Leap of Faith

I shocked my husband with the suggestion that we look into the Catholic school at the top of our road. Having married a Welsh-Irish-Catholic American who attended a parochial Catholic school as a child, it wasn’t surprising that he’d consider it for his own progeny, but from the mouth of his dyed-in-the-wool atheist wife, it must have sounded like conversion.

Sending your children off to school, even at the tender age of Pre-K and kindergarten, can inspire all sorts of personal quandries about setting them off on the right track, nurturing their fledgling independent selves, and providing fertile ground for learning. By fertile, I don’t mean teachers who throw chalk at you – or sometimes the blackboard eraser - for not paying attention, a tactic favoured by the math teacher at my first primary school. (Could any child’s mind be faulted for straying from fractions to marvel at how his trousers stayed up, belted as they were under a hugely distended stomach like string slicing into a ball of dough?) Nor do I mean the cruel English nuns who used to rap my husband’s fingers with a ruler, although the fact that he ended up marrying an Englishwoman, (note, not a nun), is not lost on me.

Having gone the route of a very liberal, creative-learning type of school for Pre-K, it turns out our Catholic and Church of England backgrounds have influenced us more than we knew. The current school’s teaching philosophy and marvelously caring teachers cannot be bettered, but the whole first-name basis between students and teachers, and casual attitude to middle-schoolers snacking, listening to iPods and interrupting teachers leaves me gob-smacked.

It seems reasonable we’d gravitate toward a school that is culturally familiar, though that’s a tall order for me in the states. My primary school had us sporting straw hats in the summer, blue berets in the winter (eat your heart out, Monica Lewinsky), and courtseying to teachers at the end of each day. We also had marvelously archaic responsibilities such as flag duty (running the flag up and down the flagpole) and bell duty (chiming a large brass hand-bell in the hallways to announce the end of class). And let’s not forget the host of throwbacks to yesteryear with highly subjective awards for deportment, character, and musical accomplishment. Perhaps they were preparing us for courtship war, sending out a battalion of Little Women.

I’ll admit this recent school envy started when my UK friends began posting Facebook pictures of little Charlie and Jemma in brand-spanking new kindergarten school uniforms. Knobbly knees sticking out from shorts and pinafore dresses; large satchels hanging off tiny woollen blazers; eyes peeking out from under crested school hats. The longing only grew when video clips and pictures arrived in my December inbox with an adorable Ben and Elsie dressed as a wise king and a glittery star in their school nativity play. Our school has a moratorium on any holiday celebrations at all. You read that right. No Easter or Easter bunny, no secular Hallowe’en, no Channukkah, and definitely no Christmas. Not even a school tree or hand-made ornament. Considering our own Christmas tree still features a small glittery egg-box creature made in kindergarten by my husband, aged four, you catch my drift.

Frankly, I’d have been perfectly content with a little secular winter play along the lines of Rudolph and the Snowman, but no such luck. When the librarian fretted aloud over a prominent display of December holiday and winter solstice books at the Scholastic book fair, I rolled my eyes. Why should we be worried, I asked? There are parents, she ventured, who prefer no mention – whatsoever – of any holiday celebration. I wondered how they coped in the supermarket or mall.

In America, there are three school picks: public-run, independent private, and private faith-based, most commonly Catholic. The public schools are uniform-free, except for the students’ self-imposed fashion rules. Private independent schools are typically anti-establishment and go without; while Catholic schools, bless their cotton socks, go whole hog for uniforms, in red and white, plaid, and navy blue. Looking at the array is like manna from heaven. All I can think is how easy school mornings would be and how many home clothes could be saved from the ravages of paint time.

No doubt the tyranny of chalk and nuns and the welcoming environment of a secular democracy both work, but neither approach seems quite right, and the quest to find the right school turns out to be as much about satisfying us, as our children. I sat my husband down to brainstorm. Besides nurturing teachers and academic records, suddenly respect, good manners, and a school uniform topped my ideal school list. The idea that I, of all people, might be in the market for a little old school structure and civility was an epiphany.

Still unsure about enrolling in the Catholic school, I met with the head. She offered her take on their school as imparting a moral framework and instilling students with Christian values: a system of cooperation, understanding, and enrichment. Now this was my mind of mantra. After all, drilled down, most religions provide a handbook to stave off anarchy.

In turns out, I’m not alone. In the UK, although active worship has been in precipitous decline over the last 50 years, religious schools have been growing in popularity, in part for their willingness to teach core values and respect.

The head stressed their students include Jewish, Muslim, and the non-practicing (though I half expected her to call the latter ‘infidels’). They’ve won the New York State science fair with a team that was mostly girls. They teach Spanish from kindergarten up. And they have a pretty spiffy uniform. I’m pretty much hooked. It’s just going to take a leap of faith.