Religious schools are a better choice than public schools.

[Warren Stupidity]

I have heard it said right here on DU. I 'm curious how many people on a progressive democratic liberal left of center message board agree that religious schools in general provide a better education for children than public schools.

10 votes, 1 pass | Time left: Unlimited
	In general religious schools are better for educating children
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	In general public schools are better for educating children
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[upaloopa]

1. What's the official liberal left of center opinion

of religious school education?
These kinds of threads seem to me to be intimidating on purpose.

Who here can speak from experience?

[Warren Stupidity]

4. universal public secular education nt.

[TreasonousBastard]

6. I spoke from experience as you were posting...

and the official left of center opinion should be that good education is good education whatever its source.

I would like someone to explain to me how public schools are "better" at educating than Quaker schools.

[Warren Stupidity]

16. All other things being equal, an educational institution that is secular

is superior to one that is not.

[brendan120678]

19. Why? What makes it superior?

And I'm not trying to be snarky at all.
If "all other things [are] equal" what makes secular education " superior"?

[TreasonousBastard]

25. Why?

[Warren Stupidity]

27. because it is secular rather than religious

and in being secular it does not, by definition, promote any religious viewpoint. A religious education, on the other hand, promotes its religious viewpoint over others. A secular education is fundamental for a secular society.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

28. You're digging into crosstabs.

Edited: Never mind, I see others have already brought up the exact same points, so I'm wasting my time.

[TreasonousBastard]

2. That's an ridiculous question...

Which religious schools vs which public schools?

FWIW, way back when I went to Lutheran grade and high schools from the 6th grade on and the academic standards were extremely high. Many of the Catholic schools around here had equally high standards, and some of the Episcopal and Presbyterian schools were so selective it was almost impossible to get in.

Now, how are we comparing those with PS whatever in Brownsville, or Bronx Science, or some fundie school down south?

[Warren Stupidity]

5. "in general"

[upaloopa]

7. That isn't saying anything at all.

What the hell is in general based on? Any statistics or just pull something out of your ass?
I went to a Catholic grade school high school and College. Both my high school and college were and still are highly regarded educational institutions. So generally how do they stack up to what you have in mind?

[TreasonousBastard]

8. That's largely what makes it ridiculous...

Who knows "in general" how the thousands of religious and public schools in this country rank.

And what are your standards for a "better choice" or "better education"? Would they be everyone's?

[skepticscott]

11. Of course they're not "everyone's"

It's a poll, so obviously everyone answers according to their own standards.

And if you'd like the questioned stated differently, try this: If you HAD to choose between having all of the schools in the country being secular schools run by local governments or having all of the schools in the country being run by churches, which of those two options would you prefer?

[TreasonousBastard]

13. Then what are they? And your...

alternative is fallacious, or just plain stupid, having the same problem as the original question.

The answer, of course, is that I would prefer neither of these options, and you can't insist I choose one. The question you pose is entirely your invention and is a pointless dilemma.

[skepticscott]

21. You answer the question according to YOUR standards

Not sure why that concept eludes you. But a question can't be fallacious, so apparently you're more confused than I thought.

And the question is a hypothetical. You do get what that is, don't you? It doesn't allow for every choice you might wish for, it asks which of those TWO you think is better than the other. The fact that neither of them might be what you'd choose if you could choose anything does not preclude a reasoned answer to the question as posed. The only thing that keeps you from answering the question and that makes it a dilemma for YOU (it isn't for a lot of other people) is that either answer would expose fallacious thinking on your part. Sorry. Cope. It's a common problem among the religionistas here.

[TreasonousBastard]

29. By my standards the question is unanswerable...

It's simply not a valid question. One is not necessarily "better" than the other. It might help to define "better" as in "better at what?" but even that won't take much of the stink off of this thread.

Might as well ask if blue or red is the best color.

[skepticscott]

31. Yes, we can all see how hard you're trying to avoid answering the question

But the fact that you don't have the intellectual courage to answer it or that answering it makes you uncomfortable does not make it "unanswerable".

One of those two alternatives is either better than the other in someone's judgement, or they are totally, completely and in all ways exactly the same. No matter how much you try to deny it, those are the only alternatives. This is not an aesthetic judgement like a favorite color, despite your ridiculous hand-waving and your claim to be clueless about the concept of "better" (a word and a concept I suspect you've used before, without misgivings). These are things with real and documented consequences.

[TreasonousBastard]

34. "Intellectual courage"? How about waste of time?

Most of the replies here seem to agree that this question is a bullshit "poll" that has no place in an honest discussion of American schools.

Now you have reduced your argument, silly as it already was, to simple name calling.

Bugger off. I have no more time for you.

(I fully expect that now you will fluff your feathers and claim victory. To the extent I give a shit, find that sad.)

[Nay]

9. It is ridiculous. As a mom who homeschooled for 1 year, sent son to public/private/Catholic schools

throughout his growing-up years, it depends entirely on the individual school EXCEPT (IMO) in the case of most established Jesuit Catholic schools, which seem to be uniformly excellent. The private school was good, but had some admin issues that clouded the learning aspects. The public schools ran from not good to just fine. I homeschooled my son in first grade because he had gotten a teacher who did nothing but scream at the kids. It's a huge mixed bag out there, folks.

The schools that are excellent seem to focus entirely on actually educating kids. Many religious schools, like the fundie varieties, focus on the indoctrination of kids. Bad public or private non-religious schools often suffer from bad/corrupt/incompetent management, often caused by the profit motive.

[Warren Stupidity]

17. "in general". nt.

[hrmjustin]

3. Depends on the school so I have no desire to make sweeping statements.

From my own experience I went to RCS from K to 8 and Public HS and when I got to HS I ended up taking tenth grade classes because my school was more advanced per grade level than the local public schools.

[edhopper]

10. My Catholics friends

would say the education would be the same or better in religious school, of course varying on the schools themselves. There are suburban and target schools in the NY area that are as good as anything, and others that are very poor.
But their experience in school, especially having Nuns teach them, and abuse them, they would say public school was by far the better experience.
There is more to school than education.

[silverweb]

12. It depends.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]Too general a question.

[Act_of_Reparation]

14. I've attended both private religious and public schools...

...and I've lived in several states, between which the overall quality of the public education system has varied wildly.

In my hometown in Connecticut, the public schools were vastly superior to the parochial schools. But, at the time, Connecticut teachers were the highest paid in the country.

In California and Michigan, the situation is different. Public schools are strapped for cash and in some cases private schools offer teachers more competitive wages. In those cases, private schools--even those with religious components--can provide better education than their public counterparts.

This isn't a shot at public education or a defense of religious education. Rather, it is illustrative of a problem with how public education is administered and funded.

[kwassa]

40. the public schools in Connecticut were the high point of my K-12 education.

Then we moved to Ohio.

[trotsky]

15. Founding Fathers agreed: Funding public education is not a debate

http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/founding-fathers-agreed-funding-public-education-is-not-a-debate/article_f05aa5b0-2fed-5c63-be1a-1b013cf49625.html

Two of our greatest Founding Fathers, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, were fierce political adversaries. But in the first years of our nation, these rivals — with vastly different backgrounds and disparate political views — shared common ground. They both believed in the importance of funding public education.

Rather than squabbling, Adams and Jefferson knew that public education was at the heart of democracy. “The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it,” wrote Adams. “There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.”

Jefferson, witness to the Revolution, drafter of the Declaration of Independence, and founder of the nation’s first public university, rightfully believed that it was the government and citizenry’s duty to invest tax dollars in public education: “[T]he tax which will be paid for this purpose [education] is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”

[Lordquinton]

18. Trick question

With the voucher system, and charter schools many religious schools are funded with public money.

[brendan120678]

20. Other...

The school with the best qualified, most dedicated teachers is the "best."

[pinto]

22. When does the public shaming begin? Will there be tar and feathers? Names named? Lists made?

Nuanced, in depth discussion be damned! I say. Let's keep it simple. Let's vote and hold the apostates accountable.

[hrmjustin]

23. +1

[Warren Stupidity]

24. public secular education is a core liberal value. nt.

[elleng]

26. They were in DC, for our daughters,

where there were no reasonable public schools available to us.

(I attended public schools, in NY and OH for college, throughout my education, until law school.)

[peacebird]

30. Question: do you have $$$ to PAY for religious school? The problem is the siphoning of public $$

to pay for voucher schools is gutting money from public education. A large number of kids have to have public education since their families cannot afford private. This country NEEDS good solid public education, and that does NOT mean common core or testing, it means letting teachers fire up the interest in learning in their pupils.
But NO public money should be siphoned off of public schools to find voucher schools or private schools.

[mikehiggins]

32. Catholic schools don't thump their bibles

Generally, coming from a family educated in Catholic schools, and having sent my kids to an RC grade school in Queens I would have to say the RC's actually did a better job than the local public schools. This may just be anecdotal (sp?) but one kid is a lawyer and the other a special ed teacher with a Masters from Hunter. The grandkids will probably going to public schools but then again, they live in the highest rated area of Pennsylvania, so go figure.

[okasha]

33. Let's add another choice.

This.is a front-loaded bullshit poll.

[ ] Agree

[ ]. Disagree

I'm a socialist. I believe that free, publicly-funded education should be available to everyone, K-Ph.D. Scotland is moving strongly in that direction; the US isn't. It could, of course, if it stopped flushing money down the Military-Industrial sewer. But that's an alternate world.

In Texas and in many other states, public schools are funded by property taxes. Guess what? that means there is no "in general.". Wealthy districts get good schools. Poor districts get bad ones. Schools are, "in general," just one more public service that gets cut back in a capitalist economy and oligarchic sociopolitical structure.

That means alternatives need to be available. Not all religious schools are wildly expensive, and many have scholarship funds available through endowments and private foundations. Some are excellent. Some are abysmal, especially those sponsored by fundamentalist Christian groups. It's the same split you see in public schools.

[Warren Stupidity]

35. Yes the quality varies in both categories.

That is an excellent observation, although it is one made by many responders up thread. All other variables being equal would you agree that public schools are better for educating children than religious schools?

[okasha]

39. All other variables cannot be made equal.

The final variable is the children. Some do better in one environment, some in the other.

One size does not fit all.

[hrmjustin]

36. Well said as always!

[Igel]

37. "In general"?

That's like asking what's the average house size in America. You get a number, but it's completely meaningless.

When I finished my ACP a religious school principal called me on a Saturday night a week before school started to set up an interview. I was reluctant. It was a private, religious school, but enticing because it was an 8-minute walk from where I lived--in my community, no transportation costs, no car shuffling. I checked it out, and it was ridiculous. It had no standards. It's where mostly working class or poor black families sent their kids who were failing out of an already failing public school system to be "rehabilitated." Everybody got As that would transfer back to the public schools. You could transfer in as a 20-year old sophomore from public schools in January and get your high school diploma by the end of May. It served two purposes--diploma mill and GPA-increaser.

When hired at a public school after my student teaching, I got kids from this kind of religious school. They'd fail the first couple of marking periods and then vanish. Then they'd return with 3 report cards with all As in Alg II and chemistry and physics. Their year average was already largely set by their transfer grades. But when given a formula, d = vt, and told that the thing's velocity was 3 m/s and its displacement was 9 meters, couldn't tell me, "It moved for 3 seconds." He didn't understand what the equation said; he couldn't match up symbols with values to produce "9 = 3t", and when given the simple linear equation, still couldn't solve for t. "Um, subtract 3 from both sides ... so t = 6." Or he'd try "9 = 3t. 9/t = 3. 1/t = 3-9. t = -6. So the answer is -6 seconds."

At the same time I've known kids who transfer in from religious schools and stare blankly until we public schools finally catch up with them. They coast through level classes, and are often stupider for having been in school for a couple of months. Their old school's "level classes" were public school's pre-AP classes or even AP classes. I observed some level physics students piddling with diffraction gratings and double-slit experiments; they were calculating wavelengths given the data from their lab. Our AP classes struggle with that, and we don't dare confuse our level kids with it. And transfers from this kind of religious school are aghast at the behavioral attitudes in even a decent public school. They are the reason that many teachers are willing to take a $10k or $20k/year pay cut to work at such schools.

So, what do you mean, "in general"? How do you average those two kinds of schools? What kind of generalization is appropriate?

[Warren Stupidity]

38. "That's like asking what's the average house size in America"

The number you get for average house size is the average size of a house, and you can compare that to, for example, other nations and understand something about comparative house sizes.

You seem to be hung up on specific cases. That was the point of asking "in general", specific cases are irrelevant, as they are to "average house size".

[kwassa]

41. Looking for a new broad brush?