Yesterday morning, Peter and I happened to be outside shortly before 9 am, on our way to the nearest playground in our housing complex. We saw an amazing sight. From every corner of the complex, kids were coming. Kids wearing backpacks. Kids walking alone, with a parent, with other kids. Lots of kids. All headed in the same direction, towards the school that is adjacent to the housing complex (you step from housing complex land right onto the schoolyard).
For a moment, I was a little sad that next year, Peter won’t be one of those kids. It would give him an increased sense of community to be able to walk to school. It would probably help him make friends who live nearby. But Peter won’t be going to that English-language public school. He’ll be riding a school bus to another part of town to attend a French-language Catholic school. There’s a good chance that he’ll be the only kid in our housing complex to attend that school.
I have an interest in homeschooling but it is not practical for our family now. Since we can’t homeschool, I am glad that, in Ontario, we do have some choices about Peter’s education. We can choose ”public” (non-sectarian) or Catholic schools (both are tuition-free and publicly funded) and English-language, French immersion, or French-language instruction. That makes six different schools that we could choose to send Peter to. While there would be some advantages to sending him to the nearest school, we believe that it is more valuable for him to become fluent in French and to receive a Christian religious education. He will become part of the francophone community in Canada and the much larger worldwide community of Catholics. At this point, I can’t predict whether he will remain in French Catholic schools through high school graduation, but we’ll start him there and see how things go.
