Pope Francis has urged Vatican bureaucrats to avoid “rigid ideological positions” that prevent them from understanding today’s reality
Pope Francis urged Vatican bureaucrats Thursday to avoid “rigid ideological positions” that prevent them from understanding today’s reality, an appeal made days after he formally allowed priests to bless same-sex couples in a radical change of Vatican policy.
Francis used his annual Christmas greeting to the Holy See hierarchy to encourage the cardinals, bishops and laypeople who run the Vatican to listen to one another and to others so they can evolve to truly offer service to the Catholic Church.
Speaking in the Hall of Blessings, Francis told them it was important to keep advancing and growing in their understanding of the truth. Fearfully sticking to rules may give the appearance of avoiding problems but only ends up hurting the service that the Vatican Curia is called to give the church, he said.
“Let us remain vigilant against rigid ideological positions that often, under the guise of good intentions, separate us from reality and prevent us from moving forward,"the pope said. "We are called instead to set out and journey, like the Magi, following the light that always desires to lead us on, at times along unexplored paths and new roads.”
I don’t pretend to know where you are time vs money. And it could be that private school is your best option. I’m also assuming that you’re in the US but that may not be the case. And what you can throw away everything I’m saying here because I know public and private schools in Europe and many other places are entirely different.
I did private for a few years. The only substantial difference for me was that the private teachers would make sure you do your homework and punish you if you don’t.
YMMV, but I will have to say that probably 40% of those kids in my private school were Grade-A assholes. Zero compassion, every little thing was a do or die competition. The teacher would do the best she could to control social situations but, there’s only so much she can do. She’s not going to fight the other parents for you by kicking little Jimmy out for being a jerk. They bring the two sets of parents together and that’s about the point where you find out why Little Jimmy is the way he is.
The state schools are being pressured pretty hard for testing scores, so it’s not so much that they don’t want to teach your kids or can’t teach your kids, but they’re underfunded and overworked and are going to pick the ones that are easiest to teach to raise that number.
But you can probably get the same outcome from using public school and pulling in a tutor after say middle school. Your school might even provide tutelage, but you’re probably going to have to realize that it needs to happen and ask them for it.
If you have some time, even just getting marginally involved in your kids education you can pull off approximately what the private schools do. Order the common core teacher manuals that your schools use, once a week go over the same things they did in school. Tell your public teachers you want to get on the same page as them they’d probably be delighted no matter how useless the seem.
Again if you’ve got excess cash, The private schools will absolutely get the job done. Just do some due diligence, find some families locally that take their kids there start asking them particular questions that would suit your kids well.
Anything before around 10th grade, just make sure that they’re keeping up grades and knowledge in algebra, calculus, trig, science and english.
All those high school grades and scores are honestly trash as long as they get into the college they want.
So here in Canada (at least on the Prairies) we’re lucky enough to have Catholic school as a publicly funded option. There would be no additional cost to me.
The thing is my kid is doing great for now (grade 4) and I’ve taught her a ton of science, engineering and math from my own knowledge. She’s bright and engaged… At home. But the standard school system is trying their best to change that.
In her class at school they are still counting blocks and doing 2-digit addition. And they need to do that, because there are kids in her class who can’t count. And can’t read! In grade 4!
The teachers say she’s top of the class easily, but how do they quantify that, just that she seems smart? There is no scoring, no grades, no discipline. It’s nothing like school when I was young. There’s this little shit in her class that likes to scream so they gave everyone else earmuffs to use when he does. He’s not disabled or anything mind you - just a spoiled disruptive little shit.
It’s a trash environment that’s hard on smart kids. I taught her how to box and also how nice girls only ever hurt someone by accident. So far she’s knocked out a kid who likes to push little girls down the stairs and took another bully’s teeth out. She told me “but they were gonna fall out anyways. It was an accident!” Good job, kid.
More parents have been pulling their smart kids for the Catholic school and she lost 2 of her best friends there this year. Most of the other kids left aren’t really decent company… They are dumb as a load of rocks honestly. The selection pressure to the Catholic system and to private schools has taken its toll.
So I went to visit the Catholic school to see what it was like and it was night and day. The kids were all lean, healthy looking and bright eyed. No fat kids. No scrubs. No screaming brats. No tablets or phones, at recess everyone was playing sports and games and laughing and smiling. Looks like the kind of company I want my daughter to grow up with, honestly.
The principal was horrified to hear my stories from public school and promised that they teach kids individually with extra projects and enrichment for kids who are ahead. Which is great because often my daughter tells me she wants to just stay on the farm with me “Because there’s no point in going to school, I’ll learn more working with you”
They have sports, they have clubs, everything from knitting and choir to lockpicking and hacking. They have a full band program and an entire supply of loaner instruments! A huge and well kept library full of mostly secular books. All the stuff that a school should have, but mostly it’s what it doesn’t have that I’m interested in. Otherwise she’s going to fall off the rails and spend her highschool days like I did - bored to death and getting into drugs, drinking and causing trouble.
My wife teaches at a local college and is very concerned that the quality of incoming students seems to drop every year and yet their attitudes get more and more entitled. The Catholic district has won industry awards for their mentorship and job placement programs, the public district… Well… They don’t even have them.
Yeah I’m out of my depth with your experience, sounds like you’re making a good decision.
Yeah it’s… Pretty bad here. I used to be proud to be Canadian but when I look at what I wrote, it drives home how our country is just a shadow of the place I grew up in. The average Canadian is barely getting by, and quality of services is degrading rapidly.
Sounds like you’re in Europe. I’ve often wondered what it would be like, if we could start a new life somewhere civilized.
I’m electrician and electric motor systems technologist by certification, systems integrator, programmer, millwright and machinist by skillset, CTO is my current job title. Wife has degrees in physics and controls technology, used to work oilfield engineering, now teaches science and math at post-secondary level. Daughter is a 9yo Linux desktop user and Python programmer, deserves a better future than this country has to offer. Got her an Arduino robot kit for Christmas.
Any market for people like us over there? I would love to abandon this sinking ship.
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If you move to the EU, not only your skillset will determine how easily you can find a decent job, but also how well your diploma translates to the ones we have here. My guess is that for technologically or scientifically oriented degrees, that’s probably not too much of an issue, on the condition that the level of education for the degree you have in your country of origin is good enough.
If you’re seriously considering this, I’d suggest finding some people who made the same decision and talk to them about their experience.
The EU has its own problems of course, but I have the feeling there’s generally less inequality than in a lot of other first world countries. Access to good education and healthcare is generally cheap or at least affordable. Some countries cope with waiting lists for specialized healthcare however, although that differs from country to country.
As a Canadian, the language shouldn’t be an issue. In large parts of Europe, you can get by with French and English. In a larger, multilingual company, people usually default to English. I know a Syrian family who fled the war with their kids (the youngest wasaround the age of yours), and the kids learned the language (Dutch) very quickly and did well in school, moving on to university education. The parents had a harder time adjusting, since their degrees weren’t very compatible, but also the language remained an obstacle for them.