Perils of educating Catholics

David Twiston Davies
MY WIFE and I began our career as parents with a firm commitment, not least because that was how we were brought up in the faith. This ruled out the nearest non-denominational primary school. Since our children had inherited my dyslexia' yslexia we opted for the smaller classes offered by the private sector.
In doing so we knew that we were forging a path eschewed by many others far better able to pay than us. These parents defended their choice of more convenient non-Catholic schools with two arguments. One, little heard now, was that in the ecumenically minded post-Vatican Council Church, our children must mix with non-Catholics.
More seductive was the suggestion that many of the strongest young Catholics seem to have been to Protestant schools where their faith was burnished by the experience. While this may be true, it does not take into account all the others sent to non-Catholic schools whose commitment steadily weakens until, some time after the age of 16, they cease to go to Mass at all.
In considering the options again for our fourth child, almost 10 years since we last made a decision, we took account of the claim that little anti-Catholic prejudice is to be encountered these days, though I suspect that fear of popery lurks deeper in British bosoms than is commonly supposed. A more pressing argument is that we are living in a world where the intensity of sectarian divisions is cooling. The cultural distinctions between Catholics and non-churchgoers are growing sharper with every advance in medical science.
Yet while our experience of six Catholic schools has not made us feel that we were wrong, some of them proved a mixed blessing. The first was excellent at nurturing the faith. Yet when we moved house our first child left it with only one academic strength, the multiplication tables which I had instilled in her during our daily walk to the school gates.
The second school, although better academically, was run by a convert headmistress who blithely mentioned that she had not bothered with the concept of sin in her instruction for First Holy Communion. A tough 20-minute session with my wife in the back of the family car for the son concerned put that right.
The clear lesson is that children require your guidance and vigilance no less if you send them to a school where every classroom contains a crucifix and the Angelus is recited than if you consign them to a godless institution where the lack of religious education is, at least, clear.
In the course of inquiries for our 10-year-old, who has been quite happy at the mixed prep of a girls' school he must leave next summer, we went through all the arguments afresh. We considered first the enormous local Catholic comprehensive and then the junior departments of three public schools.
The non-Catholic school was an excellent 19th-century Anglican foundation, but both my son and I felt it was alien. The main service of the week was at midday on Wednesdays; when I mentioned Catholicism we were not reassured by the head saying, "Our chaplain is so high he even prays for the Pope."
We also looked at two very different Catholic schools both admirable beacons of the faith but, we felt, still too large for him at present. Then we remembered a prep school we had looked at years ago. It is not Catholic, but the head's wife is a Catholic and it sends many pupils on to Catholic schools. We have reason to hope that we we made the right decision because our son seemed immediately at home when he visited it.
However, no school can be right for every child. Hope, vigilance and prayer will still be necessary.