Okay, so a friend of mine is considering putting her kid in Catholic School because the public schools here are ...well, basically they suck. But I still don't think Catholic School is the the way to go. I have no idea why I feel so opposed to the idea. Of course, I have no say or sway in her decision, but something dark and forboding swept over me when she mentioned it (haha).

Anyway, the scoop with her is that she is Catholic but only because her parents were. She is sort of a Holiday Catholic ( you know, she goes for the big stuff--Easter, Christmas, etc). She is very spiritual and accepts a lot of religious concepts and she sees Catholicism as having some positive aspects but not necessarily the only path or the path of her choice.

The thing with the Catholic schools is that they don't seem to care a whole lot about how religious you are as long as you pay up the tuition. Their curriculum looks pretty good except you have to take religious classes ( which somehow always scares me).

I have never gone to Catholic School and I was wondering if any of you had and what your experiences were both academically and otherwise.

I went to Catholic elementary and high school and I'm not Catholic. I honestly didn't mind it. Everyone treated Theology class like study hall since you can only hear the same old gospel spiel so many times. I wouldn't worry about it. Lent always got on my nerves though as I'm not Christian (I only went because public schools here are probably 1000x worse than where you're at.) and I wanted my meat on Fridays. (tongue) I wouldn't worry about them brainwashing the kid or anything; from my experience, whatever values they go in with they keep. The fact that my class made the Theology teacher cry over our views on abortion is a testament to that. o_O

Eh, I went to Catholic School from Kindergarten thru Senior year and I have to say, I'm glad my parents made me. The school was smaller than the public schools, so classer were smaller, everyone knew everyone, etc. I can honestly say, as an adult, I don't remember 90% of my religion classes and since graduating have formed my own religious views, so the brainwashing was a no go, at least for me. And my parents are Catholic (technically, I am too), so you'd think it would have taken. I feel I got a damned good education, even with the religion classes, and that the experience as a whole was good.

I too was in Catholic School for the first three years of school (until my parents divorced and mom could no longer afford it), and I wasn't scarred either. First thing my mother asked the principal before she enrolled me was "What kind of God is in your school?" He replied with "Cool guy, you'd like him." My mom decided right then and there that it was a good place.

I went to public school, but I knew people that went to our local private Catholic school until high school and they turned out fine. :D I have friends from college that went to an all-girls Catholic school and from what they said, the all-girls part made it a freaky place to be. 0_o And then one of my friends kinda went boy crazy because she wasn't used to having them around, so my opinion is that it'd be fine so long as you try to keep mixed genders. But meh, what do I know.