My state of mind these days...

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by Rmarsh

I went to a catholic school for many years and then a public school...so I got a pretty good idea of the differences.......and the difference is huge... especially when it comes to reading, writing, and arithmetic.
The nuns were pretty rough on us students...constantly drilling us and not waiting for the slowest students to keep up.... they had us learning at a much more advanced pace....than the public schools.
When I saw the homework and tests that my friends from public school....in the same grade... were working on....I was shocked....it seemed that they were like two full grades behind us.
When I transferred to public high school for financial reasons ....I barely had to open a book to get passing grades for my last three years of high school.
Another thing is that catholic schools would never put up with the disrespectful crap and thuggery that goes on in public schools. So less distractions and more learning.

We made the opposite trip with our 3 boys, started in public, switched to Catholic, observe the same exact thing. I live in a decent suburb where teh schools are considered pretty good by CT standards, and my oldest got straight As in middle school, and averaged 10 minutes of homework a day. Never broke a sweat.

At catholic high school he gets 2.0 - 2.5 hours of homework a day, and required community service hours every quarter which is a great idea. His friends at the public high school never get 30 minutes of work a day, it's preparing them for absolutely nothing.

I didn't see anyone mention the internet, which is having an awful impact. And they'' be writing papers for 100 years about what covid did to this generation of kids, the difference in CT between how the public and catholic schools handled it, cannot be imagined. Catholic schools barely missed a beat. Public schools lost more than a full year. And their solution to make up for it, is to give the kids no work. And parents are ok with it, and I don't get it.

My 3 boys do a lot of homework, play sports, are into karate, and spend little time online, and they know that if they work their fingers to the bine, good things will eventually happen. That has been lost on this generation.