School is starting soon – not as soon as it is for some of you, I know. Most schools across Florida are in full swing already, as of today.

(When I taught in Florida we started around the 15th. Which means you were back, of course, around the 8th. Which was pretty awful until…you hit the end of September and realized you were almost done with the 1st quarter. That is not a bad feeling, to tell the truth)

We have two more weeks around here – three for Joseph, since kindergartners start a week after everyone else. But Katie, who is starting high school, had registration last Friday and will have freshman orientation tomorrow. And yes, she’s going to the public high school.

This is not a big deal to me – I am mostly the product of public schools (except for high school), and although I believe that Catholic grammar schools are very important (all my children have gone to them, and will continue to do so), I also think there’s a level of diminishing returns, the higher you get in the Catholic educational system – in most places, at least.

When I look at a school, the thing I try to evaluate, the best I can is the "culture" of the school. I’m sure that educational theorists have come up with all kinds of formulas for determining such a thing, but here’s mine:

Where the weight of the school’s energy is directed, what the school is known for, what parents and students value the school for – that’s the culture.

And no matter how valiantly individual teachers uphold their vision and ideals, the total impact of the school’s culture usually overwhelms their efforts in the end.

When I taught in Florida, I had a marvelous theology department – three of us – knowledgeable, faithful folks, determined to teach and to overcome the history of the department (personified by a coach who gave everyone A’s and so on, because "you can’t grade people on their faith!") and to provide a balanced, interesting curriculum.

We did a good job. We did good jobs. But in the end, we could have only a limited impact because the culture of the school – an identity which emphasized being a "private" school as opposed to a Catholic on, and a student body that was 40% non-Catholic, only a sporadic chaplain presence (priests came around to say Mass once a month or so)…plus other factors eventually led all three of us to greener pastures. I often think of my student Kelly – a wonderful girl who was totally serious about her faith, and was really the only one in her class, was subtly ostracized for it, and shed some tears about it at the Senior Retreat.

There’s a power there, in that mileu that one or two teachers can’t beat – a totally committed administration, who took a close look at the teaching staff (majority non-Catholic, and young God bless them, (because of the low pay)  but you know….when you, the religion teacher, have to explain to the Honors World History teacher who Constantine was and what he did…you’ve got a problem…) and admissions might do it, but…lacking that..

(And chickens do come home to roost. Because when you’ve struggled along, de-emphasizing Catholic identity because you don’t want to alienate potential rich Protestant parents who want a private school, but will not even think about the local evangelical mega-school…what do you do when…the Episcopalians get busy and smart and up the qualty and energy behind their private academy and then the public school system wakes up and institutes two really excellent magnet schools, one in Performing Arts, and the other featuring the International Baccalaureate program? You’re sunk, that’s what, because you have little to say to the community, and you’re charging a lot of money to do it)

So I pretty much know the deal. We’re not talking about strong established Catholic school systems like in St. Louis and Philadelphia where there’s a diversity of schools serving various populations (one of our teachers came from St. Louis, and another, early on, left to go to a Philadelphia Archdiocesan school…neither could get over the differences….) – we’re talking about communities in which there are one, at best, two Catholic high schools. Should we automotically send our kids there?

Of course not, and we’ve discussed that often enough here. But the truth is, when you’re asked to spend between 6-15,000 dollars a year (or more)…you do want to know if it’s money well spent. There’s no crime in that.

So, after sitting around here for six years, sending my son David to the public high school (we moved in 10th grade – he had started the IB program down in Florida), from which he graduated with 38 college credits, starting college essentially as a Sophomore, and being an English major, having to take no science, no math, no intro history, Freshman comp and testing out of his language (French), and with his faith well intact…..we decided to let Katie follow.

I could say a lot more about this – there are many reasons we’ve made this decision – , but I don’t think I really want to go into it, except for two things, and it all goes back to culture and the title of this post.

One of the reasons Katie is somewhat relieved to be doing this, and I am relieved from her, is that when it comes to the Catholic schools in this part of town, we are talking relatively small. A small class graduated from her grammar school, a bigger, but intimately tied class entering the high school, with kids from the other feeder schools.

It is a culture of intimacy and strong social ties, going back a generation or two. Many of the kids coming into this high school had parents who went there. Maybe even grandparents. It is one of the self-perceived strengths of the school – those social links and connections, in which at some point, everyone seems related to everyone else.

The type of institution that every community needs, and that is a strength.

Unless you come into the game late and aren’t related to everyone.

We’ve been here for six years, and I don’t think Katie has ever felt that she quite fit in. What has always interested us is that in our first few years here, her closest friends were the 2 or 3 African-American girls in her class – I have pictures of her birthday parties, in which hers is the only caucasian face. Now, these girls are all really nice girls, and there would be no reason for Katie not to be friends with them, but at some point I think I realized is that they, in a way, were outsiders too – not mistreated at all (I don’t think), but unrelated to anyone else in the class, no one’s cousin…

And there has been a level to that which has been subtley hurtful, and which she has never quite overcome, and in that sense she is quite relieved to "get away from those people" and go to a new place.

(I am sympathetic, because when I started high school, I was the only freshman who hadn’t gone to one of the two Catholic feeder schools. I mean the only one. And they, too, had deep relational ties – the Catholic community in Knoxville was, at that time, small and deeply rooted..and inter-related to the max. I understand how she feels.)

But the other point is this, which I make delicately because I don’t want to impugn anyone. I’ll just tell the story simply.

This past Good Friday, almost the entire 8th grade class at Katie’s school, went bowling. It wasn’t an official event, at all, but in the end, almost everyone ended up going. Presumably driven by and paid for by their parents. Who are all good people.

When that whole scenario became clear to me, and Katie had looked at me and said, "I know I can’t go…." another aspect of school culture became terrifically clear. No one is looking for an Amish enclave, and these are parents, not teachers we’re talking about – but that hierarchy of values, even among a couple dozen parents, is a hard wall to breach because it is powerful, it’s reflective of a broader consensus as to what’s important, and it’s that level of the school community that impacts the young person. And in the end, it’s better to be a minority in a school culture that makes no pretense to be religious, than to be a minority in one in which you will be swimming against a tide that claims it’s going your way, but maybe isn’t. The latter can produce quite a conflicted, bitter taste in one’s mouth.

And oh yes, this is on order. She may be begging to go to the Catholic school after a week…

The directions I would like these comments to go in, if you don’t mind, is this: Discuss your own school decisions. Please don’t impugn the decisions of others.  Just present your own case, if you’d like. Let your guilt (over not sending your kids to the Catholic school, over not homeschooling them)…have free reign! Let it out!

Update: After reading through the comments, I’m struck how much we agonize about this, and it angers me that we must. There are some parts of the country in which I don’t think I could ever, with a clear conscience, send my child to the public schools, where various agendas are deeply entrenched and parents who question are punished. (Not the case here…yet). But what do parents do when it’s a choice between that and the exorbitantly expensive Catholic school where Jonathan Livingston Seagull or Joshua are on the menu or where the school punishes the parents who question the employment of a abortion-clinic escort volunteer/drama teacher?

It’s tough, isn’t it?