School Daze !

I went to a Catholic school till the eighth grade. School started each day in church for 8:00 mass.  Next we had classes like any other school. Our art class was different because a lot of it was centered on Bible pictures and events. I drew a lot of crosses in my day. We also had a class on religion each day.

My dad was having a hard time because my mother was sick with kidney stones and he was laid off from his job. He struggled to pay the bills and keep our house by bagging groceries and delivering auto parts for a local parts store. He worked for low wages and long hours doing two jobs. This from a man that was in combat in WWII fighting Japan. He had jungle rot on his feet and suffered relapses of Malaria.

I remember the Nuns teaching us that if your parents would give at least 10% of your wages (tithing) to the church God would provide for you and your money problems would disappear.  I remember that I would go home and tell my dad that the reason we were having such a hard time was a result of us not tithing.

I was a member of a class with 60 students in it. We were never taught critical thinking let alone real science. We never learned how to play a musical instrument either.

After I grew up I felt ashamed that my church would teach me such things. I felt ashamed of blaming our financial problems on my dad.  I had a hard time adjusting to a public high school. I was used to just keeping my mouth shut and never asking any probing questions.

I did manage to overcome my experience and did become a high school teacher. Over the years we had many transfers from religious schools .Some did quite well while others had problems. I guess they did as well as most other students. We had many Religious parents that could not afford to send their children to private church schools and homed schooled them.  The majority of these students did have serious learning problems. Not all but most had a very hard time getting along and many were very far behind in class work.

Please do not keep your children home to be educated. Unless you are a very smart and educated person who wants to devote your life to home schooling you will do harm to your child. Send your children to school. I prefer Public schools because of all the testing and scrutiny but a good private Christian school is just as good except for the sciences. When you hear stats that our children are not doing well compared to the rest of the world on tests remember that we educate everyone in the U.S. Other nations do not. You have to test into a secondary education. We also test and count the scores of our students with learning disabilities.  The best doctors, scientists, engineers and other professionals all come from our country