Posted on 11/24/2003 9:52:35 AM PST by Yaelle
My 6th grade homeschooled son wants to go to school. At first, I was a little hurt by it, but upon serious thought, I realized it would be good for us both. I am so busy with the new baby that it makes homeschooling difficult. And he is of the age when he wishes to contradict everything I say! But we need a safe, conservative place for him.
The local middle school appears horrible. There are hundreds of kids in each grade, and there is the gang element, and I am sure drugs as well. I just cannot throw my child to the wolves.
We are a financially struggling family, trying to make it on one salary, with three kids. We cannot afford the one local nonreligious private school: only the children of the wealthy go there. There is no Jewish school near us, and even the one far away wouldn't work (Chabad, and they don't accept my Conservative conversion), if we could afford it, but we can't. The only school we could afford (barely) is the Catholic school.
They teach Catholicism and all the kids go to Mass. As well they should! They have a good academic curriculum, and the school encourages good values. A lot of the parents are conservative. My son is secure in his Judaism and will become bar Mitzvah next year.
I have visited the school and spoken with the principal. Everyone is very nice there. My son would obviously be expected to do all the curriculum like everyone else, religion included. I simply cannot make up my mind. It doesn't seem right to send a Jewish boy to Catholic school. I wish we Jews had a good educational system like the Catholics do, but we do not. I would like my child to attend a religious-based school, at a reasonable cost.
If I were to decide to send my son to Catholic school, what about his little brothers? One will need a school next year and if I sent him at his young age, wouldn't he be Catholic within a month, just to be like his teacher and friends?
I am going in circles here trying to decide. I don't want to set my son up for failure in a school where I should have known from the outset that he might not fit in. Neither do I want to deny him a good experience in a small religious school if that would be what happens.
I am grateful for all thoughts. Go ahead and be blunt. Thanks.
Too true! The person I aimed that post at and I settled the point off line, and agreed that nowhere is totally safe. I just hated the implication that I was willing and knowingly handing my child straight over to a molester.
Almost 17 years have passed, but I just found your post and am grateful that I did because I find myself in a very similar situation, except that my son is going into Kindergarten. We are enrolled in a Catholic school, which he could attend Kindergarten at in September, but we are raising him Jewish and I really am struggling with this decision. So my question for you, Yaelle, is - all these years later, what did you end up doing for your kids and how did it turn out? What advice would you give me, knowing what you know now?
boy it was a gas to read thru this. So many old freeper names. Seventeen years ago.
Wow, what a blast from the past. That so did not work. One visit and he refused to go there. And that “new baby” is now 17. Gee whiz. Ironically my youngest child is learning about all the Saints and it is fascinating. There are a lot of things about Catholicism I really like.
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