Faith schools

[Adam]

I'm sure I've made a thread about this before lol, but wanna ask you guys what you think about it

I was reading about it in a magazine today, which got me thinking about it more

[Parts]

I have no faith in them

[Icequeen]

I think they're scary, honestly I think religion in general when it concerns kids is scary...it's far too easy to brainwash a kid.

Granted, there are parents that aren't extremists and don't shove this down their kid's throat and still encourage their children to think for themselves, but for every 20 that do their are 10 that don't, and it's disturbing. 

[Adam]

Agreed

And if you're not gonna brainwash them or forceyour beliefs on them, then what is wrong with sending them to a normal state school?

[Scrapheap]

In Jolly ole' Britian, your taxpayer money goes to pay for that shit.   

[Queen Victoria]

Agreed

And if you're not gonna brainwash them or forceyour beliefs on them, then what is wrong with sending them to a normal state school?

Some of this post may not be accurate, but:

The student/teacher ratio is usually lower in private/parochial schools than in government schools.

Parochial schools tuition usually runs lower than tuition in private schools.

In theory, students are better behaved than in government.

Some private/parochial schools offer options (classes, opportunities) that are not available in government schools.  For example our neighborhood government school used to send the 5th grade students on a trip to Washington D.C., which the parents paid for.  Now, no government school in our parish does this, but some Catholic schools still do.  Band is not offered in the lower schools in government schools, but is in Catholic and private schools.

There is a certain status to saying that a) you can afford to send your child to a school where you pay tuition, b) feeschools are better (ellitist) than government school, etc.

[Callaway]

A friend of mine who isn't particularly religious sent her daughter to a "christian school" that offered her a scholarship.  Her reasons were that they had smaller class sizes and no special needs students who, in her view, took up too much of a teacher's resources, thereby depriving good students like her daughter of the teacher's full attention.  Also, she thought the students were better behaved when not distracted by special needs students.

The straw that broke the camel's back for her was that she believed the district schools taught to certain standardized tests too much and placed too much pressure to do well on a good student like her daughter.  The principal of the district school pressured her to bring her daughter to school to take the standardized test that determined funding for the schools even though she was recovering from chicken pox at the time.

[Adam]

ok maybe i phrased my last post wrong.

I see reasons why parents would choose faith schools (although I would disagree with their reasons), but those arent enough to support faith schools in the first place

[renaeden]

When I went to primary school and had religious education classes, I thought it was all just made up stories. The same when we thanked god for everything in the morning before classes started, I had no idea what that was about, heh.

I think there are a lot of kids who go to religious schools and go through the motions and all but the actual religion doesn't sink into them and they still leave in the end as  open-minded people. Depends on what kind of person you are.

['andersom']

They are as common as non religious schools in the Netherlands. And, they have to meet the same standards.

I see no harm in them. And, they are most of the time not of a fundamentalist orientation. In my village there is a catholic primary school, a non denominational one, and one that covers most of the christian orientations. On all schools, there are kids of every possible denomination.

The non denominational is not doing that well in educating at the moment, and, thank goodness, parents can choose between two other primary schools.

If anything, it has made my kids think more critical, to be at a christian school. And, I don't mind.
For some kids, the school they are on is the first place where they see there are other interpretations possible than the ones they learn at home (We've got a few families that belong to a kind of cult) They would never see this other interpretation on a non-denominational school. In fact, that is why lots of kids from obscure sect like christian denominations visit a non-denominational school. That would not pervert their beliefs, because it would not mention it.

First thing I asked at the school was how zealous they were. Had it been one of the few zealous schools, my girls would probably have gone to the catholic school, because the non-denominational here just sucked.

[Pyraxis]

In fact, that is why lots of kids from obscure sect like christian denominations visit a non-denominational school. That would not pervert their beliefs, because it would not mention it.

Interesting point.

One problem I had with the Catholic school I went to for two years was that they clung closely to tradition. That meant being out of touch in various ways. One was employing as a computer teacher a woman who taught typing in the time of typewriters, so she would mark people down for needing to use the backspace key on a typing test, and despite the school having money, the computers were ancient. One was that their counsellor was very religious, and after she broke down crying in class because the majority of the girls supported abortion, I abandoned any hope of getting useful help from her. Their academic standards were higher, which was good, and their art teacher was good. But in retrospect it was a bad decision to transfer there.

[TA]

Indoctrination at it's finest. I'm surprised that some are even accredited.

['andersom']

In fact, that is why lots of kids from obscure sect like christian denominations visit a non-denominational school. That would not pervert their beliefs, because it would not mention it.

Interesting point.

One problem I had with the Catholic school I went to for two years was that they clung closely to tradition. That meant being out of touch in various ways. One was employing as a computer teacher a woman who taught typing in the time of typewriters, so she would mark people down for needing to use the backspace key on a typing test, and despite the school having money, the computers were ancient. One was that their counsellor was very religious, and after she broke down crying in class because the majority of the girls supported abortion, I abandoned any hope of getting useful help from her. Their academic standards were higher, which was good, and their art teacher was good. But in retrospect it was a bad decision to transfer there.

Most kids at the catholic school here are no member of the church, not baptised, not anything. It just is a better school than the non-denominational one.

Were I to move to another place, again I would orient on all schools available there, and go for the school that would be best in educating and giving the kids some confidence.

My ex SIL did send her kids to a non-denominational school on principle. She did not want the sevent-day-adventist beliefs of home compromised by a christian school. A former friend of mine got some resistance at her splinter church for sending her kids to a christian school, for the same reason. I'm glad to announce that her daughter got quite rebellious thoughts at school, compared to what she was taught at her church.

Of course, there are some really fundamentalist schools. There are not much of them though. A nephew of mine travelled three times as much as needed to get into the education he wanted, because he wanted to be at a school were evolution theory was not taught. He took the consequences that that would mean a low result on his biology exams. Because there is no way you can avoid the standard exams here.

[Icequeen]

Adam, you could say I'm a hypocrite on this and you would be right , I don't like the idea, but truth is, I sent my son to a christian pre-school.

I hated the idea , but they didn't put alot of emphasis on religion, it was clean, the hours were shorter, the classes were small (only around 10 kids) with at least 2-3 people attending to the kids, and they did alot of really fun activities with the kids.

My son was having tremendous problems dealing with other kids at the time, we had to hold him back a year from starting kindergarten as a result and decided to give pre-school a test run. I could teach him everything he needed to know to start school except how to "socialize" with other kids. Go figure.

I had 3 options for pre-school, 2 religious in nature (one overly so ), and one public pre-school that was filthy as fuck and had about 30 kids to a class.

Some of the public/state schools suck ass to say it bluntly, especially if your kid has special needs or can't function in a large classroom setting, private non-denominational schools are rare or can't seem to get the proper funding, so I do understand why parents make this choice at times. 

[Queen Victoria]

Nation-wide 11% of students from Kindergarten through 12th grade are enrolled in private/parochial schools.  In Jefferson Parish where I live and in Orleans Parish (a unique situation) slightly over 30% of the students are enrolled in p/p schools. 

(Note:  Almost all of the public schools in New Orleans were taken over by the state or given charters after Hurricane Katrina because of the massive damage and the failing publlic school system.)