Non-religious Dopers: Would you send your kid to a private school?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have a bit of a conundrum.

My daughter turns five at the end of December. In Michigan, a child has to turn five by October 1st to attend Kindergarten; waivers can be granted for kids who will turn five before December 1st.

The problem is, she’s really, really smart. We moved her from an in-home preschool to an actual preschool last week, and after two days her teacher pulled my wife and I aside at drop off and told us that we need to try to get her into Kindergarten this fall. This morning, she pulled us aside again, told us she’s had our daughter on her mind all weekend, and that she’s pretty sure she could test into first grade.

Now, on one hand, I’m extremely proud: I have a kid who is legitimately at the top end of the intelligence scale for her age. On the other hand, I don’t know what to do with her. Her preschool teacher is willing to differentiate instruction for her to keep her engaged, but she also told us she thinks that K or Grade 1 would be a better fit.

My wife and I did some research on our area, and it looks like our only option is to send our daughter to a private school if we want her to start Kindergarten this year. The problem with that is that the only private school around is St. Somethingorother’s Elementary. It’s affordable and close to home, but the thought of “religious education” really squicks me out. I’m not religious at all, and I don’t want my daughter indoctrinated into Catholicism by her school. On the other hand, I’m pretty liberal, so the actual message of Jesus (love other people; don’t be greedy; forgive others for their transgressions against you) is something I pretty fully support.

So, has anyone here been down this road? How do you balance a school’s teaching of Christianity with your own lack of religion?

2

Once she has attended kindergarten at the Catholic school for a year, can she go to public school’s first grade the next year or after 1st grade could she move for 2nd grade? Or would you always be stuck with having her repeat a grade if she transferred? If she can transfer after a year or two, I don’t think I’d worry about things at all – though she might object to leaving her friends.

You might also try to talk to some other parents of school children there and find out how much religion is emphasized.

3

I did, but not in the US.

My son needed to go to boarding school (why isn’t important for the purpose here, but I can elaborate and I have before.) The only boarding schools here in Australia are religious. I sent him to a Vincentian Catholic boarding school.

It was great, although he had some subtle discrimination - he should have been prefect and was told that if he converted he could be, for example. But all in all I have the same atheist kid I sent there. I think religious (Christian/Catholic at least) mythology permates our culture, art and literature and so to have him understand those myths will help him understand those things better.

Your milage and school may vary. The school I sent him too is very Catholic but not overly so. The headmaster told me bluntly that most boys were Catholic because their parents were.

Good luck.

4

I am atheist and my daughter goes to a private religious school.
The reasons I am ok with it are the following:

  1. It’s episcopal and relaxed. They mainly talk about the golden rule and the things you mention. I like that the students have to complete community service hours to graduate.
  2. They teach other religions. They have had many people from other religions come and talk to the students. There was a Rabbi there in December, for example.
  3. Most importantly: they teach science. I would not be ok if they didn’t.

In all, she is very happy there.
I suggest that you visit this school. You never know if you’ll find it to be a perfect fit.

5

I was perfectly willing to send my kid to a religious school. Unfortunately, it was not Catholic. The Catholic schools around here don’t care if the parents are religious or not, but this one required that both parents be members of SOME church. I wasn’t, am not, and wasn’t willing to. In retrospect I probably should have as it was a pretty good school.

However, as a parent who started a kid in kindergarten whose birthday was in mid-December–so he shouldn’t have been in school yet–I would urge you to think about this very, very carefully. My kid was not just the smartest in his class, he was also the smallest, throughout elementary school. He connected socially with kids one class or even two classes below him. This was at a time when lots of parents were holding kids back for a year to let them develop more (or get smarter, maybe), and we went against that trend, to the kid’s detriment. They are all different, and it might be different for a girl. But keep this in mind: my kid was the last one in his class to be old enough to get a driver’s license (not a totally bad thing really) and one of very few kids who wasn’t 18 when he graduated from high school.

Note that this is two different kids I’m talking about. We got it right with the other two.

6

I’ve had this on my mind a lot as well. One other advantage my daughter has is that she’s physically large as well. If you believe the old wives tale of “double the child’s height at two years to get their adult height”, she’ll be 6’2 as an adult.

It’s really not K-5 I’m worried about from a “starting early” standpoint; it’s 6-9 that will be the hardest.

I like the suggestion of going and talking to the school. I think we’ll have to schedule that.

7

A private school maybe, but a religious school, never. It guarantees that she will be exposed to pressure to adopt religious values. The valid portions of the education – even at Kindergarten level – will be adulterated with theological content.

Obviously, we can’t keep kids from learning stuff. The ideas they will be exposed to on the playground will be astonishing. But you can keep those ideas from being impressed under the rigor of authority.

8

I was raised very loosely protestant (we went to church while visiting either set of grandparents) and went to a Catholic high school. It didn’t stick.

At the high school level, there was mandatory religious instruction…we alternated half of each grading period in religion/PE classes. The religion portion was tolerable. I don’t remember much of the curriculum, but it wasn’t much of the “join the church or burn in Hell” type stuff from what I remember. All classes started with a prayer–one of the standard Catholic memorized ones–the “Our Father” (which protestants know as “The Lord’s Prayer” minus the last two sentences) or “Hail Mary”, or some other shorter thing that was less popular. There was also a monthly Mass with attendance required even for us heathens. When all the Catholic kids went up to take communion, I sat quietly until they were done. After a year or so of that, I joined the photo club, so I could move around and take pictures during the service.

To their credit, the education provided was better than that offered at the public schools in that district, and the science classes taught evolution–I think the religion classes tacked on a “evolution happened because that was God’s plan” message. Also there were few discipline problems in the classrooms. Nuns and “Brothers” (male religious types, kinda like nuns, I guess) ran a tight ship, and were not at all adverse to applying corporal punishment as needed.

9

Like Oakminster. That is my experience with Catholic Schools. I went 1-12.

When my kids went, 1980’s, my son had the same problem with being the youngest. Lucky for us we had a great K teacher at the local public school where they would go as K in Catholic schools was getting hard to find & we could not haul all over.

Point was, my kid was smart, but socially young. Poor K teacher was a nervous wreck when we went for end of the year talk. We had been thinking that we should hold him back now and not in the 5-6 grade where there would be much harm to him with the kids knowing he was held back.

Poor teacher about melted when we told her what we were thinking.
She was terrified what we would think when she was going to bring it up. Son did K twice and had a ball. No stigma at all. Made the 1-12 years great.

My siblings & wife’s siblings had some of the same age / development problems. Kids were amazingly smart but immature.

Being the youngest in a class all through 1-12 suck rocks. IMO, you should not do it on general principles no matter how smart your kid is, how big or who worldly. The kids will know what the age is and smart, big & mature will not protect them.
Grade school age kids are on average mean little suckers. IMO / experience.

YMMV

10

On all the important issues, children don’t learn anything at school–they learn it all from their parents.
I’m not talking about learning dry facts; the school teaches the math and geography. But you as the parent are the only one who teaches basic morals, work ethic, and, yes, religion. Kids absorb their values instinctively from your personal example.*

I am not a Christian, but I attended an elementary school that started every morning with hymns praising Jesus. And it didn’t matter --at alll. My parents told me to stand with everybody else, after all, that the important thing is to be polite and respect others, etc. I also learned about the parables of Jesus.
Unless the religious school near you is full of fire-and-brimstone fanatics, it should be fine for 5 year old.

*for example: music lessons vs homework lessons:
In our family, the kids knew instinctively that homework was important and good grades are important. But piano lessons?---- well, if you didn’t practice, then it wasn’t so bad.
Why the difference?–it’s simple: Mom and Dad both worked, and had desks at home full of papers they brought home from the office. They sometimes did their “homework” at the same time as the kids did theirs. But neither of them played any musical instrument.So the kids instinctively understood that practicing wasn’t so important. Personal example determines everything.

11

Absolutely.

The Dashling is 5-and-a-half and about to finish Kindergarten, but he’s very bright and we will eventually have to get him into an accelerated program (i.e. GATE or equivalent) or private school to challenge him. For now, though, we think he’s fine in public elementary school. My wife and I do a lot of educating ourselves, and he has a thirst for knowledge, so we’ll fill in whatever gaps there are.

At some point (3rd grade? 5th grade?) we’ll probably end up putting him somewhere else. Like Harvard. :slight_smile:

12

I fit in. My kid’s Catholic school was the best choice in terms of price, location and quality of teaching. We are raising her Catholic of course, though I’m atheist by choice. The family goes to church on Sundays.

13

I have no idea where you live, but you should check to see if there is a Montessori school nearby. Montessori schools are not religious, and typically provide excellent education. Both of my kids went to Montessori until junior high, when they switched to public school.

Having said that, I would be a little apprehensive about a religious school, though probably less so regarding a Catholic school than some of the fundamentalist-based schools that are fairly popular near me. Only a little apprehensive, however, as I think the indoctrination aspect is probably not too intense. But that’s just a guess.

14

We sent our daughter to a Catholic school for pre-K, because the local public that offered a pre-K was something of a gang zone. Yes, even the elementary side. I did go in and talk to them about us not being Catholic and not being willing to fake it. Not only was it acceptable to them, but I was asked to come talk to the kids about “our” (neopagan) traditions and holidays, right along with the Jewish and the Muslim parents.

At that school, the kids did attend Mass once a week as a class, but they were too young to have worries about Communion and all that jazz. The only other vaguely religious piece to the schooling was a daily “Prayer Journal”, which was really a Journal, full stop. No prayers, just an exercise in getting the little ones into the habit of “writing” daily - as they were so young, it was dictating a sentence about their day or something on their mind to the teacher - and then drawing and coloring a picture to go with it.

I would have been hesitant to keep her there in the older grades when things like “who goes up to take Communion” might have led to peer pressure and ugliness, but then again, it may not have. We decided to take it year by year, but by Kindergarten, we’d moved into a much better neighborhood with a much better public school.

I’ve got other neopagan friends who have continued on in that school - one kid finished, and one is now in second grade, and they’ve been happy with it.

Vet carefully. There’s no central control over the Montessori schools, so some schools call themselves Montessori but have nothing in common with actual Montessori education. When I was looking around, my local “Montessori” school ended up being Montessori in name only. The lessons were extremely conventionally structured and timetables strict, and when I asked the director about the principles of Montessori education and how they informed her curriculum, I got a confused look and a wave of the hand, “Um…we’ve got these Montessori toys over here…they can play with them during Free Play from 1:10 to 1:35…” :dubious:

But yes, a good Montessori school is a wonderful thing. As is a good Waldorf school (I would have loved to send her to Waldorf, but we couldn’t afford it.)

15

Wow! That is not Montessor at all. My kids went to two Montessori schools, actually. One was very “authentic”, while the other was a tiny bit less so, but it still was very Montessori based in lessons, self-motivation, etc.

16

I wouldn’t (if I had a kid) because I wouldn’t be able to afford it, although I might consider Catholic school if I could. No way, nohow to any of the non-Catholic “Christian schools” around where I live, since 1) they were founded as segregation academies and are still almost entirely white in a town that is at least 50% African-American; and 2) I don’t trust them not to teach wacky fundamentalist BS.

17

I wouldn’t send a kid to a school that taught creationism, but other than that, I think I’d be fine with a religious school.

Me and all my siblings went to a Catholic school for several years; my mother is Catholic, my Dad is an atheist, but when he married her, he promised her and her family (who were against the match) that he’d raise the kids Catholic, so we all were.

He was true to his word, too. He supported her sending us to the Catholic school and going to church (though he didn’t go himself) and was never overtly critical of Catholicism, we all grew up to be atheists or agnostic. Not one believer in the bunch.

I wasn’t thrilled about going to Catholic school, but overall I got a good education.

18

The public schools would need to be abysmal or the private school absolutely stellar in terms of academic achievement. I went to catholic schools from preschool to 12th grade and starting about 7th grade I began to feel increasingly betrayed by the growing emphasis on religion and the lack of scholastic opportunities despite the school billing itself as a college prep focused high school*. Had I been as outspoken and confident then as I am now, I would have pushed much much harder for my parents to allow me to go to the public high school.

*Telling aside: When I visited the school a few years into college, the bar graph of my class’s ACT scores was still prominently displayed by the office with a piece of tape over the “Class of 2007”

19

As an ex-kid with a mid-November birthday subject to the same (or substantially similar 37 years ago) Michigan rules, who had totally aced all of kindergarten roundup activities, and yet was denied entry because I was a boy and not a girl, I would urge the OP to let the daughter go to school now.

I was one of the only people in my class who was already 18 when I graduated. I felt like an old man most of the time and tended to hang out with older kids. I ran out of classes to take in my senior year (and they forced me to take stupid electives and attend despite having met all of the requirements for December graduation).

I was always ahead of nearly everyone else, and I always knew that I was going to start my adult life one year late, all because they wouldn’t let me into kindergarten at an appropriate time.

20

There’s nothing religious they teach at the school that you can’t un-teach.

Let your daughter know that some people believe things based on how they feel inside, rather than based on what they can see and observe, and that it’s very important for those people to believe those things. However, let your daughter know that not everyone feels the same way, and some people believe only in the things they can see and observe. Yet nobody knows for certain who is right.

In short, there’s no right answer to some questions.

That will teach her that there is a grey area, where it’s not important to be “right” or “wrong”, and that religion largely falls under this category.

When she grows older, she will be able to choose what she believes. And you will have taught her your values, and exposed her to other people’s values, and demonstrated that they don’t have to be in conflict, and it isn’t a contest to prove who is right.

When she becomes an adult, she will know what she does or does not believe.

But she will look to you as her very first place for guidance, and teachers will come and go. Don’t be afraid of what they teach.

It’s important to learn that some people have things they want to teach, that you don’t necessarily accept as always being true. And that is something she can discover for herself in such an environment, particularly one that isn’t cuckoo bananas and uber strict.