How Many Of Us Went To Catholic School?

[Razors Edge ★]

It sure seems a LOT of us.

I did the trifecta - public schools, parochial Catholic school, private Catholic school.  Can't say it scarred me too much, but I never took it seriously, so maybe that's the problem???

[bikeman564™]

I did 1-12 catholic school. I'm a hot catholic school boy

[Allen ★]

My boarding school was Episcopalian. 

[Randomguy]

2 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

It sure seems a LOT of us.

I did the trifecta - public schools, parochial Catholic school, private Catholic school.  Can't say it scarred me too much, but I never took it seriously, so maybe that's the problem???

Always seemed not believable to me, so it didn't scar me for the same reason, it was just something I had to put up with.  Going to Catholic school does allow me to back up my arguments on the most ridiculous bits, though.  It always puzzled me that the zealots all seized on the silly stuff and not on the more relatable stuff.

[Zephyr]

Normal public school from start to finish for me

[maddmaxx ★]

I went to public schools until I attended a very liberal private high school for a couple of years.  I was the token conservative.  It was an education in extreme positions.  The all suck.

A couple of enlistments in the service will teach you how to compromise.

[Parsnip Totin Jack ★]

Kindergarten at Louisville High School Catholic school for girls 

1-7 at St Mel Woodland Hills CA

8 Thoreau Middle School only year of public education 

9-12 at Bishop O’Connell, Arlington VA

[MoseySusan]

Product of public school and Catholic catechism and membership, here. 

[Kirby]

  In my neighborhood, the public grade school was not great but OK.  The junior high and high school for my neighborhood was just downright dangerous. My Mom taught in the local grade school, and she wouldn't teach the upper grades because at that age violence was already becoming an issue.

[donkpow]

The Catholics have schools?! What's next, Rotarians with zoos?

[2Far ★]

Wo2 did the trifecta.

Nada for me.

[12string]

12 years.  My wife and I.  The takeaway?  Even though we struggled financially, all our kids went to Catholic schools for 13 years..  Ye, it made a difference.  Not just in faith, but personal development and scholarship.  Worth every penny.

And, yes, the sisters and priests were often wacky, misguided and hyperfocused on the minutiae.  But that happens outside the schools, too.  Jut have to do some learning around all that.

[shootingstar]

Public schools all the way through.  

Our high school was the first school on the semester system in the county.  A number of the Catholic students in their senior year moved over to our school because of the semester system.  The ones that transferred tended to be quite bright.

[Prophet Zacharia]

Public school for me. Devout agnostic.

My wife went to Catholic schools. The nuns were mean, as she tells it.

[ChrisL]

14 minutes ago, Prophet Zacharia said:

Public school for me. Devout agnostic.

My wife went to Catholic schools. The nuns were mean, as she tells it.

Public schools for me. I grew up across the street from a Catholic Church & school.  I’d often cut through the Catholic school yard on my bike as I rode to my school as it saved me about 10 minutes to cut across than ride around the school.  

The nuns would often chase us and one caught me once. Freaking dug her nails into my arm hissing at me that she had me now... OK fine you got me, now what??? I broke her grip & rode off but Geeze the look in her eyes was weird...

They all seemed like bitter angry women to me...

[Randomguy]

24 minutes ago, Prophet Zacharia said:

My wife went to Catholic schools. The nuns were mean, as she tells it.

They were mean as hell!  Bound to be, though, total patriarchy, plus the nuns were sexually frustrated beyond all reason.  Only a sex god could satisfy them.

[petitepedal ★]

Public School for me...catholic college..which doesn't  mean much..and I taught 1 year at a catholic girls boarding school. 

[JerrySTL ★]

1-12 for me. WoJSTL was 1-16. We sent our 3 children to Catholic HS. None of the 5 of us are practicing Catholics anymore. Priests said that our lesbian daughter was living in sin and 4 of our grandsons were immorally conceived through in vitro fertilization. This from an organization that enabled pedophiles. 

[MickinMD ★]

St. Rose of Lima Elementary School, Baltimore City, Grades 1-8, Altar Boy (in Latin!) Grades 5-8, High Choir (partly in Latin!) Grades 7-8.

Cardinal Gibbons High School, Baltimore County, Grades 9-10.

At that point, Catholic Schools jacked up tuition.

Brooklyn Park (Public) High School, Anne Arundel County, Grades 11-12.

UMBC (Public), University of Maryland Baltimore County, B.A. in Chemistry.

IIT (Private), Illinois Institute of Technology, M.S. in Chemistry.

UMBC (Public), University of Maryland Baltimore County, Advanced Teaching Certificate K-12.

UMCP (Public), University of Maryland (Main Campus), College Park, B.S. in Physics.

[12string]

1 hour ago, JerrySTL said:

1-12 for me. WoJSTL was 1-16. We sent our 3 children to Catholic HS. None of the 5 of us are practicing Catholics anymore. Priests said that our lesbian daughter was living in sin and 4 of our grandsons were immorally conceived through in vitro fertilization. This from an organization that enabled pedophiles. 

No, this from a man in that organization.  The organization itself may differ with his opinion.

[Further]

2nd & 3rd grade in a catholic school, everything else in an excellent public school. But I was pretty much untrainable...

[Forum Administrator]

I’ve spent the last 21 years in a Catholic school. 

[Tizeye]

I did the first 8 in a Catholic school, and probably would have gone 9-12 except moved from Jacksonville to Central Florida. Went to public schools for the remainder as expenses were tight when Dad built the home during those 4 years. Same applies with my sister who is 2 years younger. However, my brother and sister 10 and 13 years younger went all 12 years. None of us went to a Catholic University...however, my son is the exception. This is the same son that during his youth the teacher asked that he not return to Catechism class because he was asking too many questions and would argue/debate around the issues.   When he was accepted at a Catholic university for his MBA, I told him they had a requirement where he had to be an alter boy. Didn't cost me anything though. He worked at Yale and continuing education was an employee benefit, where Yale pick up the majority of the cost...anywhere but Yale. Albertus Magnus College is in New Haven, about 2 miles from Yale.

[shootingstar]

Unlike some people's experiences, part of dearie's education was several years at a Catholic school. He thought alot of the nuns were good teachers. But then he would have been a quiet, more well-behaved kid in school.

What was noticeable to us girls in our final year of high school, is that the few Catholic girls who transferred from their all-girl's Catholic school, seemed so much more articulate and self-assured/confident.  I can't explain it....depending on quality of education some girls DO benefit from all-girls school where they have to uniforms also.  It removes all the competition via fashion/looks and vying for guy's attention.  But then, later they have to deal with it later in life...if they want to be sucked into that game long term.

[Ralphie ★]

All public for me. No Catholic school content. 

[Ralphie ★]

4 hours ago, donkpow said:

The Catholics have schools?! What's next, Rotarians with zoos?

Also cows and fences. 

[maddmaxx ★]

40 minutes ago, shootingstar said:

Unlike some people's experiences, part of dearie's education was several years at a Catholic school. He thought alot of the nuns were good teachers. But then he would have been a quiet, more well-behaved kid in school.

What was noticeable to us girls in our final year of high school, is that the few Catholic girls who transferred from their all-girl's Catholic school, seemed so much more articulate and self-assured/confident.  I can't explain it....depending on quality of education some girls DO benefit from all-girls school where they have to uniforms also.  It removes all the competition via fashion/looks and vying for guy's attention.  But then, later they have to deal with it later in life...if they want to be sucked into that game long term.

  I dated a couple of girls from a Catholic girls academy,  The depth of their education was a lesson well learned. 

[shootingstar]

15 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

  I dated a couple of girls from a Catholic girls academy,  The depth of their education was a lesson well learned. 

Um..yea.

Some of these girls..were also dating guys several years older...which to us, was unique.  I mean guys who were no longer in high school.

[maddmaxx ★]

3 minutes ago, shootingstar said:

Um..yea.

Some of these girls..were also dating guys several years older...which to us, was unique.  I mean guys who were no longer in high school.

The word is "uninhibited".

[Thaddeus Kosciuszko]

16 years K-12 at St. Helen of the Blessed Shroud.

The 5 years of kindergarten were pretty tough - the penguins nuns said I had a filthy mouth and a bad attitude.

[MoseySusan]

So, I just finished binge watching The Keepers. The story is 100 x aggravating and sad. 

[sheep_herder ★]

No, 1-12

[Randomguy]

[Square Wheels]

I went for a couple of weeks.  My mom took me out, said they were mean.  I don't remember.

[Razors Edge ★]

My experience with nuns was in the early 80s.  Our school only had three nuns and then many lay teachers (all women).  The principal was a nun and seemed nice. Sister Georgia, the main teaching nun, was very nice too.  Never had an issue with the nuns (nor really the teachers).  I was a kid who misbehaved a lot. I generally started out by picking a seat in the back row of the classroom, and almost without fail, I was eventually relocated to the desk in front of the classroom.  I randomly got sent to the principal's office for minor stuff, but never was really punished beyond maybe detention.  The one run in I had while there was in a school meeting after someone broke into the school over the weekend and did some sort of vandalism. The bishop who ran our church came over from the rectory across the street to let us know how serious it was.  When he mentioned "ketchup on the walls", I smiled, he noticed, and he proceeded to get VERY irate at my treating the incident as "funny".  Sort of like Joe Pesci in Goodfellows minus the guns and physical violence.  I was a bit taken aback to be singled out in front of the whole school for smiling, but really, what did I care and nothing actually came of it.  The bishop was a pompous dick, but since I never had any real interaction with him, I didn't suffer from pissing him off.  Catholic high school was the opposite.  Run by Jesuits and with a smattering of "Brothers" and lay teachers.  Again, very fair and seemingly kind folks doing the teaching and administrating.

[MickinMD ★]

On 2/17/2021 at 2:31 PM, 12string said:

12 years.  My wife and I.  The takeaway?  Even though we struggled financially, all our kids went to Catholic schools for 13 years..  Ye, it made a difference.  Not just in faith, but personal development and scholarship.  Worth every penny.

And, yes, the sisters and priests were often wacky, misguided and hyperfocused on the minutiae.  But that happens outside the schools, too.  Jut have to do some learning around all that.

In our area, the Catholic schools were better in the humanities and worse in math and science than the public schools.  The difference is much less now.

BUT, in our public high school, where about 40 in my class had gone to Catholic Grades 1-8 elementary school with me, the Catholic kids were the Class President, Treasurer, and a lot of the upper-level academic classes because we had responsibility drilled into us at the Catholic School much more than the most of the kids who went public school all the way.

My nephews were sent to Catholic Elementary Schools to get that discipline.  Ryan went to public high school, but it was the 5th best rated high school in the state.  Adam is in 7th grade in a Catholic School now - which has held in-school classes all year - and may go to Catholic high school.  He took the state functional tests and finished in the top 0.1% in Math, top 1% in English, and top 2% in social studies.  When he was 5 he was the banker when we played monopoly.  When he was 8 and I picked him up from winter practice on an elite baseball team, he asked, "How do stocks work?"  I think he'll do ok no matter where he goes to school as long as he avoids bad friendships.

[12string]

17 hours ago, MickinMD said:

because we had responsibility drilled into us

Each of my kids, a couple weeks into college, commented about how they were surprised that so many of their classmates were having trouble transitioning to the responsibility and self discipline required in the college setting, and it was affecting their studies.  They weren't aware how well they had been prepared in comparison.

[JerrySTL ★]

18 hours ago, MickinMD said:

BUT, in our public high school, where about 40 in my class had gone to Catholic Grades 1-8 elementary school with me, the Catholic kids were the Class President, Treasurer, and a lot of the upper-level academic classes because we had responsibility drilled into us at the Catholic School much more than the most of the kids who went public school all the way

I had a friend whose brother was doing horrible in our Catholic HS. So his parents sent him to the public high school. He became an A and B student that year. He had already had the same materials a year or two before at the Catholic school. 

[12string]

24 minutes ago, JerrySTL said:

I had a friend whose brother was doing horrible in our Catholic HS. So his parents sent him to the public high school. He became an A and B student that year. He had already had the same materials a year or two before at the Catholic school. 

We went to a small luncheon offered to accepted students in a narrow program that my ,daughter intended to attend.  The dean came to her and asked why she hadn't applied for a specific scholarship, so she said her numbers didn't meet the requirements.  The dean told her to apply, she knows what HS she went to, she would give her the scholarship.

In all fairness, the field isn't leve;.  While a LARGE difference is the way they teach responsibility and discipline, they do have the ability to weed out anyone who may adversely influence other students, or hold them back scholastically.  Public schools can't do that, and can't even use it as a threat.