Today at lunch we all talked about whether or not to send our respective kids to Catholic school. Now I will preface this with everyone at the table had been to Catholic school for at least one year, and may of us for all their schooling, so we all know what we were talking about.

I did not have a hard time with Catholic school, I went to public school k-8 and then Catholic High School. One thing I did realize that was different at this "college prep" school versus the public high school is that everyone there was there to LEARN. Not that public school kids aren't there to learn most of them are but not all of them.

I visited my friends highschool when I was a junior to help with registration (I don't' know what possessed me but I did it) and was shocked to learn that some of these students didn't even know what grade they were in. They were supposed to come up and get their ID cards and the cards were in alpha order by year - are you sensing the issue here. These teens would come up and say John Smith 10th grade. You would look in the 10th grade stack and nothing. Then he would say, "oh shit, I guess I flunked."

WHHHAAAAATTTT? is all I could think... and it happened more then I was, at age 16, comfortable with. Now in my high school if you flunked there was no way you were returning not because the school wouldn't let you but because of the humiliation. No one flunked - no one. Or if they did the school - in a very classic Catholic way either excommunicated the child and family never to be heard from again or out of guilt (another Catholic way) the family excused themselves and quietly slipped into the night.

The problem with Catholic school? Everyone expects you to be uber-good and pious. Ha to that! I meant more trouble makers in Catholic school then in public school. Want to know the big difference? The kids in the school for the learned are smart enough to NOT GET CAUGHT. That is right - they are smart, resourceful, and if they do get caught most of them have a lawyer parent that can get them out of trouble anyway.

It is my belief that you can get an education anywhere, whether you are public school or private school, but the learning environment can be very different.

So pick your poisen... education with stupidity or education with deviousness.


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Swimming Lessons

I remember swimming lessons that I took when I was a kid and I have to say I think we have become soft on our kids. I was scared to death of the deep end. Now I have to clarify why I was afraid of the deep end of the pool. I was 6 when Jaws came out and I was sure that he lived in the deep end of the pool. Knowing this irrational fear what did my instructor do? Slowly and gradually work me into the end of the pool? Logically explain that a great white couldn't fit in the pool? NO - she THREW me into the deep end.

Really - I mean threw me - she (wrongly) thought I would just get over it or see that there was no shark there. I swam furiously to the edge of the pool, scrambled out and walked straight over to her and promptly called her a beee-atch. To which my mom made me apologize to her. The indignity of it all - she tried to get me eaten by a shark the size of Manhattan and I had to apologize to her.

Yesterday I went to lessons with my son and they practiced getting in the water. I repeat they practiced just getting into the water. Then they got to voice an opinion as to whether they wanted to do something. The instructor asked them: "Do you want to blow bubbles in the water?" To which both boys said resoundingly "NO!" Since when did you get a choice? If this was 1978 the instructor would have just shoved their heads into the water, let them up for a gasp of air and then plunged them back down.

What, I mean what, has our world come to? A world where we allow kids to dictate the pace of their own learning? Where we allow them to voice a concern or a fear without reprisal. Where we shell out good money for them to refuse to do something the teacher asks? Where the teacher offers alternatives and patiently explains the things she is asking them to do?

I am half tempted to call my son's instructor a bee-atch.

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