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St Mark's is loosely Episcopal in tradition. It is not Catholic. Catholic schools- as outstanding as the academics are- are not a place for an agnostic family since religion is woven through every classroom.
Commitment to Catholic Education Ursuline Academy is a Catholic college preparatory school, and qualified students of Catholic faith are given priority consideration in the admissions process. Of all accepted freshmen for 2011-2012, 78% are Catholic. (TurtleCreek80's edit - 78% Catholic!! That's not even taking into account the Baptist/ Methodist/ Episcopal/ Presbyterian/ Bible Church students, which probably puts the "Christian/Catholic" total well into the 90-95%++ range).Consideration is also given to applicants who have attended parochial schools, as well as those with family members who are current students and/or Ursuline graduates, as these factors are representative of a family commitment to Catholic education.
https://www.ursulinedallas.org/podiu...t.aspx?t=52317 4 years of Theology classes are REQUIRED, and the school explains the students mandatory religious activities as follows: All students participate in liturgies, prayer services, retreats and other individual and group activities to deepen and foster their faith life and the communal spirit of the Academy.
Required reading for Theology classes includes: "Our Catholic Faith", "The Catholic Study Bible", "Your Life in Christ: Foundations of Catholic Morality", "The Catholic Church", "New American Bible/ Catholic Version", "The Old Testament", etc.
I'm just being honest. I think a family who is Agnostic would have a really, really hard time with a son or daughter being in a strictly religious environment. Catholic schools have mini-masses each day or several times throughout the week. They are taught by nuns & priests. It's not a loosely Episcopal school like St Mark's where chapel is multi-faith and teachers are PhD's and former Dallas businessmen.
Thank you all for posting! Sounds like it is a little more diverse and accepting than Frisco, which is encouraging for us.
We do know that these schools are very competitive and need to have backups. Any suggestions on back up privates that will be non-sectarian? If we go public, we would do HPISD which would mean living in UP and I am worried that atmosphere is going to be very similar to Frisco in regards to religion...
From what I've seen/heard of Frisco by working on Legacy the past 5 years, HPISD is much more outwardly Christian than Frisco. Yes, there are some families who are Muslim, Jewish, non-religious, but by and large the Park Cities is Christian. More Parkies than not are in a pew every Sunday morning. Some of the largest churches in their ENTIRE denominations are located within the Park Cities- Highland Park Methodist, Highland Park Presbyterian, Park Cities Presbyterian, Park Cities Baptist.
A substantial amount of the social activities for kids & teens in the Park Cities revolves around church/religion- Vacation Bible Schools in the summer for younger kids and church camps for older ones, Young Life & K-Life for middle school & high school kids, youth groups, church retreats, church ski trips & beach trips on holidays, church mission trips in the summer, huge Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapters at middle school & high school, tons of Bible studies and small groups in each grade. Many churches as well as K-Life & Young Life have youth leaders who are up at the middle & high school cafeterias throughout the week to hang out with the kids. A ton of HPISD kids attend the Christian camps Kanakuk/ Kanakomo in Missouri and Camp Ozark in Oklahoma every summer.
I have at least 3 former HPHS classmates from my class who went to divinity school/ seminary and are now ministers. I know of at least 1 girl who married a minister and a half dozen or more who work in ministry in some way (at a church, but not as a minister, or doing campus ministry or other Christian outreach).
I would recommend looking into East Dallas neighborhoods like Lakewood, M Streets, Hollywood Heights/ Santa Monica that feed into Woodrow Wilson HS, which is a good DISD high school. It is definitely more liberal than the Park Cities.
Preston Hollow/ North Dallas is also a good bet- WT White is the other good non-magnet DISD high school and it's west of the Tollroad & south of 635.
Richardson ISD is another good bet- very diverse. Lots of Indians, Jews, Asians, etc. 75248 is central Richardson (city of Dallas, RISD schools) and feeds into the best schools in Richardson and ultimately into Richardson HS.
Commitment to Catholic Education Ursuline Academy is a Catholic college preparatory school, and qualified students of Catholic faith are given priority consideration in the admissions process. Of all accepted freshmen for 2011-2012, 78% are Catholic. (TurtleCreek80's edit - 78% Catholic!! That's not even taking into account the Baptist/ Methodist/ Episcopal/ Presbyterian/ Bible Church students, which probably puts the "Christian/Catholic" total well into the 90-95%++ range).Consideration is also given to applicants who have attended parochial schools, as well as those with family members who are current students and/or Ursuline graduates, as these factors are representative of a family commitment to Catholic education.
https://www.ursulinedallas.org/podiu...t.aspx?t=52317 4 years of Theology classes are REQUIRED, and the school explains the students mandatory religious activities as follows: All students participate in liturgies, prayer services, retreats and other individual and group activities to deepen and foster their faith life and the communal spirit of the Academy.
Required reading for Theology classes includes: "Our Catholic Faith", "The Catholic Study Bible", "Your Life in Christ: Foundations of Catholic Morality", "The Catholic Church", "New American Bible/ Catholic Version", "The Old Testament", etc.
I'm just being honest. I think a family who is Agnostic would have a really, really hard time with a son or daughter being in a strictly religious environment. Catholic schools have mini-masses each day or several times throughout the week. They are taught by nuns & priests. It's not a loosely Episcopal school like St Mark's where chapel is multi-faith and teachers are PhD's and former Dallas businessmen.
The first part of that is correct.
The last paragraph is very wrong.
My daughter attends UA now - she just told me they have mass about once every three months, zero mini-masses - whatever that means, and there are no nuns in teaching positions.
My son graduated Jesuit as best I remember there is/was one (1) Jesuit teacher. Jesuit has required masses every now and again but certainly not weekly.
Are you actually claiming UA's and Jesuit's and Cistercian's, by extension, staffs are not well qualified?
I'm an atheist, my son leans that way and we had zero issues. None.
honestly you will have no concerns with these schools if you are agnostic. I know many nonreligious families, especially at Greenhill and Lamplighter, and to a lesser degree St Marks.
as TurtleCreek said, admission to Greenhill and St Marks is INCREDIBLY competitive, as they are two of the "elite" private schools of this city.
HP/UP are excellent schools, but definitely one of the more religious parts of the city (if not the most), though I believe you wont encounter too much trouble
and there are no nuns in teaching positions...
My son graduated Jesuit as best I remember there is/was one (1) Jesuit teacher. Jesuit has required masses every now and again but certainly not weekly.
Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas - Prayer and Liturgy
Mass is held every day but Wednesday. Perhaps its not mandatory, but I know the majority of boys attended when I was growing up. My boy cousins graduated late 1990s/ early 2000s, so not that long ago.
I stand corrected on nuns teaching, but there are 9 Jesuit priests either teaching or in Admin roles at Jesuit. Approx 10% of faculty.
There are 14 priests teaching at Cistercian- 27% of faculty.
Quote:
Originally Posted by EDS_
Are you actually claiming UA's and Jesuit's and Cistercian's, by extension, staffs are not well qualified?
No, not at all. Ursuline, Jesuit, and Cistercian are three of the finest schools in town. There is nothing lightweight about a priest with a PHD in Math teaching at Cistercian. Nothing at all.
I think this must be one of this things where YMMV. I knew an English Teacher at Ursuline. She taught Medea. At least one class period was given over to explaining the parallel between the evil of what Medea does (killing her children to get Revenge on the father) and Abortion. The idea taught in class being that both were women justifying the slaughter of innocents for reasons of personal gain. This was not presented as a point of view but rather as a simple fact. This woman was, at the time, the head of the English department.
I don't support or criticize this, nor do I think all English teachers necessarily approached it this way, but it must be said that a religious school is likely to give an instructor more freedom to do this sort of thing, which some my appreciate, and others may not.
I have known of people to go to the same religious school, get different teachers, and have very different experiences. My father and his younger sister come to mind. My father barely got religion mixed into non-religious courses at all. His sister got it mixed into several Liberal Arts/Humanities classes.
Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas - Prayer and Liturgy
Mass is held every day but Wednesday. Perhaps its not mandatory, but I know the majority of boys attended when I was growing up. My boy cousins graduated late 1990s/ early 2000s, so not that long ago.
I stand corrected on nuns teaching, but there are 9 Jesuit priests either teaching or in Admin roles at Jesuit. Approx 10% of faculty.
There are 14 priests teaching at Cistercian- 27% of faculty.
No, not at all. Ursuline, Jesuit, and Cistercian are three of the finest schools in town. There is nothing lightweight about a priest with a PHD in Math teaching at Cistercian. Nothing at all.
All of the daily/weekly mass/prayer is 100% voluntary and most kids rarely attend.
I'll ask my kid in the AM about mandatory morning and afternoon prayer but I think that is a no go as well. She told me a bit ago she hasn't been to mass at school since last semester.
I'm not sure what's changed about the daily masses at Jesuit but they are well attended by adults but not well attended at all by the students.
There are several Ph.Ds at UA (3 or 4?) and Jesuit (4 or 5?) as well. IIRC the head physics teacher has a Ph.D in geophysics and my son's favorite math teacher at Jesuit was also a prof. at SMU.
The bottom line is the Ursuline Sisters, Jesuits Priests and Cistercian Monks have been all about education for much longer than the US has been around.
Thank you all for posting! Sounds like it is a little more diverse and accepting than Frisco, which is encouraging for us.
We do know that these schools are very competitive and need to have backups. Any suggestions on back up privates that will be non-sectarian? If we go public, we would do HPISD which would mean living in UP and I am worried that atmosphere is going to be very similar to Frisco in regards to religion...
Personally I think that the Park Cities are probably the least accepting of different religions. I am Jewish and the only part of Dallas I have ever seen open anti-Semitism is in the Park Cities. If I wear an outward symbol of Judaism (a star of David pendant, for example) in the Park Cities I notice that I am treated very differently than if I wear no jewelry at all.
As for other areas of DFW...this is 2011...nobody cares if you are agnostic. Seriously. Nobody cares.
There are many ways to be agnostic, and if it means "antagonistic towards religion," you'll likely be more comfortable in the Bay Area. I'm from Dallas but live in New York, and there is religiosity in the Dallas air.
Having said that, I went to St. Mark's--which is indeed loosely Episcopalian and NOT Catholic--and religion rarely came up as an issue. There were a cluster of boys who did the right-wing Christian thing, and another cluster of kids who got Bar Mitzvah'ed, but religion rarely came up. It's also not 80+ % white anymore. While it was 90+ % white into the 1980's, there are now close to 40% kids of color, with roughly equivalent numbers of East Asians (eg, Vietnamese), South Asians (eg, Indians), Hispanics, and African Americans. If you take a look at the wikipedia site en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Mark%27s_School_of_Texas, it seems reasonable to take away that the major religion there is a somewhat hypomanic level of achievement rather than any particular religious party line. As for feeder schools, Lamplighter was probably the single most likely place, but it seemed to me that the vast majority of kids had come from a random assortment of public and private schools. From my experience, if your kids get in and fit in, SM is a great and lively place, but if boys fall behind academically, it's not much fun at all.
Last edited by cleareyedguy; 05-04-2011 at 12:13 PM..
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