My Story
My experience after being in Catholic school all of my life and what I saw after pulling my kids from a combination of private & public school:
Being in a private school, we just trusted that our children are getting everything they need. The report card is great after all…. However, when we started reading aloud together I started to notice problems. Then, when we worked on essays together, I was shocked at all of the writing and grammar errors. And then, I discovered how awful their spelling was! As we started digging into history and American government, I realized how little they knew. At their ages, I was shocked! What were they doing in school?! And the sad thing is, this is happening to most children, but many do not realize it. I give my example to hopefully help someone realize that their children aren’t learning what they think they are. And it isn’t my intention to call out my teens. They are truly great kids! But I am afraid that what I discovered would be the same for anyone else who pulls their children out of the school system. I can also attest to this after teaching college for 15 years.
My teens scored at a lower middle school level for spelling. They had no idea when the Civil War or World Wars were. They were also clueless about geography. They couldn’t see a sentence fragment or run-on. When reading together, if a word was unfamiliar, they just kind of guessed and made something up and moved on rather than phonetically working it out and looking up the meaning. My heart broke. How could I fix this at their age? Well, the story is beautiful and God is good! And through the various resources and articles on this website, I hope to show you the beauty of the paideia Gloriae Dei - education for God’s glory.
I am the product of private school. I went to Catholic school all of my life. I don’t have any horrible things to say about it, but I don’t have any significant praise either. Was it better than public education? Absolutely! Was I around teachers and students with higher moral standards? Generally, probably. But was the school still full of lost sinners who chose the ways of the world? Yes. And I wasn’t strong enough to resist. The influences around us in school are strong! And I don’t think people give it enough credit. I would say that being in a Catholic school, it was just easier to look cute and slightly innocent on the outside and hide all of the bad decisions.