Reply #59: This is all very enlightening for me. [View All]

[tenshi816]

I graduated from public schools in the States too and believe that I got a fine education.

The school voucher thing in America is something that started years after I moved to the UK, though, so I've been largely unaware of what it entailed until now. I feel fortunate that I haven't had to navigate that minefield with my sons' educations. They're both in Catholic schools, but almost all of the Catholic schools in the UK aren't private (although for admission purposes preference is given to Catholic children), and they have to conform to the UK educational curriculum - which means that they can't be run as religious indoctrination centers because they're publicly funded as well as receiving funds from the Catholic Church. I know my own children are getting excellent, well-rounded educations that don't have any more of an emphasis on religion than all the other state schools in the UK. Also, the religious education they do get is very broad; they study many other religions in addition to Christianity. For example, my children know far more about, say, Islam and Judaism than I do. In any case, religious education plays only a small part in their schooling overall.

The reason I mention this at all is that you said school vouchers in the US meant "primarily Catholic" schools and I wondered if you have any statistical data on this, because it surprised me. I would have thought that most vouchers would be going to people who wanted to put their children into private fundamentalist Christian "academies" to keep them away from secularism. I say that because those brainwashing centers have sprung up all over the place in the last 15 or so years at a far greater rate than Catholic schools appear to have done. I know that in the Atlanta area alone (where I'm from originally, and I know it better than I do other places) you practically can't throw a rock without hitting a Christian school (and I don't mean Catholic ones). There are eight of them within a short drive from the house I lived in when I went to high school, and most of them weren't there 10 years ago.

You're absolutely correct though: people who want private educations for their children should be prepared to pay for it.