kindergarten through my undergraduate years to be exact.  The only public educational experience I had was in graduate school.  And probably because of that, the overwhelming majority of people I know went to Catholic school including my husband.  You would have thought Catholic school would have been the automatic decision for our children.

But it wasn’t.

For years before we had kids, I debated public school, and for at least part of that time, public school was coming out on the winning side.  It’s not that I was against Catholic education.  To be honest, it was the smaller school and class sizes that were troubling me.  I think young people usually feel like they are growing up in a fishbowl, and I think smaller schools tend to intensify that.  And what if my kids didn’t get along with some of the kids in their class?  There are fewer other options for friendship in smaller schools.

And then Magoo was born, and I pretty much knew right away that she wouldn’t go to public school.  After seeing her and holding her and feeling that acutely intense need to protect her, I knew I didn’t want her going to a school that was entrenched in our culture.  There’s too much that can tear down a young girl in our society, and I wanted to protect her from all of that as much as I could.

And so I started thinking about homeschooling.

In a way, homeschooling made sense.  We could protect our children from the more vitriolic aspects of our culture; we could help them develop their senses of themselves as individuals so that by the time they entered the world at large, they at least had a greater chance of maintaining their belief in themselves.  And we could help guide them into friendships that would be beneficial to them.  Plus, I think I would really enjoy homeschooling.

But then the closer and closer Magoo got to school age, the more I started to have questions about homeschooling.  Surely it works amazingly well for many people.  I just wasn’t sure if it was what I wanted for my girls.  For all the benefits of homeschooling, there are downfalls.  There’s the lack of diversity that a child will often experience – a lack of variety in opinions and personalities they will come into contact with.  And they would miss out on all of the memories I had from my childhood days — recess with friends, group projects, athletic competitions, and the intense bonds that can develop with peers you spend your days with.  Of course, all of these things can be accommodated for in the homeschooling environment, but it’s all a matter of trade offs as every form of schooling has advantages and disadvantages.  For us, the advantages of a traditional classroom outweighed the negatives.  At least at this point.

And so after exploring Montessori, Waldorf, and non-denominational Christian alternatives, we decided on Catholic school.  We enrolled Magoo in four year old preschool, and now she is half way done with her kindergarten year.  If perhaps at the time we weren’t fully confident in our decision, we were excited for it.

And then towards the beginning of the school year, I was sitting with my little two in the all school mass while Magoo was up front with her class.  As I listened to the priest speaking to the children and I listed to the children doing readings and singing and I watched them kneeling in sincere prayer the way kids can do so much more easily than adults, suddenly I felt totally at peace.

See, I was never one who thought that kids needed religion in school.  I think it’s important that kids have religion, but I was always of the mindset that if they got religion at home and they went to religious education classes that this would be sufficient.

But sitting in the back of that church, I started to understand just how important religion in school is.  Here I saw children, in their most vulnerable and formative years, learning not just how things work and why things are the way they are, but they were also gaining a deeper understanding of our world through their experiences with faith.  They were learning that God should be the center of their lives, that he can’t be compartmentalized out.

They were learning that values aren’t arbitrary.  While I pray they continue to learn tolerance and acceptance, they are also learning the truth and beauty that comes from an intimate relationship with God.  They are learning that truth isn’t relative.

They are learning to pray… both in thanksgiving as well as in petition.  They are learning you treat others with respect not because it just makes society work better but also because it’s how we are charged to treat people by the creator of us all.

They are learning that love isn’t optional.  They are learning that charity doesn’t make us good people; it makes us merely into the people we are meant to be.

And most of all, and perhaps what I was most surprised about, is that they are learning that in communion with each other is the only way to experience the fullness of life.  They learn of their interdependence.  They learn to pray for and with each other.  And they learn that the community is just as important as the individual.

We are a mere year and a half into what will probably be decades of Catholic school, but as of this point, I could not be more sure of our decision.

What about you?  What decisions have you made in regards to your children’s education?  What led you to make those decisions?

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