The menace of religious schools (Richard Dawkins).

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I went to a private Baptist school and it was horrible. In Alabama, teachers at private Christian schools didn't have to have a degree or license then, and I'm not sure if they do now or not.

My kids went to Catholic school while we lived in Bham and they got a great education. They enjoyed it and to be honest, Catholic schools do give a very good education. They don't just teach creationism, and even though you have a religion class that is mandatory, you are not forced to believe it, just to know what it teaches. You go to weekly Mass (daily during Lent) but you don't have to participate, you just have to sit still be be polite. There were kids there of all different religions and several Jewish kids. I had thought there was only one, but looking back, there was just one in my son's class but several more throughout the school. Quite a few Protestants of the non Fundamentallist variety too. Their teachers were degreed, etc.

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I went to public school, my sister went to Catholic.

I would describe my high school experience in public school as a "Pre-Prison" program. Students acted like ignorant monkeys, running around, screaming, stealing, fighting, students were proud of getting GPA's below 1.0, one kid was skipping because he got 1 D and 5 E's. Ignorance run riot. General Population classes often spent more time on discipline than teaching.

My sister's Catholic school had children who wanted to learn. Ignorant behavior was quickly dealt with and was actually uncommon. They had the same problems with drugs and alcohol and sex the public schools did, but the kids at least wanted to be educated teen moms, not welfare teen moms like public school.

They actually are accredited by independent agencies, and while they did have religion classes, you did not see the religion crossing over into other subjects. They very much taught science, not just "God did it."

In many ways the Catholic schools provide a much better education than the public schools.

I could easily see how a hole in the wall religious school, not accredited or accredited by some self accrediting body, could be an isue.

Religious schools are a detriment to public education.

I don't think there was any benefit to learning Catholic dogma. Some Catholic schools do have better discipline than state schools (not all of them in Britain, though)...but the religious side of it is mostly a waste of time. At primary school I had and hour of RE every day and a one hour Mass once a week. I know there are other sides to education than just the academic side, but I don't think the RE and church really edified me and some other form of personal/social development education would've been better. Thankfully, the Catholic college I work at now is limited to one hour of RE a week, without the compulsory Mass. They lay on the religion heavier for the younger age groups. Considering that the school day at primary school lasts 6 hours, then I was spending the equivalent of one whole school day a week learning about Catholicism (an NO other religion).

There's no intellectual benefit. There's little social benefit because I seemed to be the only child in the school who followed those teachings. It actually messed me up in some ways because I took it very seriously when I was young. I was hyper religious and very anxious all the time.

They didn't have to do so much religion to justify themselves as a 'Catholic school'! But they did, anyway.