Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Religion and School

My daughter came home with her report card last week. The only grades on there are E=excellent, S=satisfactory, N=Needs improvement, and some others that are basically equal to D's and F's. Well everything was great except for her religion grade. She receive an "N" on making the sign of the cross and saying the Angel of God. Now, I am a Christian and I am religious but I feel when I pay to send my child to school she is there for an education with a Christian background not the other way around. I find a huge issue with her receiving this not to mention the first thing listed on the report card is the religion section which makes me think this is before the educational part of learning. Before anyone says anything mean just know Yes, it was my choice to send her to a catholic school and no we are not catholic. Yes I do agree that she must participate with the religious part b/c it is a Catholic school but I do not think so much emphasis should be put on that part. Not to mention they are fully aware she is not catholic b/c they made me pay the non-catholic rate plus the out of parish fee since I don't attend church there. On top of all that I couldn't even get a family discount for my other daughter who goes there b/c we're not catholic. So what do you do now? I have to make her learn it so she doesn't get a bad grade on it. She makes the sign of the cross just fine from what I can tell and she says the Angel of God pretty good to me too. If you know me you know I had a huge inner struggle sending her here b/c I knew the religion was going to be a HUGE part but I guess I had hoped that more focus would be on education. The other issue I have with this school is every time I blink they are asking me to send buy or send something as a "donation". I paid my tuition plus a lot of extra stuff and now they are constantly asking me for stuff. If you want me to "donate" all of this just make up a name for some fee at registration and charge me then. Leave me alone during the year b/c all it does is piss me off that I have to keep putting money out. With that said I will end this post. My daughter seems fine with the school but was highly upset that she receive "N's" on her report card. Not to mention she couldn't get her star at karate b/c of these "N's". I'm patiently trying to think of a nice way to address this with the teacher without making an enemy. It's too early in the school year to piss off the school staff.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

What does "N" stand for? Was she the only non-catholic that received an "N"?

Anonymous said...

I am sorry, I wasnt paying attention when you already explained what "N" stood for.

Anonymous said...

yeah, it was easy to miss with all the excitement.

Raspootin said...

As your daughter is so young maybe it would be a good idea to move her before she becomes attached to friends etc.

I have never been to a Catholic school, but I imagine that they continue to heavily indoctrinate until the child gets confirmed. Is there going to be increased pressure for her to follow Catholicism?

Woozie said...

Yeah probably. It's also a lot easier to make friends as a kid, strangely enough I have more now than I did then. Before I moved I only had two good friends in kindergarten. I'd like to know what happened to them, but one probably turned out an idiot, and in retrospective I think the other was gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Kønig Hasemörder said...

By supporting a catholic school you in turn support the catholic church. I think your child will be heavily influenced by the religion she will be surrounded by in school. Ritual is one of the key factors the religious use in brain washing there flock, the 5 days a week surrounded by her friends will be much more influential than the Sunday at church with you. An even more frightening fact is that the church is pushing to incorporate things such as intelligent design to have as much clout as evolution. To bring it into perspective for someone who might not be that into science it is the equivalent of teaching that the sky is a massive flood gate and the center of the earth is hollow with demons waiting for the wicked along side data from NASA.

I went to Catholic school and public school. The public schools might not be as well funded as the catholic schools but at least they are only concerned with teaching true academics. If she went to a public school her scores would be higher and you could take the extra money and spend it on extra curricular activities. Music lessons, art lessons, etc...

wishin said...

Well the public school system around here is awful and not to mention dangerous. It is a shame but that's not an option.