I’m taking way too long to think of a title…

So I ended the last post by telling you I would have a serious question for you regarding school and I asked you to put your thinking cap on. I have to apologize to any of you who might have actually been wearing that thinking cap all this time because I don’t feel the need to ask the internets for advice on this topic anymore. You look great in a hat, though! So, there’s always that. I suppose I could still tell you what I was going to ask and you could still tell me your opinion or thoughts on the subject, it just won’t affect my decision anymore. OK then…

For a brief peroid I considered enrolling E in a Catholic school, but I’m not Catholic and for that matter I don’t even believe in God. (Something bigger than us? I think so. God? No.) The Catholic schools here (and there are quite a few) are private and therefore cost money (but not much – maybe $1000 for the year), have small classes and you do not have to be Catholic or even religious to send your child there.  My question was whether or not it would be hypocritical of me to enrol my kid in a school like this. Here were a few of the thoughts that ran through my head while deciding what to do:

• I may not be religious, but I’m not the one who will be attending the school.
• I have no problem if E or K grow up and become religious, church attending people.
• I want the girls to make this decision for themselves so would sending them to a religious based school be too much when they are so young and impressionable?
• Small class sizes would be great.
• I don’t want religion to play the biggest part of their education.
• The public school we are zoned for is fantastic and there are a lot of people who wish they lived in this zone so they could send their kids to that school.

If it’s not obvious I decided that we would go with the public school up the road and consider ourselves lucky for living in an area with a school that has a great reputation. Plus the public schools here have a religion class so my girls will have the chance to learn and make their own decisions about church and God in their own time. I imagine it seems weird that I let religion even play a role in deciding where to send E to school, but it only came up for me when I found out that the Catholic schools were open to everyone and didn’t cost an arm and a leg to send your kids there. The main attraction for me was the smaller class sizes, but at this point I don’t even know what kind of a student E will be. For all I know she’ll do perfectly fine in a larger class setting and we can always get a tutor if she needs help in specific areas.

So feel free to put your two cents in on any or all of what I talked about up there. I know alot of people think religion, politics and the like are touchy subjects that should be left alone, but I think they can be some of the most interesting topics out there.

On another school related note E and I went to an open day at the public school on Thursday afternoon (I actually remembered!) and their prep program is really great. This school is made up of several buildings and the preps are in E Block which made E very happy. They have three rooms and toilets in that block and there is a separate playground for the younger kids; actually they have four playgrounds for all the different age groups. We left there feeling really good about that school and E is pretty excited to go next year. I loved being in the classrooms. I forgot just how colourful and vibrant the classrooms for smaller kids can be, it’s such a fun environment.