Reply to St. Mary's Open House (Alexandria)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We attended this morning. There are definitely pros and cons to the school. More cons if you are not Catholic or not a particularly devout Catholic.

The gym was packed full with prospective families, and it was the most crowded open house we've seen, thus far. The tour groups were packed, which made it difficult to hear the tour guides and have questions answered. Older St. Mary's students accompanied the tours, and they were very well spoken and seemed to have a lot of pride in their school. It's a very large school, I think over 700 students. Class size target is 26.  The school seemed very orderly and disciplined, and the children appeared well behaved. We did not see any chaos, but a lot of engaged learning. Not much diversity. We got the impression that it is a wonderful community, with very friendly parents and students.  Several students came over and introduced themselves to us. Also several current parents. A nice community....if you are Catholic. Apparently 87% of graduates go on to Catholic high schools, e.g., BI, Gonzaga, Visitation.

What surprised us was just how indoctrinated the school is. Even as a Catholic family, we were surprised to hear that [b]the students pray before and after every single class.[/b] The open house opened with a prayer followed by Hail Mary. There was much more conversation and presentation about religious studies than there was discussion about the basic academic curriculum. The principal spoke at length about how religion is infused into the curriculum in every way possible, right down to discussion of the sun (God), moon (Mary), and stars (Students). They spoke about how the children walk 6 blocks to the church for services and also have weekly mass in addition to that, in the school.  The student tour guides discussed religion at length, as they have religion class every day, not to mention praying before and after every class, and also classes on learning how to pray.

This was our first Catholic school tour, and we also plan to visit Blessed Sacrament and St. Ritas.  Can anyone comment if the other Catholic schools are this conservative? We want our child to have a Catholic education, but I am not confident if St. Mary's is the right fit for us. We want DS to be exposed to other things besides all religion all the time.
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Maybe that is common in the Arlington Diocese (which is known as one of the most conservative Catholic dioceses in the nation), but I never did that as a kid who went to Catholic grade school and high school in a town that was predominantly Catholic (the Catholic HS was twice as large as the public HS and there weren't any non-Catholic kids attending the Catholic HS... so you can see it was a CATHOLIC town).  We never prayed before each class (unless it was a religion class -- and even then it was probably only in HS, not grade school).  We did attend mass twice a week every week.... no meat on Fridays.   Praying before each class would be too much for me... but I guess it works for some.  I have friends with 2 kids at BS.  They like it, but by the time the oldest was in 4th grade they were thinking more about going public for HS... too cliquey and limited in social options.  There's only one class at each level.  It gets a little old after K, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th with the SAME kids (and parents).  Plus they want more diversity and sports options.  But, on the whole, I think they have been happy with BS.[/quote]

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