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Yes. I am repeating myself, but I am so struck at how the Pope's judgement continues to speak to our own time with so much variation in situations and compromises accepted over the years. Here is a plumb-line straight and true. It comes from another age, addressing primarily a very different set of political situations and difficulties but it provides us with a tremendous mechanism for evaluating the current argument in favor of sending Catholic children to public schools in the USA as well as for an emphatic counter-response in the negative for the aforementioned reasons.

Well, since the public schools were set up in the USA to counter the Catholic ones....

Seriously, academically, at least around here, the public and non-Catholic private schools do have the advantage, with a couple exceptions. And the Catholic high schools are financially out of reach for a lot of people, not that there aren't those who sacrafice a lot to send their kids to them. Now, that's not to say that people couldn't home school if they wanted.

True confessions...I went to public school for two years and, frankly academically I was met at my level. Where we were living at the time, there just wasn't an alternative. In Catholic schools I was always coasting to straight A's with no homework. Socially, they were comparable. There was an elite group and the rest of us suffered.

Having said that, due to what is NOT taught and what is mistaught, I can't imagine why any Catholic would send their kids to public school. They embody everything our faith fights. Well, except for the band programs, if there is one after cutbacks. Personally, home-schooling truly sound like the way to go.