The thing I never even suspected about Catholic high school is how it would shape my kids' ideas about money. You know who sends their kids to Catholic high school? It's mostly people with disposable income. To be more specific, according to my oldest son, it's a bunch of rich white people who all live in the same two subdivisions. Is that a comprehensive demographic report on the Gladlyville Catholic high school? Of course not. Do people nod ruefully when they hear it? Yes, they do.
It started in small ways, with a kid saying, "I cannot take that phone to school." It comes up routinely. "Everybody I know went to a different state for spring break."
The first person I knew in town who sent her kids to Catholic school talked regularly about feeling the pinch. Nursing an old car through yet another repair, delaying the purchase of a larger house. "We never go on vacation," she said. "We have kids in Catholic school." I hear it from other families with kids at the parish grade school as well. But that kind of budgetary caution doesn't seem to be the norm among the families who send their kids to the Catholic high school.
The letter of James says that the love of money is the root of all evil. That sounds like a wacky assertion these days, but I believe it's true. It's all over the news in recent weeks. I'm seeing it in Martin Chuzzlewit, which prefigures Bleak House in its decrial of those who would rather have an inheritance than a living testator. It was clear in the chunk of Mark's gospel I read this morning: How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! In response the disciples said LOL WUT (the Millennials Translation, natch), so Jesus had to tell them again.
His disciples are still saying LOL WUT here in the third millennium.
I think it's hard to teach the universality of the church in a homogenous environment. It's hard to teach preferential love for the poor when a majority of school families are in the top income quintile. I am still troubled -- so troubled that I don't see us sending the younger kids there -- by the stories I hear about partisan identity trumping* Catholic identity.
*no pun intended
Poverty is the first of the evangelical counsels (joined by chastity and obedience) for a reason. When a person has plenty of money, it can be a bulwark that causes her to lose sight of the truth: God alone is our refuge and strength. When wealth is normal, it reorders kids' priorities. (And adults' priorities too.) When privilege becomes something a person thinks she deserves instead of something for which she should be humbly grateful, it warps the lenses through which she views the world.
I'm not sure it does much good to ask for our eyes to be enlightened if we're going to insist on wearing the wrong glasses.
When I told our private school admissions officer that no, we would not be sending our 8th grader on to the HS because I wanted her out of "the bubble," she assured me that in the HS there would be kids from other racial groups. I said that's not the bubble I'm talking about. She found that confusing.
Friends said that they liked that bubble and hoped their kids would spend their whole lives in it. That made me sad.
Posted by: Karen | May 19, 2017 at 07:29 AM
Jamie, let me go on a bit further. I don't think your comments about Catholic school are unique to Catholic school, and I'm sorry that your Catholic school has become a place where affluence is the rule rather than the exception.
In my city, there are some private religious schools that do not primarily serve affluent families, but these schools are small, focus on a rather fundamentalist religious view and struggle for good staff and a reasonable number of students.
In the end we chose to send our kids to the public schools, which are excellent in our area of town and have served them really well. They are definitely not in "the bubble" and have developed a greater appreciation for the lifestyle we are able to afford, and a much, much greater understanding of how the majority of the world lives.
I am glad we made that choice. I know you struggle with how to educate your children, but from this side of the computer screen it seems that your children are succeeding in spite the issues you've had with their schools. Take heart!
Posted by: Karen | May 19, 2017 at 09:48 AM
I remember a coworker telling us that they didn't send their kids to the super-expensive private (non-religious) school in town because they didn't want their kids thinking that THEY are what "poor" is, because they are certainly not "the poor" -- they're solidly middle class, but would certainly be "poor" compared to the vast majority of kids at that school. Sounds like the same thing here.
We moved J from one Catholic grade school to another and definitely changed demographics as to race and socioeconomic status. I feel we fit in better at the second one, the one that is less affluent.
Not sure yet what we're going to do about high school. We've got a few years but I want to start figuring it out soon, for just these sorts of reasons.
Posted by: mary d | May 19, 2017 at 10:20 AM
My sister is a public high school teacher and she's encouraged us to keep our kids "in the bubble" forever. No matter where our kids go to school, they won't be the poorest or the wealthiest, but we'll keep them where the teachers have the ability to provide a moral framework for why "50 Shades of Grey" is not an acceptable poster theme.
Posted by: Calee | May 19, 2017 at 11:37 AM